Hodges, TN Train Wreck, Sept 1904
FIFTY-FOUR KILLED
One Hundred and Twenty-five Injured in Wreck.
COLLIDED AT FULL SPEED
Passenger Trains Crashed Together Near Hodges, Tenn.
Orders Were Not Followed-One of the Engineers Supposed to Have Been Asleep or Dead When Collision Came-Heartrending Scenes at the Wreck-Timber Driven Entirely Through One Woman's Body-Did Not Leave Track.
Knoxville, Tenn., Sept. 24-Running on a roadbed in a high condition of maintenance, and having about them every safeguard known to modern railroading, two trains on the Southern Railway, carrying heavy lists of passengers, came together in a frightful head-on collision, near Hodges Tenn., to-day, killing 54 people and injuring 120, several of whom will probably die. This appalling loss of life and maiming of the living resulted apparently from the disregarding of orders given to the two trains to meet at a station which has for a long time been their regular meeting point. The plea of failure to see either the station or signals cannot be set up by the engineer of the west-bound train, were he alive to enter a plea of defense, as the accident happened in broad daylight, and according to the best information obtainable, he had the orders in a little frame in front of him as his engine rushed by Newmarket. Soon after it came full upon an east-bound passenger train making for New market, in compliance with instructions to meet the west-bound train which carried the sleepers from the East for Knoxville, Chattanooga, and other Southern cities.
The possibility exists that the ill-fated engineer may have been asleep, or that death had suddenly overtaken him before Newmarket was reached. But nothing is known, save that the orders were not obeyed. The trains were on time and not making over thirty-five miles an hour, yet the impact as they rounded a curve and came suddenly upon each other was frightful. Both engines and the greater portion of both trains were demolished, and why the orders were disregarded or misinterpreted probably will never be known, as the engineers of the two trains were crushed to death, their bodies remaining for hours under the wreckage of the locomotives.
List of the Dead.
Some of the bodies have not been recovered, and many remain unidentified.
The known dead
RALPH MOUNTCASTLE, Knoxville
W. A. GALBRAITH, Knoxville
MRS. W. A. GALBRAITH, Knoxville
MONROE ASHMORE, Knoxville
JOHN BLACK, White Pine, Tenn.
JAMES KING, Knoxville
Two children of JAMES KING, Knoxville.
Continued on page 2
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TN Train Wreck Hodges,
My grandmother lamented all of her life about losing her father in a TN train wreck. I have been searching for yrs trying to find out about
it. Today I found the answers to so many questions. My great-grandfather died in the Hodges, TN wreck in September, 1904. I had
known very little about it other than the year & state. His name was Melvin Gantt. He was born in 1845 in Cleveland County, NC.
He served in the Confederate Army while still a very young man. I was told that on this particular trip he attended a civil war reunion
in San Francisco & also stopped in St. Louis for the 1904 Worlds Fair. The accident occurred on his return trip to North Carolina.
My grandmother was 14 & never really got over losing her father. She married my grandfather the next year and lived a very good life
until her death at the age of 92.
I am very grateful to whomever is responsible for this invaluable information.
Thank you so very much.
R. S. Peeler
Staunton VA
Train Wreck
My Great Grandfather, Frederick Gray Turner, postal clerk for the Railway Mail Service from 1900 - 1939 (Salisbury-Chattanooga run at that time) , was a postal clerk on one of the trains. He narrowly survived. His obituary read:
"On the fateful morning, Mr. Turner was riding in a mail car directly behind the coal tender of one of a Knoxville-bound train. The engine of an Asheville-bound train plowed deeply into the old-fashioned wooden mail coach, missing Mr. Turner and three other clerks by but a few feet. Their car somehow held together, but other wooden cars in the wreck were reduced to splintered debris. Bodies of wreck victims were strewn in every direction. Some were never identified. Mr. Turner escaped with a wrenched back... Mr. Turner offered the explanation that his guardian angel was looking after him..."
He survived three train disasters, this being the first.
A very yellowed newspaper clipping and photograph was on the wall of my grandfather's room for as long as I knew him. It was the New Market wreck that his father had survived. My great grandmother may have been pregnant with my grandfather at the time (b. 1905).