Seven deaths: Coal Creek's tragic toll, 1869-1946

From the 1875 Andreas Atlas of Iowa

It's smooth driving these days as you dip into the Coal Creek valley on U.S. 34 headed east into Albia from Georgetown. Once a ridge road after the landscape begins to buck and twist beyond the mighty St. Patrick's Church and its broad prairies to the west, all of this highway's kinks were ironed out years ago and the ribbon of concrete is well maintained.

Just before the Coal Creek bridge, you're presented with a choice --- continue up the Highway 34 incline for a mile and a half and enter Albia's southern edge on the bypass or hang a left and follow Old 34's twisting path into town, crossing the creek on a more modest bridge before the road rises sharply.

Here, as we approached the bridge on this old road, my dad always told the story of the two Georgetown couples --- Robert and Cecelia Stone and Lloyd and Laura Harris, all in their early 40s --- who perished nearby on a July night during the year I was born, 1946. 

Mr. and Mrs. Stone and Mr. and Mrs. Harris, close friends, had spent the evening in Albia and were driving toward home on U.S. 34 around midnight July 16/17, descending that steep hill which then had more of a twist in it before the bridge at its base. They were unaware that flooding on Coal Creek had washed the bridge out sometime after 10 p.m. Unable to stop in time, their car plunged into the creek and they drowned.

This was not the first tragedy that had occurred near this place and theirs were not the first lives that Coal Creek had claimed.

Almost exactly 77 years earlier, at dawn on the morning of July 14, 1869, and a short distance down Coal Creek to the north, three youngsters --- William Jr., Elizabeth Ann and Adeline Herriott --- were drowned when the rail car they were riding in plunged from a trestle into the flooding creek, mild-mannered under ordinary circumstances, deadly in times of heavy rain.

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William Herriott Sr., Pennsylvania born, Ohio bred and a farmer by trade, was 39 that summer when he and his wife, Rebecca, decided to move their family of five from Bureau County, Illinois, to the land of promise in Taylor County, Iowa --- Bedford is the county seat. William Jr., age 12, was their eldest; John B., born the previous August, the youngest. In between were Emma, Elizabeth Ann and Adeline.

The family traveled together by horse and wagon to Monmouth, Illinois, where Rebecca and John stopped to spend a few days, planning to join the remainder of the family in Iowa later. William and the older children drove on to East Burlington, hired a ferry to take them across the Mississippi into Burlington proper, and there contracted with the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad for a boxcar to haul their wagon, horses and themselves to Russell, thereby avoiding the extreme hills and difficult creek and river crossings of southeast Iowa made more hazardous than usual by days of heavy rain.

From Russell west, the roads leveled out and the way became easier. Although by now the B.&M.R.R. had reached Creston, the Herriotts planned to unload their gear at Russell and continue southwest by horse and wagon.

William Herriott Sr. picks up the narrative here in the form of testimony given during an inquest over the bodies of his two daughters, lying then in coffins in the Monroe County Courthouse on Friday, July 16. Young William's body would be recovered later that morning and brought to the courthouse later in the day. All of the testimony from this inquest was published in The Albia Union of July 22, 1869.

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In the matter of Adeline Herriott and Elizabeth Ann Herriott, two females found lying dead in Coal Creek, at the railroad bridge, on the B. & M. Railroad, in Monroe County, Iowa, on the 14th and 15th days of July 1869.

Inquest held before Thos. E. Peters, a Justice of the Peace, in and for said county, there being no coroner in said county, at the Court House, on the 16th day of July A.D. 1869 at 8 o'clock A.M.

William Herriott, a witness of lawful age, being sworn on oath deposes and says: "I have examined the corpses in coffins present, and find they are both my children; the oldest one is Elizabeth Ann Herriott and the youngest one is Adeline Herriott.

"We started from Bureau County, Illinois, to go through to Taylor county, Iowa, by wagon. We came to East Burlington in the wagon; there we found we could not cross the river by wagon. I agreed to pay $9.60 cents to be landed at Burlington.

"When we came across to Burlington it was still raining and the roads heavy, and we made contract with an agent of the B. & M. Railroad, at Burlington, to carry us to Russell Station, in Lucas County; to carry me, my wagon, horses and children, in the same car, for sixty dollars. We got aboard the car and started at about quarter past seven o'clock on the evening of the 13th of July, 1869. We came on the cars to the place of the accident; the wagon box was taken off the gearing and the gearing was taken apart and run over the wagon body, and the oldest, Elizabeth Ann and her brother, made a bed in the wagon box and laid down and Emma and Adeline layed down on top of the gearing on some boards, and went to sleep. I layed down by the wagon-box and came on in that way to the place of the accident.

"I was on the floor of the car and jumped up as the car commenced going over end-wise; I grabbed onto timbers and fell among the horses, and knew nothing till I felt the water in the car; the car then rolled over sidewise two or three times. I came up out of the water right under the side door. I got hold of side bars and the first I knew this little girl (Emma) came up by my side out of the water and I held her till she came to so she could speak.

"I told her to get hold of the bars and hold herself up as well as she could. I then looked about for the other children, but could see nothing of them. She hung to the door and hollered and we could see no way to get out and only heard one man asking for help. I found this door above us was not bolted and tried to slip it back, but the car was twisted and could not, and then she and I worked a long time and finally got the door pried up at one corner a little. I told her to climb up and see if she could get out, and she got out and then she took a stick and pried up the door and I got out. We set on top of the car an hour until people on shore made a flat boat and took us out; they brought us to the hotel.

"The children that were drowned at that time was William Herriott, age 13 years next August, Elizabeth Ann Herriott, aged 10 years next May, and Adeline Herriott, aged nearly nine years; don't recollect exactly.

"Yes, I was awake and was up a short time before the accident. I had no notice of high water before the accident; there was no conditions in the contract to take me to Lucas county. I have stated it in full. The car was washed down below the bridge; the boy, William, has not yet been found. The accident took place on a railroad bridge on Coal Creek as we were going west of Albia; it was just after daylight in the morning that the accident happened, a short distance west of Albia. the mother of these two children is living, and we left her at Monmouth, Ill., on last Monday morning. I don't know  the conductor or engineer."

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Young William's body was found on the morning of the 16th, as the inquest was in progress; brought into Albia, placed in a coffin, brought to the courthouse and William Herriott was recalled to the stand where he testified as follows:

"I have examined the boy that has just been found and brought in since my first examination, and know him to be my son, who was drowned at the time of the accident on last Wednesday morning, 14th day of July, on Coal creek, on the B. & M.R.R. His name is William Herriott, aged about 13 years next August. The car when we left Burlington, it looked to be next to a passenger car as we could see light and men also behind. When we got to Ottumwa they hitched on other cars and then we could see no light or men after that. I was up when we passed through Albia and saw lumber in the car behind us. there was no offer by agents of the road or anyone else to take us or any of us into the passenger car."

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Perhaps a dozen others, many of them railroad workers, testified during the inquest. Daniel Anderson provided the best picture of the scene at about 9 a.m. on the morning after the accident had occurred, reporting that "seven cars went over and one flat car hung." The passenger car, a sleeper and several other freight cars were left standing on the tracks.  The box car that the Herriotts were in was "virtually on top of the coal car," Anderson said, "and we cut the car open to hunt for the children."

The train had consisted of a locomotive, coal car, 12 freight cars, a baggage car, a sleeper and a passenger coach. The locomotive and coal car sank immediately after the bridge gave way, the engineer and fireman escaping through windows. The freight cars, couplings snapped, popped back to the surface, then rolled downstream until catching on debris.

The jurors questioned witnesses closely, attempting to determine how aware B.&M.R.R. officials were of track conditions before the doomed train was allowed pass beyond Albia.

There was general agreement among the workers that Thomas Potter, resident agent for the B.&M.R.R. and been warned on the evening before the accident occurred that neither the tracks nor the bridge were safe for heavy trains. It also was alleged that Potter had warned his superiors in Burlington by telegram of the adverse conditions.

Potter, when called to the stand, was evasive, occasionally belligerant and in some instances contradicted himself. He acknowledged warnings from E. Newman, a section foreman, but said he "paid no attention to Mr. Newman, or his report; he is not a reliable man." When asked if he had sent warning telegraphs to other officials, he replied, "I refuse to answer whether I sent telegraphs or not." 

In the end, the three inquest jurors --- Henry Miller, Thomas Craig and W.G. Atherton --- "upon their oaths do say that the above named William, Elizabeth Ann and Adaline Herriott, came to their death by drowning on the morning of the 14th day of July, 1869, by the giving way of a bridge on Coal Creek, two and one half miles west of Albia, while the westward bound train was passing over, and precipitating the car in which they were into the stream below, which was very much swolen at the time, caused by the late heavy rains. We further find from the evidence produced before us that the said B.&M. R.R.Company were too negligent in not making a more thorough examination before permitting their trains to pass ...."

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The Albia Union editor, summing the inquest up with a bit of editorializing elsewhere, wrote "the facts elicited at the inquest held on last Friday over the dead bodies of three children of Mr. Herriott, who were drowned by the breaking of the Coal Creek bridge, proved conclusively that the sad disaster was caused by a careless indifference and neglect of the officers and managers of the B. & M.R.R. It was shown in evidence that the agent and employees of the company here were thoroughly cognizant of the dangerous condition of the road, and that telegraphic dispatches had been sent to headquarters at Burlington, warning them that it was unsafe for heavy trains. And yet in the face of these facts, and while the storms raged with increased fury, washing out the grades, a very heavy loaded train of from 15 to 18 cars was sent over the road to be plunged into Coal Creek, thus verifying the truth of the information sent to the officers of the road, but which they in their lofty dignity did not deign to heed."           

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Frank Hickenlooper's 1896 history of Monroe County contains at least part of the rest of this story.

The Burlington & Missouri River Railroad, faced with the verdict of the inquest jury, was anxious to settle and offered William Herriott Sr. $1,700 plus expenses, which he accepted, according to Hickenlooper. With expenses, the total paid out was in the neighborhood of $2,000.

That included the cost of transporting the remains of the three children back to Bureau County, Illinois, where they were buried in Mount Bloom Cemetery, near Tiskilwa, where two Herriott infants already had been interred. The railroad also paid the costs of transporting William Sr., Rebecca and the two remaining children onward to Taylor County.

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Find a Grave photo

Thomas Potter, the evasive Albia agent, continued to climb the corporate ladder and eventually was named first vice-president and general manager of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy (C.B.&Q.) Railroad, which by that time owned the Burlington & Missouri River.

In 1887, the year before his untimely death at the age of 48, Potter was named first vice-president and general manager of the Union Pacific, becoming perhaps the most powerful railroad executive in America at the time. His remains were brought home with great pomp to Burlington after his March 9, 1888, death in Washington, D.C., and buried in Aspen Grove Cemetery where his towering obelisk is one of the most impressive monuments located there.

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The Herriotts settled down to farm in Taylor County and appeared to prosper, but by 1880 were operating a restaurant in Lenox. Prior to 1900, the family relocated to Denver, Colorado, where William worked as a grocery salesman and died March 12, 1901, age 71. Rebecca died eight years later in Colorado Springs. Their tombstones are considerably more modest.