Sunday, August 25, 2013

SURVIVOR OF WRECK DIES AT IROQUOIS

Patrick Brady, Who Escaped Death in Famous Chatsworth Disaster

Watseka, Ill., Oct. 16. -- Patrick Brady, eccentric, and aged resident of Iroquois, died at his home Friday of old age. Mr. Brady was 97 years old and was one of the best known of the men of that locality. His burial took place Sunday at Gilman.  (I can't find his burial in my transcriptions of Gilman or Wenger Cemetery.  Maybe he was Catholic.)
Mr. Brady was one of the few survivors of the Chatsworth disaster, in which three hundred lives were lost when a bridge burned, causing a passenger train to be wrecked. "Pat," as he was familiarly known, narrowly escaped death, and received a fractured skull. His escape from death was due to the fact that he had just left the smoker when the accident occurred. Every person in the smoker was killed. Brady, not being addicted to tobacco, had gone outside to the platform and was sitting on the step when the crash came. He was pinned between the roof and the platform and received many bruises besides the fractured skull.

--The Loda Times.  20 October 1916.

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