The sad end of young Barney Wax, a rabbi's son

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Barney Wax is not exactly a Lucas Countyan, although he died here. And his remains are buried in the cemetery of Congregation B'nai Jacob in Ottumwa. But I was intrigued by the remaining scrap of his sad story, as reported on the front page of The Chariton Herald of June 25, 1908.

Born in Russia and after making it to Iowa in search of opportunity, he died at the age of 20 of injuries sustained after falling from a freight train somewhere along the C.B.&Q. line between Russell and Chariton while riding the rails farther west.

Here's how The Herald reported the story:

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While Barney Wax, a young Russian Jew, and an Italian companion named Barney Alpin, were riding the bumpers on a freight train between Russell and this place about three o'clock yesterday morning, the former met with an accident which cost him his life. Mr. Wax, it is thought, went to sleep and fell from  the train, and the wheels passed over his body, injuring him internally and crushing his right limb so that amputation between the knee and thigh was necessary. His left knee joint was also badly injured.

His companion rode to this city before he could get off the train, and has been almost crazed with grief. The injured man was brought here on train No. 15 and taken to the county farm, where medical aid did all that could be done, but the unfortunate young man died yesterday afternoon about 2:30 o'clock.

A sister, Mrs. Anna Green, and her husband, W. Green, and Mr. S.W. Govronsky, arrived here last evening from Oskaloosa and this morning the remains were taken to Ottumwa for burial  in the Jewish cemetery. Deceased was only eighteen years of age and had been in this country but two years. He had been employed as a laborer in railroad camps and left Oskaloosa on Tuesday. He had just sent the day before to Russia for his father and mother. His friends said that when he earned a dollar he saved half of it for his father and mother. They said he was a good, industrious young man.

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I found Barney's sister, Anna, and her husband, William, in both the 1910 and 1920 census enumerations of Oskaloosa, then in Des Moines (he was a confectioner by trade) and finally in Brooklyn (New York), where her family had regrouped.

Their parents, Max and Ida (Bulis) Wax (Woskobonek), did make it from Russia to the United States during 1909. He was a rabbi and they lived out the remainder of their lives in Brooklyn.

And Barney certainly wasn't forgotten by his family as his substantial tombstone in the Congregation B'nai Jacob Cemetery testifies.