Tragedy Strikes

During a visit to Pennsylvania in September of 2011, I located a transcript in the Avella Public Library of an interview with a Joseph H. Kelley.  In the interview Joseph told the following story about Samuel Ross Cheesebrough (Ross).  (Warning: The story is graphic and sad.)

Joe:  …Ross was a driver and delivery man.  He stayed there from 1905 until he died in 1953.  Never worked any other place.  He [Ross, senior] worked with me at the lumber yard until he died. …He used to open up every day from ’46 until he got killed in ’53. 

Jane:  How did he get killed:

Joe:  Railroad track. Train hit him.  He was crossing… Ross’ eyesight was failing.  We were planning on him working in the yard, in the store, and me taking over the truck.  And we didn’t get to do it.  Planned on doing it the first of the year.  And it was a couple of days or so before Christmas.  From the way the engineer told it to me, he said, “I think the man thought the train was further back than it was.  He started to cross and seen the train was on him and started running ahead of it.  Of course he couldn’t outrun a train.”

Jane:  You mean he was walking?

Joe:  Yes.  He’d come to work and had forgotten his pocketbook and he went back home to get it.  He was hurrying to get this opened up by eight o’clock.  I always… I lived in Washington then and I always got there about a quarter till eight. 

I’d pulled in and I saw guys running don the track.  And there was the train crew.  I asked what was the matter and they said they’d hit a man down here.  So I just took off running right down there with them.  And we got down and there laid the body. 

The conductor of the train… it was a freight train but they had conductors too.  He asked if anybody knew who it was…

I walked up to the body and started to take his hand to feel his pulse because you could see some twitching.  The conductor said, “Take his other hand that one’s all mangled.”  We I had to roll him over a little bit and looked right down onto Ross’ face and said, “My God, that’s Ross!”  And I just took off running.  Run down and got on the telephone to call the ambulance.  Then called the house.  The ambulance came and took him.   Of course he was dead.

Jane:  Which crossing was that?

Joe:  It wasn’t a crossing; it was in back of the lumber yard.  He lived up on Highland Avenue, where his son lives now, Wayne.  In the old homestead.  He came down over that big steep bank.  There was a path cut into that bank.

The map below shows the area in Avella, Pennsylvania where this tragedy occurred.  The gray hashed- line indicates the railroad tracks adjacent to Highland Avenue.


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