A Letter From Douds

NEWELL, GREEN, MCCLURE

Posted By: Gloria Dodds (email)
Date: 10/31/2002 at 01:53:07

Thursday, August 15, 1935 The Keosauqua Republican Page Twenty-Three

A LETTER FROM DOUDS

Douds Station, April 13, 1880
Editor Republican--- There was an accident
happened near this place on Sabbath the 11th inst.
which we think worthy to be inserted in the colums of your paper, it may prove a warning to
others.
While Mrs. D.C. Newell of this place was visiting
her mother one mile south of here, her 16 months old babe was playing near a well, fell in it a distance of 24 feet. Striking its head against the stone well, inflicting several severe wounds. Mrs. Newell missing her babe ran to the well, found it struggling in 18 inches of water at the bottom of the well, and with that love whom only mothers possess, she called to her step-father, Mr. Robert Green to lower the windless, Mr. Green commenced to lower her, and from this time until the mother had her babe in her arms at the bottom of the well neither Mrs. Newell nor her step-father can give any account but the supposition is that Mrs. Newell dropped herself after the first five or eight feet. She found her babe terribly mangled, almost lifeless, but after a short time the babe revived, the mother by tearing up her apron, she managed to tie it to the rope and sent it to the top. There being no one there of sufficient strength to draw Mrs. Newell out. She had to remain in the well until assistance came.
Dr. McClure of this place was summoned, and after examining the child pronounced it not seriously hurt. He dressed the cuts on the head, and in a few days the little here will be able to answer to the coll of Blaney Blance. (I have no idea what the sentence from "here on means")