Edwin Lancaster's death by lightning near Freedom

A guy never knows what's going to turn up when he plugs search terms into one of those online newspaper databases. I was gratified this week to find --- when looking for something else --- the following brief report of a death by lightning near Freedom, Lucas County, Iowa, published of all places in The Opelousas Courier, Saint Landry Parish, Louisiana, on August 10, 1872. It reads:

"While Mr. Ed. Lancaster was plowing in Freedom, Lucas county, Iowa, he was struck by lightning and killed instantly. The same stroke killed one of his horses, knocking the other down, and slivered the plow into fragments. There was no external sign of injury upon his body save a slight wound near one of his ears. Two men working the same field were knocked down by the concussion."

You can see on the map here where Freedom was located, down near the Wayne County line. All that survives of it is the nearby Freedom Cemetery. No doubt some version of the news item published in Louisiana also had appeared in Chariton newspapers, but the issues that would have contained it have not survived.

The story would have reached Louisiana --- and the desks of many other newspaper editors across the country --- in a compilation of "filler" items distributed by a boilerplate syndicate. These fillers were brief news stories sensational enough to grab reader attention used by typesetters to fill holes as forms were being prepared to be locked up and printed.

+++

Armed with the news item published in Louisiana, I set out see if I could find out where "Ed" Lancaster was buried --- and found him --- Edwin R. Lancaster --- in the cemetery at Corydon, Wayne County's seat some distance south of Freedom. His tombstone is there, recording the information that his death occurred on June 12, 1872, two months before it was reported in Opelousas.

Edwin had married Katharine Vollmar on July 22, 1868, in Wayne County, and I found them living in Benton Township, Lucas County, when the 1870 federal census was taken. Their daughter, Mehitabel "Hittie," was born there during May of 1871. Their son, Edwin Jr., was born four months after his father's death --- on Oct. 18, 1872 --- but died at age 2 on May 27, 1875, and was buried near his father.

Katharine did not remarry, but moved back to Corydon after Edwin's death and raised her daughter there. She died on Jan. 12, 1914, at the home of her daughter, by then married Charles B. Jackson and living in Des Moines, and her remains were returned to Corydon for burial. Her obituary also records the date and cause of Edwin's death.