| From the Augusta Constitutionalist |
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| June 9, 1864 |
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| 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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