INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS -- Boiler explosion – Frenchtown's Sunbeam Lenape Park was the site of Jacob White's steam-powered sawmill when, on April 2, 1879, a boiler blew up, blasting to bits the building that housed it. Pieces of brick, slate and wood rained down as far away as Fifth Street and Milford Road.
Engineer Robert Swick was killed, and three co-workers were injured: Charles White, Henry G. Sigafoos and Simpson Lyons. Clarence Fargo wrote: “Mr. Swick's head was entirely blown away; only the skin of his face remaining; one arm was blown off, and not a whole bone remained in his body, and not a stitch of clothing remained excepting one sock.”
Swick and his wife, Rebecca, had five children – Martin, Charles, John, Jane and Isaac W. “Brice,” ranging in age from about 12 to 25. (Brice would grow up to be a harness maker at the Britton Brothers' Big Brick Store, a musician in the Frenchtown Cornet Band, and fire chief in 1906.)
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George W. Hummer (1908-1990) had his own personal museum in his basement. One day around 1980, he showed Sarge Russell his prize exhibit.
It was a splinter about 28 inches long, less than an inch in diameter at its big end and sharp as a needle at the other. It was made of a hard, smooth-grained wood, possibly oak. Hummer said that his grandfather, also named George Washington Hummer, had been on the second story of the big brick building at 10 Bridge Street, sitting in a chair and about to eat an apple, when the boiler exploded across the street.
This splinter shot like an arrow across the intervening 200 feet, through the open window, and took the apple right out of his hand. The withered, yellow-brown apple, about 2 inches in diameter, was still skewered on the sharp end of the splinter.
What was Hummer doing there? Why was the window open on April 2? How unlikely would if be for the splinter to hit the apple without hitting the hand? And the steam engine would've had to be very close to Bridge Street in order to have a clear shot at 10 Bridge Street, without the Railroad House (Frenchtown Inn) getting in the way.
Russell is no pushover in the credulity department, and he believes that Hummer was sincere, which could mean that the story was true or – way more likely – that Grandpa was putting him on. But at the very least it is a genuine story.
From "Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia"
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