"Melancholy News": Utah's First Fatal Passenger Train Collision

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 51, 1983, No. 1

Melancholy News": Utah's First Fatal Passenger Train Collision

BY ALAN P. MACFARLANE

UTAH TERRITORY AND THE MOUNTAIN WEST had enjoyed superb autumn weather that October of 1869. Salt Lake City and other population centers along the Wasatch Range were burgeoning with the arrival of trainload after trainload of immigrants from European shores following the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869, at Promontory, Utah. Many were on special immigrant trains carrying the myriad British and other European converts to the Latter-day Saint faith disgorging at eastern seaports. On June 25, 1869, "The first company of Latter Day Saint immigrants who came all the way from the Missouri River by rail arrived in Ogden by Union Pacific Railroad in charge of Elias Morris." By late October nearly 2,000 Saints in six different immigrant companies had detrained at Ogden and moved out from there to communities in various parts of the Mountain West. Almost all arrived safely after enduring the, by then, relatively minor privations of overcrowded ocean steamer and still somewhat primitive rail travel, the whole journey from Great Britain to Ogden being completed in about three weeks. No longer did immigrants face the hardships of several weeks of North Atlantic sailing, followed by tedious river boat or jouncing, dusty covered-wagon transportation, nor the supremely taxing handcart pulling of a mere one or two decades earlier. Technology and the vigorous westward surge of the vital young nation had finally made migration to and beyond the Rocky Mountains almost comfortable.

For some of the rail immigrants that first year, however, arrival in /ion was less than auspicious and was, in fact, tragic as they became involved in Utah's first fatal passenger train collision.

The Deseret Evening News of Tuesday, October 26, 1869, carried a list of the names of 288 Saints who had sailed from the English port of Liverpool on October 6 aboard the steamer SS Minnesota, shepherded by Elder James Needham who was returning home from an LDS mission. This party was even then crossing the high plains of Wyoming, due in Ogden early in the afternoon the next day. Most were from the British Isles, with a few from Scandinavian countries. It was a historic day in Salt Lake City of another dimension, as the next page of the newspaper presented an announcement of the excommunication from the LDS church of the Godbeite apostates, William S. Godbe, E. L. T. Harrison, and Eli B. Kelsey, who had so exasperated Brigham Young and other church leaders by their open and strident opposition to Mormon economic, political, and other secular policies and activities.

Wednesday, October 27, 1869, was no doubt a fair and lovely day in Salt Lake City. That morning President Brigham Young, the pain of the Godbeite heresy now relatively dulled, and probably taking advantage of the propitious weather, had left with a large party for Sanpete County in central Utah, planning to hold meetings at settlements along the way and return to Salt Lake City in ten days." Late that afternoon those church leaders remaining in the city, as well as businessmen, craftsmen, laborers, and farmers in town for marketing, picked up their Deseret Evening News at the newspaper office on the corner of South Temple and Main Street or at their home door stoops and read the following on the third page in the Local and Other Matters section: MELANCHOLY NEWS.— By telegram received this afternoon from Elder James Needham, dated at Evanston, the other side of Bear River, we learn that a collision between the train on which were the emigrants whose names we published yesterday, and another, had just occurred, by which three persons were killed. Further particulars are not given. Immediate steps were taken, on the reception of the telegram, to send surgical skill to their aid. Dr's Anderson and Richards started immediately for the scene of the accident.

The next day, October 28, the Deseret Evening News reported this further amplification of the details of the wreck, again in the Local and Other Matters section:

PARTICULARS OF THE ACCIDENT ON THE LINE. — From a gentleman who arrived in this city by stage last evening, we glean the following in relation to the accident at Evanston, yesterday. Our informant was on an express train traveling westward, about two miles this side of Evanston yesterday morning between 10 and 11 o'clock when the fore wheels of the locomotive ran off the track. Signals were made to the emigrant train, which was known to be behind; but they were not perceived until the two trains were within half a mile of each other. The grade of the road in that locality is about sixty-five feet to the mile, and, although the engineer of the emigrant train as soon as he observed the obstruction on the line reversed the wheels of his engine, he was unable to check the progress of the train so as to prevent a collision. When the wheels of the express train ran off the line, engine No. 83, which was on a side track immediately rendered what assistance it could; the engine being attached to the rear of the express train, in order, if possible, to get it on the line again. The engineer of this locomotive seeing the emigrants train approaching at a speed that could not be checked, detached his engine from the back of the express train and opened the throttle, heroically set off to meet the emigrant train, in order to break the shock. This he accomplished to some extent, his engine being severely damaged by the collision. Had it not been for this act of daring it is presumed that the accident would have been of much greater magnitude. As it was, there were three killed and two badly wounded. One of the killed was on the express train.

The names of the killed and wounded are as follows: Killed, David Shields, Jun., Philip Dell and Joseph Thomas [Rees]." Slightly injured: James Hill and David Shields, Sen.; also Mary Bell whose collar bone is broken.

On Saturday, October 30, 1869, the Deseret Evening News printed this dispatch from Chicago:

An Omaha special says that a man named John Tustin, whose family was aboard the passenger train, was killed in the collision at Evanston the other day; also Miss Percy Young, a lady passenger, was severely cut in the head. It says the engineer of the "Mormon" emigrant train disregarded the signal which was properly placed to stop him. Three "Mormons" were killed and five wounded.

Not much enlightenment but further confusion was provided on October 30 by the Denver Rocky Mountain News in a small paragraph on page 1:

COLLISION ON THE U. P. ROAD. A special western bound passenger train on the U. P. railroad ran off the track, Thursday [actually Wednesday] near Evanston station. An emigrant train loaded with Mormons ran into the rear passenger car, disregarding a signal which had been placed to stop it. Three Mormons were killed and five wounded. A passenger named John Fustin [sic] whose family was on board the train, was killed instantly. Miss Percy Young, a lady passenger, was severely cut in the head. The entire blame rests on the engineer and conductor of the emigrant train who were promptly discharged.

In his personal journal Thomas Ashment, Sr., would thus remember the event: "The cars met in collision and 1 man in our company was killed, and a few more on our side got hurt. One person on the other side was also killed. I saw his wife weeping for her loved one." Ashment may not have observed or remembered the whole scene. Another immigrant passenger, J. David Pugh, recorded somewhat more accurately that "3 of our brothern were killed in an instant and several others hurted but not fatal."

Several California newspapers as well as one in Elko, Nevada, carried detailed and colorful accounts of the accident that help to fill in the picture of the circumstances, though in other ways further confused the overall scene. One new point that emerged in these accounts was that the site of the accident was not at Evanston but some miles away, across the Utah-Wyoming border at or southwest of Wahsatch, Utah. Other details helped to place the scene more accurately, such as that it occurred on a grade of sixty-five feet to the mile which is found only in the upper reaches of Echo Canyon southwest of Wahsatch; that a "coal engine" was only a short distance away from the derailed express engine, on a sidetrack that would probably have been at Wahsatch where there was a siding and a Y-spur for turning and refueling the extra engines used to haul trains eastward up the heavy grade to the top of Echo Canyon where Wahsatch Station was strategically located (otherwise the line was single track in those days); that the engineer of the immigrant train first saw the stalled express when it was only half a mile ahead, indicating that it was on a section of the rail line having substantial short-range visual obstruction of the line ahead, a topographic condition occurring in upper Echo Canyon but not east of Wahsatch Station. The current north track of the double-track Union Pacific line follows almost precisely the original line of 1868-69, ,5 and just past Wahsatch the grade down Echo Canyon begins to descend at the specified sixty-five feet to the mile. The circumstances described in "PARTICULARS OF THE ACCIDENT. . ." suggest that not only was vision limited for the engineer of the emigrant train by the curves, bluffs, and walls of the deep railroad cuts of that canyonside, until the stalled express train came suddenly into view half a mile ahead, but also that the steep downward grade encouraged increased speed that added significant momentum to the speeding train and, shortly, an ominous challenge to the unwary engineer and the primitive braking system of a train of that early vintage. In one family victimized by the accident, oral tradition and brief biographical sketches of three members (father, brother, and sister of the dead Joseph Thomas) indicate that the scene was in Echo Canyon.

Perhaps the most authoritative newspaper account appeared in the San Francisco Daily Morning Call on Saturday, October 30, 1869. Although the story is rich in details, it is somewhat flawed in its credibility by a tendency toward editorial hyperbole and an impression one gains that the reporter was vague about the geography and facilities in the area of the accident. With that reservation, the story is here given verbatim, in the quaint format sometimes used in those days:

COLLISION ON THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD Five Passengers Killed — A Number Wounded — How the Collision Occurred

On Thursday morning [sic] between nine and ten oclock, a collision occurred on the Union Pacific Railroad, six miles from Wahsatch Station, which is situated eight hundred and six miles from Sacramento, by which five persons lost their lives, and a number were wounded. From a gentleman, one of the passengers on the train who arrived in this city last night, we obtained the following account:

THE COLLISION.

At the time mentioned, a first-class passenger train, consisting of locomotive, baggage-car, and five passenger-cars filled with passengers, was westward-bound. After turning a curve, on approaching Wahsatch, the locomotive jumped the track and brought the train to a standstill. Immediately after the accident, a messenger was sent a short distance to the rear, to get a locomotive which was on a side-track, to back the train so that the regular locomotive might be replaced on the track. Pending this operation, the conductor of the train sent to the rear a red flag — the signal of danger — which was placed alongside of the track about two hundred yards from where the train was at a standstill, to warn

THE EMIGRANT TRAIN

Which was expected every moment. The first-class train was backed, and the spare locomotive run down the track a short distance. This had scarcely been done before the emigrant train was heard coming along at full speed. It consisted of the locomotive, "caboose", and four passenger cars. From the manner in which the train came it was evident that the engineer had paid no attention to the warning signal, for he kept right on, and it became evident to the passengers who had stepped off the train, that a collision was inevitable. Their surmises were correct, for in a few minutes

THE CRASH CAME.

The emigrant train came on, and the locomotive ran into the spare locomotive, driving it with force against the rear passenger car of the first-class train, running it upon the second car. The rear car was smashed into splinters and Mr. John Tusten, of Petaluma, who was with his family on the car, returning home, was struck by some of the timbers and crushed beneath them, and when he was extricated it was discovered that he was dead. A Miss Percy was severely wounded, having received a deep cut on the head. The emigrant train fared worse. The first passenger car, by the force of the collision, ran into the "caboose", completely "telescoping". Four emigrants, whose names are not given, were instantly killed, and about fifteen or twenty wounded, some of them seriously. Shortly after the collision, a special train came from Wahsatch Station, bringing several physicians, who attended to the wounded. [A train bringing physicians would have had to come upcanyon from Ogden, since there were probably no physicians in Wahsatch or Evanston, and it could not possibly have arrived very soon.] All care and attention was paid to them.

THE ENGINEER To BLAME.

The whole blame rests, beyond a doubt, on the engineer, William Kelly. It is said that if he had been attending to his business, he would have seen the red signal at least half a mile before he reached it, as his train was coming up grade. [This statement is at variance with the other evidence that the trains were headed downhill.] He was waited upon by a number of passengers, among them Mr. James W. Coffroth, of Sacramento, who questioned him as to whether he did not see the signal, and the only response he made was that Mr. C. could "go to h—1, as it was none of his business." The passengers expressed their indignation and made preparations to give Kelly a dose of Lynch law, but better counsels prevailed, and he was let alone. A dispatch from Omaha in another column announces that "Kelly, the engineer was promptly discharged." Our informant endeavored to send a dispatch to this city giving full details but he was unable to do so, as the Telegraph Company, refused to send his message as he had prepared it. It is presumed that this was done to prevent the public from knowing the extent of the damage.

The Sacramento Daily Bee, in its commentary on the accident on Monday, November 1, 1869, further castigated the embattled, defensive, and friendless William Kelly:

THE RAILROAD ACCIDENT. — There can be no doubt that the late fearful calamity on the Union Pacific Railroad was caused by the reckless conduct, if not the fiendish malice of the engineer on the emigrant train. When, after the massacre, a committee waited upon the engineer and respectfully asked for his version of the matter and why he disregarded the signals so plainly given, he insultingly replied that he would not have cared if they had all been killed.

The Sacramento State Capitol Reporter editorialized on Saturday, October 30: "It is stated that the conductor and engineer were promptly discharged. We think it should have been, were promptly arrested and held to answer for the crime of murder."

So far as is known, of the 288 Saints who sailed from Liverpool on the SSMinnesota, all were aboard the immigrant train except one small boy who had died on the ship and was buried at sea. The names of the Mormon collision victims were on the passenger list — Philip Dell, thirty-five years of age, from Swansea, Wales, and traveling alone, while David Shields, Jr., sixteen years of age from Paisley, Scotland, and Joseph Thomas, eighteen, from Crumlin, Wales, were members of family groups. Joseph Thomas, granduncle of the author, was traveling with his parents as well as an older sister and a younger brother and sister. Family tradition holds that he was standing on the platform of the passenger car at the moment of the collision. Later that day the bodies of Joseph Thomas, David Shields, Jr., and Philip Dell were interred at Ogden City Cemetery. The exact location of the graves has been lost.

Two California newspaper accounts state that five people were killed, but it has not been possible to identify anyone else than Dell, Shields, Thomas, and Tustin. The larger death toll is probably another inaccuracy among the confused details reported in the numerous newspaper accounts.

Among the injured on the immigrant train was Mary Bell Wilson, a Scottish convert from Kilmarnock ("among the first to accept the Gospel in Scotland") and niece of the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, who had disowned her when shejoined the Mormons. Her husband, Benjamin, and two older sons had emigrated to Utah a year previously to prepare a home. Mary Bell [for as such she was listed on the passenger manifest] sailed with her three youngest sons. Her relatives, out of bitterness at her becoming a Mormon, declined even to say goodbye. The youngest son, Andrew, died on the ship of an undisclosed illness and was buried at sea. Mary Bell, in the Deseret Evening News account, was said to have sustained a "broken collarbone." However, later reports indicate that she was "badly crushed" and "received the most serious internal injuries, being in a critical condition, but she was in the hands of kind friends who rendered every necessary attention, and strong hopes were entertained of her ultimate recovery." She did indeed recover after being nursed by friends in Ogden.

Mary Thomas [Rees], twenty-one years of age, sister of the dead Joseph, sustained unspecified injuries not reported by the newspapers. Her health was seriously impaired by the accident. According to family tradition, the injuries led directly to her death nearly two years later on October 5, 1871. The mother of the family, Elizabeth, lost an eye in the accident. This maimed and sorrowing family group was met in Ogden by a daughter who had emigrated previously, Johanna, with her husband, Richard Palmer, and after the burial of Joseph were taken to the Palmer home in Cedar City, Utah, where they continued to be shaken and dispirited for a long time after. The father, Henry Thomas Rees, never adjusted to the new country or circumstances and died a broken man eight and a half years later. The mother, Elizabeth, died twenty years and one day after the accident.

David Shields, a weaver from Paisley, Scotland, was on the immigrant train with his wife and six children, David Jr., the accident victim, being the eldest at sixteen. The father had his ankle "badly crushed." Following the accident they lived for a time in the West Jordan area of Salt Lake Valley where another son was born, named David no doubt to memorialize the dead elder brother. Then the family moved to Green River, Wyoming, where two more children were born in 1873 and 1874. David Sr. and his wife, Janet Munn, died and were buried at Green River, she at fifty-four years of age and he at fifty-nine. It is not known what effect the accident may have had on their relatively early demise.

Still another California account gives the names of several more people on the express train who

were hurt, but not severely. . . . Mrs. James W. Coffroth and child, of Sacramento; Asa P. Andrews, of Sacramento; George K. Gluyas and Minnie Gluyas, of San Francisco; Mrs. E. A Horton, of New York; Miss Maggie Walters, of DeWitt, Iowa; Mrs. F. H. Chessman, of Boston; Lieutenant Commander Alfred Hopkins, U.S. Navy. ... It is complained that the Union Pacific railroad company did not show that diligence in having the wounded and the bodies of the killed cared for that might reasonably have been expected.

John Tustin, forty-five years of age at his death, was an eminent citizen of the Petaluma area north of San Francisco. The Petaluma Journal and Argus described him as "an old resident of Petaluma and the inventor of the Union Reaper, the Tustin Windmill, Tustin's Gang Plow, and several other inventions." With his family he was returning from the East on the express passenger train at the time of the accident. Although the newspaper accounts previously cited give a fairly detailed description of the accident scene, it remained for the Vallejo Weekly Chronicle to abandon all journalistic restraint and taste in providing the following gripping, astonishing view of the moments on the stalled express train just before the crash and the final seconds in the existence of the luckless Tustin as well as a vivid picture of the appalling circumstances of his violent end:

A party of seven were standing on the platform, when one of them chanced to lean out and look to the rear, when he saw the engine of the immigrant train just coming round the curve. He cried, "Look, look!" and "Jump!", at the same moment jumping himself and rolling down the embankment. Five of the others all leaped down on both sides of the train, but Mr. Tustin, an elderly man [at forty-five?], was less active in getting off. He had swung about one half of his body off beyond the line of the cars, holding onto the [platform] rail with his left hand and was already in the act of letting go, when two cars came together, catchingjust one half of his body between them, and of course crushing it into a mere mangled mass of flesh and fractured bone. Here his body remained for 3 hours before it could be extricated, while his unhappy widow (who was slightly wounded) was compelled to remain in the train, in knowledge of the horrible event. Of course, Mr. Tustin's death was instantaneous, [and] we may mention, as instancing how shockingly he was mangled, that when his body was released, his heart was found to have been forced completely out of the cavity of his body. Mr. T. was a prominent citizen of Petaluma, an old resident, and well known through all that section of country. It is said he had his life insured for $12,000 in the Accident Insurance Company.

Tustin's body (or what remained of it) was sent to Petaluma, where the Petaluma Journal and Argus reported: "His remains arrived in the city on Saturday noon, last, and the funeral took place on the following day from the residence of his sister, Mrs. Barbara Ann Lewis. Mr. Tustin's life was insured for six thousand dollars in Hartford Accidental Insurance Co."

The reporting of such anatomical gore would not be countenanced in most twentieth-century newspapers, but it adds vividly to our perceptions of the accident; and the public recitation of his insurance benefits, whether $6,000, $12,000, or even the sum of these two reported amounts, must have given any possible creditors considerable comfort and hope, which may be one reason for the discontinuance of that particular journalistic practice.

The author had hoped and expected that some details of the accident could be obtained from operational records of the Union Pacific Railroad, but, unfortunately, they have not been preserved. There are only some executive records from that era which contain no reference to the event.

Several California newspapers, ardent proponents of their own Central Pacific Railroad in the hotly contested and just-cooling race between it and the Union Pacific in the rush to Promontory Summit that had ended five and a half months earlier, were not slow to shower criticism on the Union Pacific for its supposed carelessness in the maintenance of a faulty switch that reportedly caused the express train to derail, as well as to allege that the UP was negligent in caring for the victims. Given the remoteness of the accident site and the sparse population of that Utah-Wyoming border area, the company probably did the best that was possible for the victims and, if judged by medical outcomes, did quite well, since there were no deaths other than those four instantly killed in the crash. T. B. H. Stenhouse, in his Salt Lake City Semi-Weekly Telegraph, clarified the matter of medical aid by reporting that

Drs. Anderson and Richards had started in the afternoon, as soon as the information was received in the city, but surgical aid had been in attendance before they could arrive. . . . Sister Wilson [Mary Bell], who received the most serious internal injuries, was in a critical condition. . . . She was dispatched to Ogden immediately.

Moreover, as noted earlier, three of the dead were buried later on the day of the accident in the Ogden cemetery. Evidently the Union Pacific officials did mobilize effective help quite rapidly. At the time, however, no one came publicly to the defense of the UP.

At this point history seemed to ring down the curtain on the accident, but it was raised again for a reprise nearly four years later when on October 16, 1873, Henry Thomas [Rees] filed suit in the Third Judicial Court of Utah Territory for $30,000 in damages from the Union Pacific Railroad for the death of his minor son, Joseph Thomas, due to the railroad's negligence. The brief of his attorney, J. C. Hemingway, stated that, as a result of the negligent accident, Joseph was

wounded, bruised, and mangled, of which wounds and bruises the said Joseph Thomas then and there languished and languishing did die. . . . That by the death of said son who was then in the nineteenth year of his age, and a blacksmith by trade, this plantiff [Henry Thomas] has suffered great damage by reason of the loss of the services of his said son and servant . . . and has suffered great anguish and distress of body and mind, insomuch that he believes himself to be permanently impaired in his mind and memory and nervous system, and that said injuries will continue to afflict him during the remainder of his days.

Thomas lost in the trial court (it is not known if it was a trial by jury or by judge alone). He appealed to the Territorial Supreme Court which upheld the trial court's decision on the basis of a hoary rule of common law, going far back to the origins of English common law, that if a victim of negligence died his case died with him and no one else could sue for the consequences of his injury and death. The Supreme Court cited a number of controlling cases and said

That the death of a person caused by another does not give rise to a cause of action in any one, is a settled doctrine of the Common Law. . . . "In a Civil Court the death of a human being cannot be complained of as an injury," and this doctrine has ever since then been uniformly followed.

It would be several decades before court decisions would begin to swing the other way and state legislatures would start to enact laws recognizing the right of survivors of negligence victims to sue, not only for their own emotional and other deprivations but also for the pain and suffering of the victim prior to death as well as expenses connected with the injury and death.

On the same date of October 16, 1873, both Henry and his wife, Elizabeth Thomas, entered suit against the railroad for $20,000 damages due to the loss of vision in her right eye in the accident. 34 In its own way, her situation was nearly as poignant as the violent death of her teenage son. For many years prior to the accident, the attorney's brief stated, she had been totally blind in her left eye but, having good vision in the right eye, could function normally as a housewife. In the accident she

was struck by fragments of the wreck ... on her head and other parts of her body, causing the blood to flow from her nose and mouth in great quantity, and greatly injuring and permanently impairing the sight and vision of her right eye insomuch that she has ever since said injury, and in consequence thereof, been unable to attend to the duties of her household as before said injury she could; and has been rendered wholly and utterly incapable of sewing, cutting out, and making up garments and clothing for her family. . . . [Moreover,] she constantly suffers much pain and great discomfort and distress of body and mind every day she lives. '

The Third District Court upheld the contention of the attorneys for the Union Pacific, Hempstead and Kirkpatrick, that Henry Thomas should not properly have been a plaintiff with his wife ("misjoinder of parties"), and that the action was filed long past the two-year statute of limitations. Thomas appealed this case also to the Territorial Supreme Court which, in its June 1875 term, ruled that a four-year statute of limitations applied to Elizabeth Thomas's case. The railroad, in the meantime, had dropped its contention that Henry Thomas was not an eligible plaintiff. Chief Justice James B. McKean and Justices Jacob S. Boreman and Philip H. Emerson reversed the Third District Court's ruling in favor of the railroad and remanded the case for further proceedings.

There is no record of a retrial, but on October 24, 1875, a stipulation was filed by attorneys for the two sides stating that "the cause of action in said entitled case be and the same is entirely satisfied in full," indicating an out-of-court settlement by the railroad. The amount of the award is not recorded in either judicial records or records of the Thomas [Rees] family.

No indication has been found that any other victims of the accident took the Union Pacific to court.

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