Erie Railroad Biography - Samuel Cook

Samuel Cook, Meadville, PA
From the April 21, 1903 issue of the New York Times:

Trains Crash: 8 killed
Jamestown, NY, April 20 -- Eight persons are dead and ten injured, three of them seriously, as a result of a collision between an express train and a freight train on the Erie Railroad at an early hour today near Red House, NY.

Of the dead, only one, Robert H. Hotchkiss of Meadville, a brakeman, has been identified. Seven bodies, apparently those of three men, three women and a child, were burned beyond recognition in the fierce fire which followed the wreck. The women are said to have boarded the train at Youngstown, and to have come from Pittsburgh.

R.S. McCready, mail weigher of Meadville, PA, and Frank Barhite of Jamestown, a traveling salesman, are missing, and it is likely two of the unidentified bodies are those of the two men. The injured include:

Cleminger, H.F., mail clerk, Gerry, NY, ribs fractured and body bruised;
Cooke, S.A., colored porter, 242 W. 63rd St., New York, back and ribs injured;
Johnson, C.S., colored porter, Summerville, NJ, leg fractured;
Gabler, E.C., express messenger, Marion, OH, leg cut off, probably fatally hurt;
Bell, Fred T., fireman, Meadville, head and back bruised.

Gabler and Bell are in the hospital at Salamanca. The others were able to proceed to their destinations.

The wrecked passenger train was a vestibuled limited express, known as No. 4, running from Chicago to New York, and was made up of engine 545 in charge of Engineer Samuel Cook and Fireman Fred Bell of Meadville; one combination car, two day coaches, three sleepers, and two private cars. It was derailed by striking a freight rain which ws entering a siding at Red House.

The passenger engine and some of the coaches ran on beside the track for a distance of three rods and crashed into a small wooden structure used as a feed store and schoolhouse. The first half dozen cars of the freight were wrecked. They were box cars loaded with coal. The coal filtered in among the wreckage. All but three cars of the express followed the engine, and the whole mass of wreckage was soon to flames. The combination car, two day coaches and two sleepers, besides several freight cars, were consumed.

The two private cars attached to the train were occupied by W.J. Murphy, general manager of the Queen and Crescent Railroad, his wife and two officials of that road, and J.L. Frazier, general superintendent of the Clover Leaf route. All escaped uninjured.

There is some dispute as to the cause of the wreck. The passenger train was running east, and the freight, which was westbound, had orders to go into the siding at Red House and wait for the passenger train to go by. The siding is about a mile and a half long, and there is a tower of the block system near the west end.

The freight was hauled by two engines. Some trouble was experienced in entering the siding, and the foremost engine of the freight was sent in along the siding with a flagman to hold the express. It is alleged that the operator in the tower, Lawrence Vale, a boy of 17, saw the light engine of the freight which was bringing up the flagman, and supposed the freight was on the siding behind it. With this mistaken idea, it is thought, Vale displayed a white signal toward the passenger train, indicating to the engineer that he had a clear track.

The engineer on the passenger train failed to see the flagman sent out from the forward engine of the freight train, and saw only the clearance signal from the tower. The train ran toward the east end of the siding at high speed, struck the second engine of the freight train just as it was about to clear the main line, tearing off the cylinder and part of the cab, and jumped the track.

The work of clearing the tracks was begun promptly and continued all day, trains in the meantime being diverted from the mainline and sent around via Dayton.



Nine survivors arrived in Jersey City last evening, where a group of anxious friends awaited them. One of those who arrived was Harold M. Pulsifer, manager of the B.F. Sturtevant company and residing at the Marltan on W. Eighth Street, who said:

"I was in the forward sleeping car, and when I went to bed was the only passenger in that car. During the night, and unknown to me, a family party - an old woman, her daughter and grand-daughter - got aboard, and later a man. I was awakened with a feeling as if my neck had been driven into my body, and then I could feel the car bumping over the ties. Almost immediately I smelled smoke. I knocked out the ventilator and opened the window. The car was tilted at an angle of 30 degrees, and I was on the upper side. As I opened the window flames burst from beneath it.

"Thinking I was the only person in the car, I flung out my belongings and was about to climb out after them when I heard a child's voice calling, 'Come and help us get out.' I got out in the aisle, where the smoke was now thick, and tried to get at my imprisoned companions. That side of the car was crushed against the engine, the upper berth was jammed down upon the occupants and I could do nothing to help them. By this time the fire had gained such headway that my own life was in peril and I crawled out of the car through a window into a little space between my car and the wreck of the freight train, and beneath the flat car was the mangled body of the brakeman, R.S. Hotchkiss.

"While I stood between the two trains the engineer of the passenger train came running up, crying that there were women in the car burning to death. Together we tried with irons from the wrecked freight cars to break in the windows of the car, but the flames were too much for us. The other man in my car had escaped, as had the negro porter, Cooke. Both were only slightly injured. The two women and the child were burned to death. Both the fireman and the engineer were thrown from their engine, neither knew how, and the fireman, though his right eye was closed, his face fearfully gashed, and his right leg badly torn, was the foremost among the rescuers. It was he who rushed down the line and opened the vestibules of the coaches. He finally fainted, after all was over, as he was carrying a woman's valise to the Reed House. As he was carried off on a stretcher, he asked for a smoke and a last sight of his engine. He was the hero of the day."




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