Death at the Supper Table (and Other Unfortunate News)

1907

MUSKEGON, MI. — Charles Bromstra, 37 years old, while working complained of pain in the region of his heart and said he thought he would die. At the supper table he expired.

MONTROSE, MI. — A broken brakebeam tumbled 14 box cars of a Bay City to Durand train on the C., S. & M., four miles south of here. Four of the cars were reduced to kindling wood and the track torn up for a long distance. Nobody was hurt.

DETROIT, MI. — Florence W. McGill, upon looking into the bathroom, found her mother lying dead in the tub, face downward, with water covering her head. She had been taking a foot bath and it is presumed that she was overcome and fell head foremost into the water.

PORT HURON, MI. — Guests at the Windermere hotel, Gratiot beach, have complained because of the fact that the waitresses employed at the hotel bathe in the lake at the same time as the guests take their daily plunge. The lake being very large, however, no attempt has been made to put a stop to the practice.

LANSING, MI. — William Henry Harrison, a quaint character, 72 years old, who worked for years at Delta and refused to accept any employment from his employer, dropped dead on the street here from apoplexy. He had just emerged from Beck's clothing store when he toppled over against a passerby and was dead before he could be lowered to the sidewalk.

AMERICUS, GA. — Bram Goodwin, a Sumter county farmer, dropped dead in a cotton field. His brother Arnold summoned and at the sight of the body he fell on it and expired.

JOLIET, ILL. — William Myers, a young man of McKeesport, Pa., who was stealing a ride on top of a coach of a passenger train was struck by the viaduct under the Michigan Central tracks at New Lenox and beheaded. Two companions, with whom Myers boarded the car in the yards at Chicago, escaped because they were lying flat on the car roof.

NEW YORK — Mrs. Catherine Gillighan, at the age of 107 years and four months, is dead at her home in the Bronx. She had lived in New York 35 years, coming here from Ireland at the age of 79 to join her eight children. Mrs. Gillighan ascribed her longevity to her habit of eating onions at every meal and her refusal to worry about anything. She never tasted medicine.

LIGONIER, IND. — Pat Summers, one of the best known horse breeders in this section and owner of Edifice, was killed by lightning while in a barn at his stock farm near this city during an electrical storm. Summers had just returned from Kendallville where he was training a large number of horses for the fall track. Several valuable colts were saved by Summers' son from the burning barn.

— Daily Eagle, Traverse City, Michigan, Aug. 3, 1907, p. 5.