Iowa Old Press
Wayland News
Wayland, Henry, Iowa
March 15, 1906
Charles McClintic, son of Mr. and Mrs. William McClintic,
was killed by a Rock Island freight train Saturday afternoon. Charles lived with
his parents about three miles north of Brighton and had started to walk to town.
At the south end of the Skunk River bridge he stopped to wait the oncoming of a
freight train from the north. These trains slow down at the bridge and he
attempted to board this freight for a ride into Brighton. Instead of waiting for
the caboose, he caught a box car. He had on a long overcoat and it is supposed
that his coattail was sucked under and caught by the car wheel and drew him
under the train. As the lower end of his overcoat was badly chewed up. The
engineer had seen him standing by a pile of lumber at the side of the track and
saw him attempt fo jump onto the train, but could not tell whether he had
succeeded; but as the caboose pulled past the spot, the conductor saw the body
on the track. The train was stopped as soon as possible. Charley’s father was
just walking up the track on his way home from Brighton and met the engineer who
told him they had just killed a man on the track. Knowing that Charley had
started for town, he feared it might be him. The body had been laid beside the
track and covered with a quilt
borrowed from a nearby house; but as soon as his father saw the cap he knew it
was Charley. A telephone message to Brighton brought Marshal McCarty and
Undertake Woodford an the body was taken to Woodford’s undertaking rooms where
it was kept until Sunday, when it was taken home. A livery team took Mr.
McClintic home . Mrs. McClintic was at home alone and it was not intended to
tell her of the sad accident until her husband got home, but she had learned of
it from conversation over the phone.
Charley’s head was crushed at the back and on the left
side and there was a bad cut down his face. His left foot was severed from the
leg and his right leg was broken in
two places. He wore bow glasses and these had been knocked off but were not
broken. The front case of his watch was torn off and the crystal broken, but the
watch would still run. Charley was between 20 and 21 years old and was an only
child.
His aunts, Mesdames M. Reel, Dan Wenger, John McClintic and
E. E. Sanders went to Brighton from here Saturday night and Mr. Reel was there
Sunday making funeral arrangements and went back for the funeral which was held
Monday afternoon.
Mrs. James Oswalt,. A second cousin to Charley, was also at
Brighton but returned home Monday noon. Mrs. Ed Wolfe is also a second cousin.
Another theory which later investigations seemed to bear
out is that Charley did not attempt to board the train but accidentally stepped
onto the track. There were several flat cars behind the box cars on the train.
Charley wore glasses and perhaps his vision may not have been clear and as the
box cars passed by he may have thought the whole train had passed and stepped up
where he was struck by a car.
The funeral was conducted from the home by Elder A. B. Cornell, a former pastor of the Christian Church at Brighton, but now at New Sharon.
Submitted by A.M.W., March 2006