NP, AC 6/9/1864

From the Augusta Constitutionalist
 
June 9, 1864
 
Accident on the Petersburg Railroad
   The Express of yesterday states that a serious accident occurred on the Petersburg and Weldon {the Petersburg} Railroad, at Stoney Creek, about 12 o'clock, Tuesday night by which one life was lost and some ten or fifteen soldiers more or less severely wounded. At 9 o'clock, as usual, the regular mail train left Petersburg for the South, and shortly thereafter a freight train left for Weldon to bring in stores for the Government. As is always the case, when one train follows closely after another, a red light was displayed from the rear car of the first train, so as to avoid accident. The mail train stopped at Stony Creek to take on wood and water, and while there the freight train, of which we understand, John Harrison was engineer, dashed up at a rapid rate, and in the face of the red light displayed, ran into the rear car. The entire train was, of course, heavily jarred by the collision, and not a little damage was sustained. The platforms and bumpers of four or five of the passenger cars were knocked off and broken to pieces, and some of the cars themselves seriously strained.
   But the sadder part of the affair was the injury to life and limb that resulted. A young soldier named Paulson, hailing from the Chesterfield District, S C, who was wounded in one of the engagements near Petersburg, was terribly mangled on the platform of one of the cars, and instantly killed. He had been under treatment at the South Carolina hospital in Petersburg, and had so far recovered as to admit of a transfer to the hospital in Columbia, where he would be nearer his friends and relatives. He was the last but one of nine brothers who entered this war--seven having been killed, or died from wounds received on the battlefield. 
   Some ten or fifteen soldiers who were returning home on furlough, were wounded, some of them severely, others slightly. One poor fellow was so closely bummed in between the broken cars, that he had to be cut out with an axe.

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