Thomas Wicks (-1895)

WICKS, JOHNSON

Posted By: Mark Christian
Date: 5/15/2006 at 21:18:07

The Roland Record, Roland, Story County, Iowa, August 8, 1895.

Monday afternoon Mrs. Alice Johnson received a telegram announcing the the killing of her oldest brother, Thomas Wicks, of Millington, Illinois, in a threshing machine. She left at once for that place. Mr. Wicks is quite well and favorably known here, as he spent some time here on a visit last year. The full particulars of the accident we have not been able to learn. Mrs. Johnson receives the sympathy of the community.

We clip the following from the Chicago Record: While repairing a belt on a pulley of a steam thrashing machine, Thomas Weeks, a prominent republican, and resident of Big Grove, was caught at the wrist, and his body sent whirling around a shaft. His left arm was wrenched from his body at the sholder, and his breast broken in.

The Roland Record, Roland, Story County, Iowa, August 22, 1895.

Mr. Tom Wicks the principal in the event chronicled in the article below, was the brother of Mrs. Alice Johnson, whose death we mentoned a couple of weeks ago:

One of those horrible affairs that are becoming so common in the threshing season occured on Christianson farm, near the North Prairie Lutheran church about noon, Monday, August 5. When the news came to Yorkville it created a good deal of consternation, for the victim had many friends in this vicinity who could hardly credit the report. It is too true, and one of our good citizens was in a moment hurled into eternity.

This season, Mrs. Wicks and one of his brothers had bought a brand new threshing outfit with all the modern improvements, including a twenty horse steam engine; and they took a great deal of pride in running this superior machines. On Monday they began work on the farm where the accident occured. Somewhere near noon Mr. Tom Wicks attempted to put on the conveyor belt while the machine was running; by some accident the belt slipped down the inside of the pulley, and he reached in to pull it out, when his hand was caught by another pulley, that was running at lighting speed, and in an instant poor Tom was whirling around the shaft. His arm was torn from his shoulder, his ribs broken, and when he was extricated he was almost dead - breathing only a few times. The men about the machine were horror-stricken, it was such a sudden and awful death.

Mr. Wicks was an enterprising and energetic man; was a farmer, a machinery expert, and had been in business of selling farm implements in Yorkville and Newark, hence was well known and many friends. His death is most deplorable, but it should be another lesson to those who work about threshing machines and traction engines. Many of the accidents are caused by familiarity with such machinery; and operators do not use ordinary precaution. It is better tolose a little time than for a man to lose his life. -(Kendall Co., Ill.) Record