Byron, OH Flouring Mill Boiler Explosion, Jul 1884

A TERRIFIC EXPLOSION.

A Mill Destroyed by the Bursting of Its Steam Boiler.

Seven Persons Killed and Many Others Injured.

A terrific boiler explosion occurred a few evenings ago in the flouring mill of Behren & Haefer, near Bryon, Ohio. About forty men were employed in the mill at the time and the explosion was so terrible in its force that the large structure was blown almost to atoms, and among its debris were buried twenty- seven of the employees, eleven of whom were extricated in a dying condition. It was found that seven men were killed and three others mortally wounded. Beside these about eight other persons were seriously injured, while nearly every man in the mill was more or less hurt.

The force of the explosion was so great that pieces of the boiler, machinery and stones from the wall were hurled through the air a distance of a quarter of a mile. One piece of the boiler, about three feet square and weighing probably more than a hundred pounds was sent flying through the roof of a house at that distance from the mill. It took nearly the whole roof off, and the falling timbers seriously injured MISS NELLIE WINTERS and GEORGE WINTERS, two of its occupants.

EDWARD FORSTER, the engineer, was thrown nearly three hundred feet. He was terribly scalded and mangled, but lived for three hours. E. A. AYERS, his assistant, was hurled through the roof, three hundred feet away. The work of extricating the injured was not completed until this morning, and while the work was carried on, women and children whose fathers and husbands were buried in the debris filled the air with their lamentations. The scene throughout was a pitiful one.

Ticonderoga Sentinel New York 1884-07-04
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Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!