Lawrence County, Ohio Mill Explosion

Deadly Calamity

An explosion of Boilers at the Lawrence Mill

Three Men were Killed Instantly, and Many Injured
DETAILS AND INCIDENTS OF THE SHOCKING DISASTER.

A Fourth Victim Expires in Great Agony

Ironton, Ohio, Thursday, Oct. 27, 1887

Lawrence County, Ohio Mill Explosion – A few minutes before 8 o’clock last Monday morning, a battery of six boilers at the Lawrence Mill blew up, hurling their immense fragments high in the air into the valley of Storms creek and broadcast through the mill, where 150 or 200 men were at work.

Three men at the bar mill rolls were killed outright. They were Michael Dyer, catcher, and Jas. Dyer, a catcher’s helper, and Thomas O. Davis, a veteran mill man who served as a laborer. A huge boilerplate section probably struck and killed them all in one blow. Besides these, Jas. Dyer, Sr. and Edward Dyer, his nephew, fell with the dead men, and his father may be fatally hurt. He is 67 years old and suffered internal injuries and a crushed hip. Ed. Dyer is seriously injured also but will doubtless get well. 

In another part of the mill, Peter Clay, the fireman’s helper, was lying with injuries the most serious sustained by any who survived the explosion. The bones of his left arm were crushed, and his body burned dreadfully from head to foot.

Besides these sad cases, nearly a score of other men was more or less injured, but not dangerously. The REGISTER has endeavored to get a full list of the victims and will record them in another place.

The shock of the Lawrence County Ohio Mill explosion was felt in almost every quarter of town. It made a rumbling, thunderous sound and a tremor like an earthquake, which shook windows and doors like a violent wind and aroused the whole population. Three distinct vibrations followed so closely upon one another that they all occupied only a few seconds of time. 

With the explosion, the mill’s machinery stopped running, the flying streaks of hot iron ceased their swift passage through the rolls, and the roof opened. Piles of stacked iron fell in a tangled mass, bits of board and brick and iron accompanied the more deadly missiles of boilerplate as they swept through the mill, and a storm of blinding dust and steam covered everything. 

The scene of active industry and companionable occupation was changed in the twinkling to the one of suffering and anguish. The next moment, the workmen’s families who lived nearby came rushing toward the mill. Adding to the pandemonium of grief and astonishment with agonizing cries, they searched among the ruins for their loved ones.

When the first effect was over, the workmen who had escaped injury and had fled in terror to the open air returned to render any assistance possible to their less fortunate companions. A fire alarm was turned in anticipation of impending flames, and with the sound of the ominous whistle, hundreds of people flocked to the mill. From whence came clouds of steam and dust, certain pieces of evidence of the location of the disaster.

That part of the works where the boilers were located was found in a sad plight, with the roof torn and small fragments of iron and building material scattered about. A thin coating of mud covered the wreck. As the injured persons and others emerged from the mill, limping and bleeding and on the arms of friends anxious to assist them, they were bespattered with mud and, in many cases, marred beyond recognition by a complete coating that the black dust and steam had made.

Physicians were promptly on the scene, and as none needed their immediate services, called at once to the injured persons at their homes. All who were seriously hurt were taken away in carriages. The mangled forms of the dead were tenderly borne from the spot where they fell by their late fellow workmen, who placed them upon boards, spread mantles of tarpaulin over them, and solemnly conveyed them to where their grief-stricken families awaited them at home.

While these tender and delicate offices were being performed, the search among the ruins for other missing persons continued. Many still suffered in agonizing suspense as they awaited tidings from their friends. Relatives of the employed who lived farther from the scene kept arriving. They met the sturdy workmen with affectionate greetings and exclamations of joy as they realized how great their escape was.

The boilers which exploded were each 28 feet long, 42 inches in diameter, and contained two 15-inch flues. They were built by J. K. Hastings 13 years ago. They were tested only last June by an inspector of the Fidelity and Casualty Insurance Company of New York, who pronounced them in first-class condition in a letter written to the officers of the mill company. The test was made in anticipation of an insurance policy of $7500 on boilers and machinery, which was afterward written and is now in force. 

Two minutes before the explosion, the engineer, Floyd Barker, had tried the water in the boilers and found the proper amount of two and a half gauges. Hence the cause of the explosion remains a mystery. After trying the water, the engineer walked to the hoop mill engine to make some slight repairs, and in a minute, the explosion occurred. The noise was so dreadful and sudden that he could not analyze it, but he felt hit with a brick in the back and fled outside.

John D. Jones, with face upturned, was pulling down the damper rod of his furnace at the moment of the Lawrence County Ohio Mill explosion and saw the roof open before he heard the report. R. H. Pritchard, usually engaged near the boilers, escaped injury in the office. The office inmates could not realize that the explosion was so near, though the sound they heard was terrible, and they thought the office building was falling.

The position of the boilers was on the side next to Storms creek and the S. V. and Iron Railway tracks, not far from the office. They lay parallel to the trains of rolls in the mill and opposite the train comprising the bar mill and one end of the guide mill. The fated family of Dyers was all struck near the bar mill. James Thomas, Sr., stood near the boilers and was not injured at all but completely covered with the black mantle of dirt as others were. 

Robt. Jones and John Mayne, both seriously injured, were also both nearer the boilers than the men who were killed. A great fragment of boiler blew over the bar mill and rests on the ground beyond, on whose ragged edge tufts of hair were found, indicating the deadly weapon with which the unfortunate men were slain.

It seems wonderful how the other men at the bar mill, shears, guide mill, and some other parts of the works escaped with their lives. At the bar mill, two men, John Pritchard and Charles Sloan were at work on the side next to the boilers. On the spot where they stood, a section of steam drum, probably 18 inches in diameter and 10 feet long, lies on the ground, where terrific force was required to launch it, one end nearly touching the billet of iron Pritchard was handling, and the other end entangled in the half rolled bar that was passing through young Sloan’s tongs. 

Everyone who looks upon the positions remarked on their narrow escape from death. If Pritchard had been receiving the bar from the rolls instead of discharging it, as he would have been doing the next moment, he would have been in the track of the steam drum.

However, most of the larger fragments of the wreck blew outside the mill, and this fact, unaccountable as the causes of the explosion, shielded much human life. Most of the wrecked boilers landed in the Storms Creek bed. One boiler, almost complete, lies halfway up the bank on the West Ironton side. Other pieces were embedded in the mud up and down the creek for 200 yards. 

One fragment struck a telegraph pole and landed in three pieces on the roof of a house in West Ironton. Another small piece of boiler went through the roof of John L. Abram’s house several hundred yards away and came near, striking Mrs. Abrams and her children.

On their way to work uptown, two girls were passing along the railroad track near the boilers and escaped unharmed, though frightened. Evan Williams, Sr. had just left the office and passed by the boilers on the outside to look at the cars. The force of the Lawrence County Ohio Mill explosion seemed to burst out from the side of the boilers, but half of one boiler forced its way sideways through stacked iron in the corner of the mill and landed alongside the office. 

The iron it disturbed was tangled up like straw. One of the flues in the boiler is broken off short but not otherwise mutilated, and the other is collapsed like an envelope. Machine men who viewed the boiler say the watermark shows an abundant water supply.

The wreck made a woeful sight but interesting, despite its calamity and horrors, and groups of people may be seen there at any hour of the day since the accident, gazing upon the ruins.

 Following is a complete list, as near as can be procured, of the victims of the disasters:

THE DEAD

• Michael Dyer, bar mill catcher, aged 38
• Jas. Dyer, catcher’s helper, aged 35
• Thomas O. Davis, aged 64
• Peter Clay, fireman’s helper, aged 30

THE INJURED 

• James Hatton, bar mill roller, flesh wounds on leg and left hand.
• Frank Gagag, shear-man, head bruised and cut, and hand bruised.
• Thomas Hicks, heater for bar mill, bruised and scalded on hips and legs.
• Jas. Dyer, a laborer, age 67, had ribs broken, and a hip was crushed.
• Edward Dyer, hookup on bar mill, was scalded severely on the head and body and possibly injured internally.
• Hiram Rust, straightener on bar mill, flesh wound in the face.
• Sonny Johnson, a laborer, has a shoulder wound.
• Robert Jones, straightener on bar mill, bruises and ugly scratch on left hip, and similar injuries on right shoulder and arm.
• John Wagner, straightener on bar mill, bruised across the back and slightly burned, slight wound on hand.
• John Pritchard, rougher at guide mill, right arm, left wrist cut, and ankle sprained.
• Thomas W. Davis, heater, contused and bruised wound on right shoulder.
• Ben Golden, a colored fireman, face badly scalded.
• John McCormick, rougher on bar mill, scalp cut, and wound on the neck.
• John Wagner, heater on hoop mill, a slight bruise on the arm.
• Charles Sloan, scraper on guide mill, leg injured
• Geo. Sherman, guide mill shearman, cut on the leg.
• Mac Grubb, bundler on guide mill, wounds on the back, left arm, and right hip, and general bruises.

Michael Dyer lived on Sixth street near Etna in a neat two-story house he owned. He was a quiet, industrious citizen and the head of a fine family. His wife and six children, three boys and three girls, are left to mourn an irreparable loss. Three of the children are in school, the oldest being ten. His wife, a good philosophical woman, was among the first to reach the mill after the accident and knew her husband was killed because the people there sought to keep her from approaching. 

In deep anguish, she preceded his remains to her home but bears up nobly under the heavy stroke that has fallen upon her. The deceased was a cousin of Jas. Dyer, who was killed, and a brother of Ed Dyer, who was injured but was raised from childhood in his uncle’s family, with whom his brother Ed still resides. When the youngest daughter of that family heard of the calamity, she started to console the stricken widow, but upon seeing the men coming in the distance with Mike’s remains, she fell fainting in the street.

James Dyer was 35. he lived with his wife and daughter, their only child, a bright and intelligent girl of 12, with whom he built many fond hopes. Their home was on Fifth below Vesuvius in the Isaminger house, which Dyer purchased a few years since. He was a kind and dutiful husband and parent and a man of sober habits and unobtrusive manners, whose death many will mourn. 

His excellent wife was formally Miss Mary McKenna, who for many years lived with Thos. McCarthy’s family when resided next to the Baptist church. When the Lawrence County Ohio Mill explosion occurred,  her husband had just been home to breakfast, and she ran from the table she was clearing after the meal to the back door and beheld the wreck, reaching the scene in a few moments, as her husband’s fellow workmen came bearing his body from the ruins. She bore the terrible blow in silence, without a tear, but is now overcome with grief.

The other man killed instantly was Thos. O. Davis, a veteran mill man, was formerly an old mill boiler but has not worked in the mills for many years except as a substitute until a few weeks ago when he took a laborer’s job in the Lawrence. He was the father of Mrs. Thos. Hibler, Mrs. Wm. Morgan, David Davis of Pullman, and Thomas and John Davis, boys at home. He was a jolly, kind-hearted man, a prominent Old Fellow, and one of our best-known citizens.

Peter Clay, the fireman so badly crushed and burned, died Tuesday morning after 26 hours of untold suffering. About a year ago, he came from Ashland and had worked briefly at the Lawrence. His wife is a sensible, quiet woman who comprehended the situation at once and demanded the doctors the whole truth about her husband’s condition. There are two children in the family, a boy and a girl of perhaps 5 and 3 years. The family resides in West Ironton in Mrs. Brenneman’s house on Third street.

The reporter called upon James Dyer, Sr., and Ed. Dyer, yesterday afternoon, at their home. The family lives on Sixth, a few squares below Michael’s late residence. The two men occupied beds in the same room and talked freely about their awful experiences. 

Ed. Dyer’s serious injuries are apparent at a glance, for his head and face are bandaged with the application for burns, with only the eyes and mouth exposed. He said the first he knew of the Lawrence County, Ohio, Mill explosion accident, there was a slight hissing sound, and then there was a torrent of bricks or something that made him fall on his knees. 

After he got down, he felt a sweep of some great force and sought to avoid it by crawling behind the crane. While there, he saw them carry Mike and Jim out and then got up himself and, refusing assistance, walked home, where he sank exhausted and told somebody that he was badly hurt, but not to tell the women, as they would see trouble enough. He has burned awfully from his head to his hip but, at the time, was resting easy.

James Dyer, the old gentleman, layover in a corner where a ray of sunlight at the side of a window curtain lit up his bearded face. He extended his hand as the reporter drew near, and talking of the disaster, his voice trembled, and the tears came when he alluded to the death of his nephew and son. 

He said he was at the shears, about the closest man to the boilers, when he was knocked down by a shower of bricks, he supposes, and got up and shouted to the boys for help, and then he choked up when he realized how vain his calls had been. He left the mill and walked home with Mr. Cronin’s assistance.

NOTES: 

• All injured are better.
• All the boilers flew out of the mill.
• The explosion twisted the railroad tracks nearby.
• A person walking through the mill wonders how anyone in it escaped. There are thrilling incidents, almost without a number, connected with the explosion.

The piece that killed the three men clipped the hair from the top of Jack McCormick’s head. That was close. The $7500 insurance is divided thus:  $3000 on boilers, $2500 on engines and machinery, and $2000 on the building.

About $800 has been raised for the relief of the suffering families. John Phillips alone raised $164 on Tuesday.

Mrs. Michael Dyer’s father was killed years ago by a falling tree, and her brother-in-law was suddenly killed also.

Mr. Favre of Portsmouth engraved our picture of the wreck from a photograph taken by Howard E. Norton before noon on Monday. It gives the reader a correct idea of the effect of the explosion on the mill.

Mike and Jas. Dyer was buried this Wednesday morning, and Thos. O. Davis this Wednesday afternoon. Their funerals were largely attended. The funeral of Peter Clay will be at Wesley Chapel Thursday morning at 10 o’clock.

A boilerplate from the explosion was picked up in Horn’s field at Eighth Street’s foot. It flew over R.W. Robert’s house with terrific speed and almost buried itself in the field. Mr. Robert has the specimen at his butcher shop. It weighs 25 ¼ pounds.

The Lawrence Mill officers hope to have part of the forge running again this week or the first of next. They propose to run the forge and finishing department alternately, using the battery of three boilers at the lower end of the mill until new boilers can replace the exploded ones.

Joe Fletcher says that if he hadn’t taken another notion, he would have been loading iron at the side of the boilers from a pile now covered with debris. Changing his notion saved the lives of four men, Charlie Allen, Wes Thompson, Barney Smith, who had just left the spot when the explosion occurred, and Geo. Jordan’s life, for he called George, seated right against the boilers, in the track of the boiler that blew toward the office, only a moment before the boilers let go, to help him a little.

W.G. Lambert was in the yard behind the machine shop, close to the creek bank, and had the best possible view of the Lawrence County, Ohio, Mill explosion. He saw it all, from the first tremor, and gives a vivid description of it. He says the air was filled with missiles all above the roof like the vomiting of a volcano, some of the pieces flying swiftly and high. 

They rose to three times the height of the gas well derrick, it seems to him, and one big piece whirled over and over in its flight through the air toward the hill until he stopped watching it to gaze at the rest. Another smaller piece flew off in that direction, and some must have gone into the river. It was a wonderful sight, but one he never wanted to see again.