Fireworks at Columbia prove fatal to John McKinnon

Find a Grave photo.

I've been wondering this morning if my maternal grandmother, Jessie, then age 14, was present to witness the fireworks-related accident on July 4, 1889, in the Marion-Lucas county border town of Columbia that killed John A. McKinnon.

Jessie would have been living with her family then at the main crossroads in that little town when folks came from miles around to celebrate Independence Day with the usual small-town fare --- parades and picnics, orations and an evening display of fireworks, launched in this instance from a wagon parked in front of McKinnon's carpentry shop.

This brief item included in the Columbia news column published on July 11, 1889, in The Chariton Herald, describes what happened:

"Our community is now in sad affliction," the Columbia correspondent reported. "On the evening of the 4th while the fire works were being displayed from a wagon in front of John McKinnon's shop, the whole mass was exploded by the fire from a rocket.

"While attempting to jump from the wagon, John McKinnon fell upon the wheel causing an internal rupture. Doctors Agan and Cornell were called, but nothing could be done to afford relief and after lingering in intense suffering, he died Saturday morning, July 6, at half past 5 o'clock.

"He leaves a wife and eight children, only two of them grown. He was buried on Sunday at 10 o'clock by the Masonic fraternity of that place, assisted by the G.A.R. post, many being present from Knoxville to take part in the ceremonies."

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McKinnon, who was 50 at the time and an honored Civil War veteran, was a native of Indiana who had married in Marion County on Oct. 24, 1867, Miss Martha A. Jerome, some 12 years his junior. They became the parents of nine children, one of whom died as an infant. Martha was heavily pregnant with the youngest when John was killed.

Although McKinnon's carpentry shop was located in Columbia, the family may have lived on 40 acres south of town, immediately north and west of the Columbia Cemetery.

In the immediate aftermath of John's death, Martha gave birth to William McKinnon and continued to live with her younger children at Columbia until after 1900.

John's grave in the Columbia Cemetery never was marked permanently and it seems likely that he was joined there during the 1890s by two of his daughters who died relatively young, Susan and Edith.

Some time after 1900, Martha joined children who had relocated to Oklahoma where she lived until death at age 91 on Aug. 16, 1941. She is buried in Shattuck Cemetery, Ellis County, with a tombstone that identifies her as the wife of John A. McKinnon --- killed more than 50 years earlier, buried in an unmarked grave in Iowa, but not forgotten.