Special thanks to Steve Fisher for pulling me into this location. Everything about it caught me off guard and blew me away.
Thank you soooo much to Eunice Specter for digging your teeth into this one in your historical search. At least you’re an expert in train accidents now.
(Also known as Madison Twp. School)
6600 Trenton Franklin Road
Middletown, OH 45042
Historic Timeline
•Colonial-style school constructed in 1936-37under Works Progress Administration program with remainder of funding approved byMadison Township votersinabond issue for a consolidated elementary school at Poasttown and an addition to West Middletown School. Consolidation brought to an end township’s collection of one-room schoolhouses, including predecessor of “old” Poasttown School.New school to be located on eastern edge of Poasttown.
oConsolidationaimed atbetter school program forstudents with agraded systeminstead of one-room school where teacher responsible for all eight grades together.
oOriginalone-roombrickPoasttown Schoolbuilt in 1857locatedon Middletown-Germantown/Germantown-MiddletownRoad; later used by GrangeHalland eventually remodeled for use by Madison Township Fire Department.Initialschool housedin log cabin.
•Newelementary schoolfeaturing six classrooms and gymnasiumopened in September 1937 on TrentonFranklinRoad, with 200 students assigned to new building from previous one-room schoolhouses.
•All construction not complete at time of opening, delaying official dedication of building until April 1938.
oDr. Walter Collins gave dedicatory address, and County School Superintendent C.H. Williamsalso spoke.School board members at time of opening includedGeorge Finkbone, CarlSeigel (Sigel),Nathan Weikel,Lacy Keith, Harry Selby and Harry Augsburger.
oAmong firstteacherswere Ruth Slade,Francis Riley, Kathryne Boegard/Begardand Lucille Bowlus Finkbone. J. Howard Burns firstprincipal.
▪Sixth-grade teacher C.W. Roberts surprised at school with dinner party to celebrate his retirement; veteran teacher at Poasttownfor 25 years. (Middletown Journal, 5/23/1960)
oPTA formed in 1937. Among first presidents wereMrs. Orville Wills, C. E. Stutenroth and Mrs. Paul Hoover.
•Six modern-equipped rooms, cafeteria and school’s recognition as “one of the county’s best” touted. (Hamilton Daily News Journal, 2/24/1940)
•Overcrowding prompts plans for new addition, including four classrooms, lunchroom and restrooms. Classes were being held on the stage and in the library to accommodate the enrollment of about 200 infirst through sixth grades. (Hamilton Daily News Journal, 1/17/1949)
•Six new classrooms added.(Cincinnati Enquirer, 7/15/1953)
•School approximately 150 students over capacity. (Middletown Journal, 1/8/1965)
•Space dedicated to serve as central supply office of medical aids for student health care. (Middletown Journal, 12/20/1974)
•Madison Local Schools bond issue approved, allowing proceeds to be used to build new high school. New buildingbringsclosure of Poasttown Elementary, whose students assigned to new schools. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 6/5/1999)
•Former students Darrell and Brenda Whisman purchasedthree-story, approximately 36,500-square-footpropertythat includes 54 roomsin 2004 following five-year vacancy.Couple reside in remodeled wing; other rooms updated andleased to businesses. (Journal-News, 10/28/2016)
Tragedies, Notes of Interest
•Eighth-grade honor student Richard Wells, 13, killed after lost control of newly repaired bicycle on steep hill, striking tree and catapulting into creek bed. Died of head injury week before school graduation. (Dayton Daily News, 5/27/1962)
•Kindergarten studentCheryl Ann Combs, 5, died after suffering head injuries in fall from rocking chair in her Germantown home. (Middletown Journal, 12/7/1963)
•School custodian Lewis “Butch” Newkirk, 39, killed in fire at his Middletown apartment. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 11/26/1990) Memorial to him installed at school in 1991.
•Hail and heavy wind break out 27 windows; water damage to textbooks and library books. (Journal Herald, 4/10/1965)
•Arson damages Union Chapel United Methodist Church; services to be held at school until repairs completed. (Journal News, 12/12/1977)
•Property:
oLand on which school constructed speculated to have been Indian ceremonial ground.
oHome used as church circa mid- to late-1800s located near land where school built.
o11 windows broken. (Hamilton Daily NewsJournal, 8/4/1964)
oAlmost each of 32 rooms cluttered in vandalism rampage: theater curtain slashed; vending machines wrecked and cash boxes taken; aquarium overturned; desks and cabinets ransacked; food strewn about cafeteria, including 240 half-pints of milk and 75 pounds of hot dogs. (Middletown Journal, 9/11/1967)
Historic train disasters
Often mentionedin connection withschool’s history becauseof proximity oflocation of wrecks and treatment sites of victims to the area where the school would eventually beconstructednear railroad tracks.
July 25,1891:‘A merry picnic party suddenly transformed into a scene of mourning’
Cincinnati, Hamilton & Daytonexcursion train carrying employees of Dayton Cash Register Company struck by fast-moving freight trainNo. 44while stopped at Middletown station for disembarking passengersreturning from resort picnic.(Also thought trainstopped for repairs afterpranksterturned air brakes on as joke and train struggled to pull heavy load, breaking a drawbar. (Bremen Enquirer, 8/7/1891))
•4 estimatedkilled(3 deaths said to be immediate);more than50injured when excursion train struck by a freight train on track, crushing rear coaches.
oSome witnesses claimed seeinghalf-dozen oras many as 11 dead bodies taken from wreck, but railway surgeon declared toll lower. (Akron Beacon Journal,7/27/1891)
•Injured taken to nearby homes andtransfer trainforpassengers. (Hamilton Daily Democrat, 7/27/1891)
•Coroner’s verdict finds Peter T. Slance, conductor of excursion train, and Albert Schwindt, engineer of freight train, both guilty of gross negligence. (Hamilton Daily Democrat, 8/31/1891)
•Talesof deaths, injuries
o“The rear car was packed full of people, and the freight plowed into a mass of broken cars and dead and crippled human beings.” (Abbeville Press and Banner, 8/12/1891)
oAmong reports of deaths:11-year-old boy “cut inthree pieces”; womankilled and girl, 6, died shortly after taken from debris. (Macon Republican, 7/30/1891)
▪“Another train left for Dayton bearing almost the last of the excursionists and the bodies of the killed.” Coffins contained Minnie Freyer (see below note), Willie Matthews, 12, and Frank Simoner, 17, “who was found dead, with his head almost severed, at the side of the track.” (Cincinnati Enquirer, 7/27/1891)
oStory recounted of two youngwomenwho attempted to escape before crashbut only made to platform of train car. Mary Gramfoundbyrescuers trying to free her limb from the wreckage, later amputated.Asked men to help friend/sisterMinnie Freier first.Minnie, terribly mangled in crash,reportedly asked man who discovered her on platform to “bid her parents goodbye for her”;carried to freight house opposite station, but finding building locked, rescuers took to nearby house, where she died 15 minutes later. (Dayton Herald, 4/27/1891)
•Details of location
o“Across thelittle weed-covered risethe wrecked cars lay in all their frightful significance.” (Hamilton Daily Democrat, 7/27/1891)
o“A half dozen of the houses near the station might have been mistaken for field hospitals after some battle” … “Improvised hospitals” – in one homeclosest to stationlay four of the wounded, in home nearest wreckon same roadlay nine maimed …a few yards back from siding(low-speed track section) another house sheltered two badly injured and a dozen “who considered themselves lucky to escape with cruel cuts and bruises.” (Cincinnati Enquirer, 7/27/1891)
July 4, 1910:‘A veritable city of the dead’
Head-on collision ofBig FourTwentieth Century Limitedpassenger trainand the second section of aCH&D freight train.Misunderstanding of orders resulted in one of worst wrecks of kind in state history.Disaster site approximatelytwo milesfromPoasttown.
•36estimatedkilled(21 deaths said to be immediate);50injured whensouthbound passengertrain,reroutedbecause ofanotherwreck, crashed head-on intoCH&Dfreight trainwithin300hundredyards of Middletown station.Freight had orders to proceed north to clear tracks for a southbound “flyer” of Dayton anddecidedto sidetrack at (West) Middleton.
•Passenger pilotengineerhad received orders to waitat Post Town(sic), according to railroad officers. The freight train was to have passed him therebut was late in pulling out of Middletown. Instead of theseven-minutemargin, whichhethought had to reach Middletown, the time was less thanfiveminutes.As beginning to back into the siding, Limited came around the corner out of Poasttown at 60 mph.(Washington Post, 7/5/1910; reprinted gendisasters.com; “Madison Township: Bicentennial Sketches,”GeorgeCrout)
•Mostof the victims pinned beneath debris and carried from wreckage. Dead taken to morgues around Middletown; residents opened homes to care for injured; other injured and dying taken to police headquarters and physicians’ offices. (Butler County Democrat, 7/7/1910)
oPhysicians argueddeath toll may have been smaller if they had been allowed to attend to seriously injured at own offices instead of “first-aid treatment” before received at hospitals. (Dayton Herald, 7/5/1910)
▪No local hospital at time left many victims to be transported to Hamilton or Dayton.
•Dead reportedly robbed at wreck site; possessions, money stolen from bodies. (Butler County Democrat, 7/21/1910)
•Coroner’s inquest rules wreck due to carelessness and negligence of train dispatcher, train crew of second No. 90 and pilot engineer in charge of Big Four train. (Butler County Democrat, 11/10/1910)
•Public memorial service marks centennial of disaster. Concern expressedthat disaster forgotten over years, and, as no Middletown residents died, significance of accident “didn’t stick.” (Middletown Journal, 7/2/2010)
•Talesof deaths, injuries
o“In an instant the two trains were a mass of wreckage and the moans of the dying and shrieks of the injured filled the air.” (Butler County Democrat, 7/7/1910)
oImpact of collision heard for miles around; “Within a second, more than fifteen mortal souls had passed into eternity.” (Dayton Herald, 7/5/1910)
oEngine crews jumpedto avoid injury; brakeman killed. (Washington Post, 7/4/1910)
oFatal injuries included scaldings, internal hemorrhage, skull fractures, decapitation, broken neck and shock.(Butler County Democrat, 11/10/1910)
▪Man, about age 25, decapitated with head found about foot from body. “Terror was frozen on the faces of some of the dead.”(“Ohio Train Disasters,” Jane Ann Turzillo)
oSome (of the injured) taken to the waiting room of the CH&D station, “the last place that many were laid because they died there with no one to weep over them.” (Hamilton Telegraph, 7/7/1910)
oJessie Bodey, en route to the funeral of a friend, buried in debris. Husband pulled himself through window but after unable to locate her, tried to re-enter wreckage.Falsely believedshe must have been taken out. Body later identified by his brother at morgue. (Dayton Herald, 7/5/1910)
oStory recountedof five friends, traveling toballgame, receiving last sacraments and dying together. (Dayton Herald, 7/5/1910)
o“Poor mother, she’s dead”:Rescuers discovered arm sticking out of debris and worked to uncover seven-year-old Samuel Wayne Garrigus. Freeing boy from splintered wood and metal, they found the body of his mother, Lydia, huddled above him, having attempted to shield her son with her body. “The collision had turned her into a shapeless mass.”Father Ared also victim of crash. Lastof victims to be shipped from Middletown. (“Ohio Train Disasters,” Jane Ann Turzillo; Dayton Herald, 7/7/1910)
•Details of location
oTracksrun near west side ofGreat Miami River near where SR-122 from Middletown crosses. The depotlocated on eastside of the track, just south of SR–122.Accidentoccurred about 200 yards north of the SR–122 crossing.
oThe engines locked into a mass of smashed steel and iron, the heavy passenger locomotive telescoping its smaller fellow as far as the cab. First in the freight train were a steel coal car and a box car loaded with 6-inch timbers. The heavy gondola car ripped the floor out of the combination car, and tossed it and the locomotive tenderdown a 10-foot embankment into a cornfield.(Washington Post, 7/5/1910)
o“What the people found in thatcornfield along the river north of the highwaystunned many with horror. Some of the victims were unidentifiable.” (“Madison Twp. Bicentennial Sketches 1799-1999,”Crout)
oFormer railroader J.M. Foley recounted hurrying to scene of disaster. He and neighbor first upon scene and helped carry dead and dying from wrecked cars. Claimed carried 12 bodies from forward coaches and laid them incornfield alongside of the track.(Dayton Herald, 7/5/1910)
o“Cars were piled sky-high it seemed, broken pieces being hurled several hundred feet from the scene of the disaster. A half dozen undertakers’ wagons were scatteredall over an adjacent fieldready to receive the wreck victims. As fast as one of the wagons was filled it was sent immediately to the city and rushed back post haste to the scene of the trouble for another load.” (Hamilton Telegraph, 7/7/1910)
oDaredevil teenagers jumped aboard to “ride the blinds.” Four of five bodies found inadjacent cornfield: brothers Tom and William Dunleavy, Richard Van Horne, George Frohle; body of Edward Cain identified later.
oInfant found alive incornfield, 700 feet from railroad tracks.“It wasacross the cornfield in which the baby was found that the relief wagons and rescue parties carried their dying burdens, and it is thought that in the excitement, the child was torn from some unconscious mother’s arms … the wee bit of humanity,lying cuddled between the growing corn.”(Dayton Herald, 7/5/1910)
oCentennial public memorial service commemorated the tragedy next to the Westside Feed Store,5450 Trenton Franklin Road, close to the site of the original event.(Middletown Journal, 7/2/2010)
Additional wrecks, deaths
•Other wrecks on the CH&D line at West Middletown included oneson July 4, 1895andon Jan. 2, 1905.Wreck of train No. 349 noted in Poasttown circa 1920.
•Elbert Lee Wells, 17, killed in collision of station wagon he was driving and five-car passenger train about mile northeast of Poasttown. 45 train passengers injured in crash and derailment. (Hamilton Daily News Journal, 8/10/1968)
Additional sources:“Madison Township: Thesecond hundred years 1910-2010,”J.L and J.E. Gilmore;Midpointe Digital Archives, mainstreetmadison.com; Midpointe Library System; Larry Helton Jr.; Alan Wise
WOW!!!!
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