Lost Four Days in Woods.

1916

Dixville Notch, N. H., Sept. 24. — Lost for nearly four days in the wilderness of the northern foothills of the White mountains, Joseph A. Dennison, former assistant district attorney of Suffolk county, Mass., and his wife, were found early today. They had suffered greatly from lack of food and sleep, but it was not thought their hardships would cause permanent injury to their health.

The Dennisons were found in an abandoned logging camp on the shores of Dead Diamond stream in the Dartmouth college grant, a wild section of country near the hotel from which they had set out Wednesday afternoon on a walk which they expected to finish before dinner.

In seeking to return they had lost their bearings in the almost trackless woods, and for two days had wandered in quest of a habitation. Not until Friday did they find shelter in an old lumber shack, where they remained, too tired to go further, and not knowing which way to turn. The discovery was made by Earl Gould and Scott Copp, employes of the hotel, who will divide a reward of $1500, of which $1000 was offered by Daniel H. Coakley of Boston, brother of Mrs. Dennison, and $500 by Thomas G. Washburn of that city, a close friend of the former district attorney.

It was early this morning that the young men, who had been tramping the vicinity of Dead Diamond stream through the night in a heavy rain, came on the abandoned logging camp in which the Dennisons had taken refuge. After giving such help as was possible under the circumstances, one of the young men went to a farm at Wentworth's Location, several miles away, and from there telephoned.

Although it was 10 miles from Dixville Notch to the shack where the Dennisons were found, it was necessary to send a team 25 miles over back country roads to bring them back.

Both the attorney and his wife were so overcome at the sight of their rescuers that they broke down and cried.

That the Dennisons were not found sooner was due to a series of coincidences. During their stay at the hotel they had occasionally gone away on trips that took one or two days, and their absence Wednesday night aroused no comment.

—The Fryeburg Post, Fryeburg, Maine, Sept. 26, 1916, p. 2.