Accidents, incidents, and Missteps, large & small

By T.M. Bradshaw

Area newspapers of the 19th and early 20th centuries reported on stories large and small—providing news and entertainment. Part of the fun of browsing those newspapers is the friendly, kidding tone of some items, little jokes and puns that invite the reader in. Generally used in small fillers about people, occasionally the practice worked its way into bigger, newsier stories. The overall effect is a glimpse into the realities of life at a different time, a combination of fact and flavor.

In February 1871, the Bloomville Mirror reprinted an item from the Windham Journal describing a buggy trip gone wrong— but not as wrong as it might have. Watson Briggs was traveling from Gilboa to Prattsville on a Friday night, accompanied by a woman from Ashland. In the dark Mr. Briggs had trouble discerning the location of the road, and after realizing he was no longer on it, attempted to turn around. He backed off a dugway and horse, buggy, and people fell thirty feet down the bank. Somehow both people managed to get clear of the wreckage; neither was badly hurt, but they judged the horse to be dead. They took off for Prattsville on foot—no AAA back then or a means to summon aid. Upon returning to the scene the following morning, they discovered the horse had regained consciousness and was standing, but the buggy was a pile of kindling and twisted metal.

Music can be described as “good vibrations” but vibrations that are too synced can create destructive energy waves. The June 14, 1904, Mirror-Recorder described a band concert that generated too much enthusiasm for the audience’s good. Stamford’s Churchill Hall hotel consisted of multiple buildings connected by exterior porches. One of these verandas was crowded with people enjoying the music of Baker’s Band. Between the weight of the people and their enthusiastic foot stomping keeping time with the music, the veranda gave way. The veranda floor remained attached to the building, but hinged down like a drop leaf table, sending a number of people plummeting 15 feet to the ground. There were no fatalities—the most serious injuries were broken bones, neck injuries, and dislocated joints, but most of the crowd escaped with only sprains, cuts, and bruises and a story to tell. As Dr. Stephen Churchill was the proprietor of Churchill Hall, medical aid was close at hand.

A very different type of accident or incident happened in Jefferson because of a lack of people. C. Bathgate Becker and Wallie Johnson of New York planned to go hunting in October 1922. As reported by the Mirror-Recorder on October 11 that year, Mr. Becker was concerned that “the wild woods of Jefferson” might prove damaging to his luxury car, a Pierce-Arrow, so he borrowed the Tin Lizzie belonging to his chauffeur, David Stobie. Leaving Lizzie in a cow pasture, Becker and Johnson went off for several hours of hunting. When they returned, they discovered that they hadn’t closed the car door and a Guernsey cow was happily eating the upholstery from the inside of the door. The Mirror article ends with these two lines: “Shortly after the cow had finished her upholstering a la mode, we noticed Dr. W. H. Wheeler driving towards Jefferson. As yet, we have not heard if the cow had indigestion or turned into a Ford part.”

An earlier story reported in the Gilboa Monitor on July 20, 1899, concerned a less peaceful bovine. “Two Davenport lady cyclists had a lively encounter with an infuriated bull last Friday evening. … The road was rough and they were obliged to walk, and when quite a distance from any house the bull started after them. In their rapid flight they scaled three barbed wire fences, crossed field after field, waded the river, and finally reached a kind neighbor’s. … The ladies escaped with slight bruises and torn clothes.”

Other animals caused problems, too. In 1921, the Franklin correspondent to the Mirror noted that the Franklin Electric Light Company was plagued by eels. In the autumn, eels head to the ocean. But 1921 was a dry year, causing the eels to seek an outlet through the company’s turbines, “where they become mangled and clog the wheels.”

The Catskill Mountain News of July 23,1926 ran a very different water story under the heading “Autoists Forced to Ford Creek at Prattsville.” According to the article, after a speeding driver struck the center steel arch, displacing it and weakening the structure, “Over 500 autoists traveling on state highway number 23 between Oneonta and Catskill daily are forced to ford Schoharie Creek at Prattsville.” The article’s author used imagination to peek inside those vehicles and describe the trip. “Great excitement prevails with every autoist who comes along and suddenly finds that the bridge is gone. Women grip the sides of the car with suspense and say, ‘Now, John, be careful.’ The children scream. But one by one the cars plunk down into the stream, waddle along across it, and out the other side.”

The article also noted that the State Commissioner of Highways visited Prattsville at the time and ordered a temporary bridge be constructed immediately, “and it is supposed that his visit will result in arrangements for the construction of a new bridge there.” A new bridge was built in 1927. It was badly damaged by Hurricane Irene in 2011; its replacement opened in 2018.

Bridges spanning the Schoharie Creek at Prattsville had been damaged by weather before. The Delaware Gazette of April 6, 1836, carried an item originally printed in the Catskill Messenger stating, “Some three weeks since the bridge over the Schoharie Kill at Prattsville was carried away by the ice, it has already been rebuilt, as we are informed, in a substantial manner, with a double track and is now used daily.”

That hastily constructed bridge must have been intended as a temporary solution because three years later, on July 10, 1839, the Delaware Gazette reported that, “A new and splendid bridge has recently been erected across the Schoharie Kill, at the village of Prattsville, Greene Co. It is a single arch, 224 feet long, and 190 in the clear, resting on solid stone abutments, and is believed to be the longest single arched bridge in America.”

Then the Bloomville Mirror noted on June 10, 1862, that “Mr. John Murray, of Delhi, has taken the job of building a $1,000 bridge at Prattsville.” According to the Franklin Visitor, it wasn’t quite finished, but ready for crossing that September.

The story of a much, much smaller piece of metal than a damaged bridge support appeared earlier in 1927, in the February 2 issue of the Mirror-Recorder. It concerned a Roxbury man, John H. Dakin and a very preventable DIY accident.

“While at work screening in the back porch at his home on Main Street he placed a few two-pointed staple tacks between his lips. With his arms upreached in fastening the screen at the highest point a tack slipped into his throat and lodged there.”

He was advised by a local doctor to go immediately to a surgeon. A neighbor, Samuel More, drove him to Oneonta. There, Dr. M. Latcher dislodged the staple, but failed to latch on to it, and Dakin swallowed it. The Mirror-Recorder wrapped up the story with a little joke and a clear though unstated resolution of the problem.

“Mr. Dakin for a time at least lived up to his fine reputation as a ‘tactful’ man. He returned to Roxbury Friday and has since been relieved of reason for further worries.”

Items in unexpected places proved to be protective rather than dangerous in a very early story printed in the Catskill Recorder and Greene County Republican of May 14, 1829.

“Advantages of Newspapers—A person riding very rapidly yesterday was thrown, by the stumbling of his horse, violently upon the pavement, his head coming first in contact—by great good luck, a quantity of newspapers had been deposited in his hat for leisure reading—these served to break the force of the fall; so that, though stunned and sadly bruised, he escaped a fracture of the skull.”

And a skull, or its tanned covering, proved to be invaluable in this story from the Mirror-Recorder of August 7, 1930, under the headline “Charlie Wright’s Bald Head Stamford Beacon for Lost Newark Flier.”

Stephen Ransom and Fred Pollard left Newark Municipal airport at two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, heading for Stamford. Not quite two hours later, they arrived, but pilot Ransom couldn’t locate the Dayton E. Griffin airport at South Gilboa. Circling the general area, searching for a landmark, Ransom spotted a group of golfers. Among them, he recognized the perennially tanned dome of his friend Charlie. Knowing he was in the right place, Ransom landed his plane in a meadow on the other side of the fence near the clubhouse. Ransom and Pollard were Stamford’s first guests to arrive by plane.

T. M. Bradshaw shares other thoughts on history at tmbradshawbooks.com.