Quigley, Patrick 1836-1901

QUIGLEY, DURUIN

Posted By: Wilma J. Vande Berg - Volunteer (email)
Date: 8/24/2012 at 18:33:29

LeMars Globe Post May 22, 1901
Patrick Quigley Thrown from Buggy Breaking
his Neck.
Patrick Quigley, one of the Plymouth county pioneers, but for many years a resident of Sioux county, about twelve miles north from LeMars, fall from a buggy on Saturday morning while coming to LeMars and his neck was broken in the fall and his death was instant. Mr. Quigley was on his way to LeMars to take his daughter who is attending the St. James school home with him for an over Sunday visit and this has been his weekly custom for some time. The accident which cost him his life occurred at the Andrew Johnson house at Valley Grove farm four miles north from LeMars. Miss Dora Durban of Struble was driving over the road and was the first to find the body which was in front of Mr. Johnson's house.
Miss Durban went in and apprised Mr. Johnson and he went out and examined the body and seeing that the man was dead returned to the house and in company with Mr. Riter of Strube came to LeMars to inform the authorities. Others came along and among them Miss Carrie Byrne of Struble and recognized the dead man as Patrick Quigley. His team had run about three fourths of a mile from where the body had fallen out and had been caught in a wire fence.
Coroner Cole, A.. M. Duus and Frank Miller went out and brought the body to LeMars and in the afternoon an inquest was held. A. M, Duus, Bryson Love, and Martin Gleason were in as jurymen who rendered a verdict that his death was caused by falling and breaking of his neck.
A number of wittnesses testified to seeing the body and some testified to seeing Mr. Quigley a short time before the accident which cost his life occurred but that was as near as it could be determined. A rumor was current that Mr. Quigley had been subject to fainting spells but under close inquiry of members of his family and intimate friends that rumor was proven erroneous. From the bruises on the side of the head and face it was evident that in some manner he had lost his balance and had fallen out and it is probable that the team which was a spirited one did not run until after be had fallen.
The news was broken as gently as possible to Mrs. Quigley by neighbors who received a telephone message at Struble telling of the tragedy. She came to town immediately and the scene at the undertaker's was heart rending when the woman saw her husband, who had left her but a few hours before with a cheery nod of
farewell in the best of health and spirits, a lifeless corpse. Her grief and that of the children was pitiable and would make the most callous heart ache.
Mr. Quigley was a native of Ireland and was about 65 years of age. He did not marry early in life and leaves a family of four children under 21 years of age. He came to Iowa in the early sixties and located on land some point north of where Hemsen now stands but after a few years lost the land through some error in locating and took up his home some time after in Sherman township,
Sioux county, where he has since resided. He was a member of that indomitable little band of early settlers who successfully combated the drawbacks which assailed on every hand, grasshoppers, droughts, blizzards and like hardships. Out of the raw prairie he helped make a garden of Eden and secured ease and affluence for himself and his family.
It is related of him that in the early days in the death dealing blizzard of the winter of 71-73. he was exposed to is fury for three days and nights. He was over to the Little Rock for timber and on his homeward journey was caught in a blizzard. He unhitched his team of mules from his sled and while doing this laid his gloves on the sled and when he turned to get them they had disappeared, his hat blow away and for three days and nights he walked and stumbled round and round on the desolate prairie leading the two mules. He was hatless and gloveless, and the cape of an army coat wrapped around his head and his arms muffled in his sleeves saved him from being frozen to death. As it was he was
badly frost bitten and suffered terribly.
It is said he walked into one yard more than fifty times during the storm, but such was the terrible force of the blizzard that he could make no bearings nor sight any landmark, there being miles and miles of nothing but prairie in those days.
Mr. Quigley was a fine man, by his long residence he enjoyed a large acquaintance. All the old settlers knew him and honored him. He was a model citizen, the best of neighbors, a loving husband, a kind and indulgent father. He leaves a widow, one son and three daughters. They have the sympathy of the community in their appallingly sudden bereavement.
The deceased was a devout catholic and the funeral services were held in Maurice this morning and largely attended by sorrowing neighbors and
friends.