Scalded to Death in a Railroad Accident

Newspapers sure can mess things up. And once they do, you can spend years trying to find the facts.

My ancestor Alexander McClelland had many children, their births and deaths all faithfully recorded in his family bible by his wife, until she died. One child was a mystery to my mother, and to me, for decades. Rufus Buchanan McClelland was listed as born 30 September 1856. But we could never find him in any census after 1880.

Last fall I took a trip to Marion County, Illinois, where all these McClellands were born and raised. The Marion County Genealogical and Historical Society folks were just wonderful to me. I acquired the complete set of their quarterly publications, and learned much by going through them.

In 1980 they published a McClelland genealogy compiled by Mary K. Lyons. Rufus was listed, with the notation "died before 1889–killed in a railroad accident in Indiana." Newspapers in the 1880's were full of railroad accidents. But no article listed Rufus.

One of the treasures of the Marion society was George E. Ross. He searched through Marion county newspapers for years, gleaning anything that could be useful to a family historian. And the results were published by the Marion Society in their quarterlies. That's where I found

"Rufus McClelland, son of Alexander, was scaleded to death in a railroad accident near Shoals, Indiana." Several local papers reported this information on November 17, 1876.

So naturally I ran to my newspaper databases, and sure enough, there were articles about a grizzly accident near Shoals, Indiana. But none of the reported dead had names anything like Rufus McClelland, and the accident was on the 4th.

In the midddle of the night I woke up with an inspiration. What if there had been another grizzly accident around the same time, and the newspapers confused them? So I jumped out of bed, ran downstairs and looked. This time I searched for railroad accidents.

Sure enough, I found it. The best coverage was in the St. Louis Globe Democrat, 19 and 20 November 1876, "A railroad accident occurred on the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad at Sparksville, Illinois, at Mitchell Station, at 1 o'clock in the morning on Novembe 18, resulting in the death of two brakemen, Frank Albert (other articles say his name was Dirge) and Lucas McClelland. The westward bound freight train went upon a side track at that place to let the Western express paas. Two brakemen were asleep in the caboose and the conductor opened the switch and forgot to close it again. The express thundered along, and ran into the caboose, making a fearful wreck. Two freight brakemen, Dirge and McClelland, were so badly scalded that both died. The baggage and postal cars of the express were telescoped, crushing a leg off A. Greenland, postal clerk. Others were slightly injured. The engine, baggage car, postal car, caboose and five or six freight cars were badly wrecked.

Rufus was just 21. All of his brothers worked on the railroad for a while. Marion Clark lived to retire from one. My ancestor, John Allen, lost an arm working for the Illinois Central, and supposedly threw himself into the Mississippi River. Oliver shot himself. But those are stories for another day.