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Sunday School fatality

By Bob Cudmore

The first passenger fatality on the Fonda, Johnstown and Gloversville Railroad (F.J. & G.) did not take place until 1889, nineteen years after the first steam train made the inaugural run between Gloversville and Fonda. 

For those who worked on the local railroad, though, injury and death were more commonplace.  In his book “Our Railroad,” author and retired Amtrak engineer Paul Larner wrote, “That the railroad industry was unforgiving of carelessness is an understatement.  It wasn’t enough to be careful, to a serious extent you also had to be lucky.  For train service employees on the F.J. & G. the likelihood of receiving a serious injury or death in any year was one chance in nine.”

In August of 1889, for example, brakeman Ed Young, 19, of Gloversville was gravely injured when his foot was caught in a guardrail while he was trying to couple a locomotive and caboose near Fonda.  Young was thrown under the engine. 

Young died later that day surrounded by his parents, siblings and doctors who were unable to save him.

Historians Episode #500 this November 

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The Gloversville Intelligencer wrote, “When told that he must die, he received the intelligence calmly, and even told the doctors that he would rather die than live with both legs gone.  Afterwards he actually tried to cheer his relatives, telling the weeping group not to cry for him.”

The railroad paid for brakeman Young’s funeral and fellow workers erected what Larner called a fine tombstone for him.

Young’s father, Richard Young, had been an F.J. & G. conductor who was discharged from the railroad in 1878.  Richard Young had failed to get his train out of the way of another, causing a collision.  Seven years later, the elder Young went back to work for the railroad as a laborer.  

The first F.J. & G. passenger death took place during an excursion of the Baptist Sunday School of Amsterdam to Sacandaga Park, an amusement park operated by the F.J. & G. that ended up being flooded when the reservoir now called Great Sacandaga Lake was created in 1930.

Citing newspaper accounts from 1889, Larner wrote that 28-year old Ralph Beach of Amsterdam broke his neck when he fell from a train.

The August 10 Gloversville Intelligencer reported that Beach was standing on the lower step of a coach enjoying the scenery a short distance above Mayfield when the accident occurred on a sharp curve.

“Young Beach, who was leaning forward to look back, was pitched from the step as the train rounded the curve,” the paper reported.  He was killed when his head hit a telephone pole.  Beach’s fiancé and his sister were both on the train.

A coroner’s inquest was held in Northville that day and the death was ruled accidental, the result of Beach’s negligence.

The Intelligencer wrote, “It was due entirely to carelessness on the young man’s part, and should serve as a warning to others to pay more regard to the instructions of the road, and avoid standing on the platform and steps of the coaches.”

The second passenger death on the local railroad took place a year and a half later in 1891.  According to Larner, a workman on the then new Adirondack Hotel being built at Sacandaga Park fell from the platform of a northbound train.

Larner’s “Our Railroad” covers from 1867 to 1893, the years when the F.J. & G. steam railroad was built and when work began on the electric trolley line that ultimately operated under the F.J. & G. name.  The railroad is gone now and part of its roadbed is a bicycle and walking trail.

Wednesday, August 16, 2023-From the Archives- November 6, 2020-Episode 343-Retired Colonel Dave Cummings discusses efforts to research St. Joseph’s Shrine in the Adirondack hill town of Bleecker.  St. Joseph’s Church, torn down in 1919, was the first Roman Catholic Church built in Fulton County.

Thursday, August 17, 2023-From the Archives of Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-Bombing Fort Plain

New this Friday, August 18, 2023

...may be some spice down the road

Episode 488-Kiersten Marcil, author of the American Revolution historical novel Witness to the Revolution.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Tuesday, August 15, 2023

67 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:05AM

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