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Archiver > NJHUNTER > 2001-11 > 1006739789


From: "Dennis P. Sutton" <>
Subject: Re: [NJHUNTER] Hunterdon Dem/Rep newspaper lookup?
Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2001 20:56:29 -0500
In-Reply-To: <003c01c175fb$c0c40f00$0300a8c0@dad>


Jim,

Sorry messed up the attachment. Following is the extraction as
appeared in paper.



Hunterdon County Democrat, Flemington, N.J., May 22, 1888


DYNAMITE'S AWFUL WORK
-------------------
One Man Killed and Six Injured - A Dozen Houses Demolished and a Hundred
Others Wrecked - Many Miraculous Escapes.

Three hundred cans of blasting powder and two hundred and fifty dynamite
cartridges killed one man last Thursday morning, injured six others,
demolished a dozen buildings at Prallsville and more or less wrecked the
town of Stockton, this county, on the Belvidere division of the
Pennsylvania Railroad.
It was one of the most destructive explosions ever known in New
Jersey. James Wafer, the foreman of S. B. & E. W. Twinning's brownstone
quarries at Prallsville, a mile beyond Stockton, went into the power
magazine at twenty-five minutes past seven and told Assistant Foreman Peter
Hoffman that he was going to get a can of fine powder and that he would
have to move the cans of coarse powder in order to get at the fine powder,
which was on the bottom. Two minutes later there was a great cloud of
white smoke, a belch of fire fifty feet high and a noise like a hundred
thunderstorms.
The powder magazine, which was twelve feet square and ten feet high, was
shattered into toothpicks. Foreman Wafer's body was blown into a thousand
pieces. A hole ten feet deep and twelve feet square was all that was to be
seen where the magazine had stood. Fifty cart loads of dirt and rocks went
up with the little building. At the same time a dozen buildings within a
radius of a quarter of a mile were demolished. A barn north of the
magazine was blown out of sight and the hay and debris went up in a blaze
that only lasted a few minutes. The quarry blacksmith shop, a hundred
yards away, was torn to splinters and nothing was left to mark the spot
except two anvils and a bellows. The Philadelphia Times gives the
following account of
SOME MIRACULOUS ESCAPES.
James Dean and Thomas Lawler, blacksmiths, and Thomas Corcoran, a
stone-cutter, were at work in the blacksmith shop. They were blown about
fifty feet and picked up out of the debris. Corcoran's hands were badly
burned, and his face was cut and his right hip injured. Dean and Lawler
were bruised about the head and arms. James Brown, one of the engineers,
was running a derrick engine, five hundred yards to the south, down in an
excavation. He was picked up and blown over the roof of the engine shed
and landed on his head in a sandbank nearly fifty feet away. He was not
hurt. William Dilts, another engineer, who was running an engine a
thousand yards away, was taken up in the air and landed on a coal pile on
the other side of the engine shed. He had two ribs broken. John
McCloskey, another engineer, was carried fully a hundred feet, and found
himself when he became conscious, lying in an apple orchard to the west of
the magazine.
Thomas Smith, who lived in a big brown stone house, five hundred yards
away, was hurled around his sitting room. His wife and five children were
cut about the face and hands by flying dishes and broken window
panes. Guissepe Torrento, who lived across the road, with fifteen other
Italians, was blown out of his bed into the road and had his left cheek
cut. A turkey in a coop in Thomas Smith's yard was picked up in the
Delaware river half a mile to the south. Mrs. Cornelius Wilson, of
Stockton, was standing at her front gate and was knocked down by the
concussion. She may die from the shock, as she is quite old. All the
others will be all right in a few days.
A bucketful of pieces of Foreman Wafer's body were picked up, and
Undertaker Samuel Horner, of Stockton, took the pieces of bones to
Lambertville and buried them in the Catholic burying ground in the
afternoon. William Moody lived next to Thomas Smith. His red-hot kitchen
stove was hurled at Moody's little daughter and just grazed her head. The
three stone steps, each weighing about six hundred pounds, which led up to
the door of the powder magazine, were blown in three different
directions. One was found on the edge of the Delaware, half a mile
away. Another plowed through four fences, tore the porch away from John
Smith's house, and buried itself in a bank opposite Joseph Smith & Co.'s
flour mill. The sod that was torn up was thrown on top of a barn a hundred
feet farther ahead. Thomas Lenker was standing within two feet of where
the stone step buried itself. He was not hurt. The third step was carried
more than half a mile over a ravine and rammed into the side of a hill
three feet.
HOUSES BLOWN TO ATOMS
The floors in Thomas Smith's house were blown into splinters. The hall
floor on the first story was blown into the cellar. The dining room table
was smashed into a dozen pieces. There wasn't a whole piece of furniture
in the house a minute after the explosion. Every dish in the cupboard was
broken to bits. All the doors were torn off their hinges and the panels
smashed as if they were eggshells. Every window sash was shivered into
small fragments. The plaster on the walls and celling in the third story
was torn from the wall. Two bedsteads were reduced to the size of
laths. Bed clothes were torn into shreds. Up in the attic three trunks
had their lids torn off and the bodies of the trunks were split into
hundreds of splinters. The roof was riven in two and the slates on the
roof were cracked into pieces the size of oyster shells. The chimney was
reduced to a pile of brickbats out in the backyard. The back fence was
torn up posts and all and was carried down the street to Joseph Smith's
flour mill.
There was nothing left of William Moody's organ in the adjoining house
except the keys. The frame house occupied by the Italians was literally
driven down into the earth. A brown-stone store house, across from Thomas
Smith's house, was pulled apart, stone from stone, and crumbled into a pile
of debris. Joseph Smith & Co.'s flour mill was gutted. All the machinery
was damaged and every window sash and door was shattered into fragments. A
barn back of Thomas Smith's house was blown out of sight. Nothing could be
found of it except an old haycutter.
The quarry oil house, which was full of barrels of oil, was located in a
hollow two hundred years from the magazine. The barrels of oil flew
through the air in all directions and burst before they struck the ground,
showering torrents of oil over the mountain of brownstone which comprises
the biggest brownstone quarry in this part of the country and the biggest
quarry in New Jersey. The whole front of the double frame house half a
mile away, across the railroad, which was occupied by Osborn Lee and Thomas
Mays, was torn out.
DESTRUCTION DOWN IN THE TOWN
Down in the hollow, almost a mile from the quarry lies the little town of
Stockton, where the 700 inhabitants live in about a hundred pretty little
houses. All but about a dozen houses were damaged. Some of the houses
were left without windows, doors or shutters. On the main street some of
the houses were so badly wrecked that the people moved their furniture out
into the street and boarded up their houses and took refuge with their
neighbors. Charles French's big brick blacksmith shop, in the heart of the
village, was left without a single window sash. The streets were covered
with broken panes of glass, and men gathered up barrels and barrels of it
and left the barrels standing in the streets. C. D. Mason, the hardware
man of the town, went to Trenton and ordered three car loads of window
panes. It will take twenty-five men a month to put in new windows sash and
panes in all the houses.
When the explosion came women and children, some of them half naked, ran
through the streets shrieking and ringing their hands. In the quarry were
140 men working. Most of them are married and live in Stockton. The women
thinking that every man in the quarry had been killed ran up through the
town and on to the hill to the scene of the explosion, expecting to find
husbands, fathers, brothers, or sons blown to atoms. The village was
almost deserted until late in the afternoon. The women were afraid to go
back and enter their homes. Hundreds of broken dishes were thrown in piles
in the middle of the streets.
OVER IN BUCKS COUNTY
Across the Delaware, in Bucks County, Pa., nearly opposite the quarry,
about a mile away, is the little village of Centre Bridge. Half a dozen
houses were left without any window panes. Thomas Hendricks stood by and
saw his barn shattered into kindling wood. His place is more than a mile
from the quarry. Fletcher Scarborough was sitting on a herring box on the
river shore at New Hope, four miles away, and the box was knocked from
under him. Edward Tomlinson keeps the White Hall Hotel at Newtown, Bucks
county, 14 miles away. He states that the shock felt in Newtown made
dishes dance on the hotel tables. A window sash in Winner's grocery store,
in Lambertville, four miles off, was shattered into pieces. Joshua Pierce,
a manufacturer, of Bristol, 25 miles from Stockton, felt the shock while
eating his breakfast. The force of the explosion was felt all over Bucks
county. - Houses in Washington, N.J., New Brunswick, 36 miles away, and
in Milltown, Sayreville and other distant towns were shaken by the
explosion. The country within a radius of 40 miles was shaken by the
enormous force.
THE SUPPOSED CAUSE OF THE EXPLOSION
An agent of the Dupont Powder Works visited the quarry in the afternoon,
and told Stephen Twining that he thought Foreman Wafer must have spilled
some of the powder and ground it under the heel of his boot, and that it
ignited. Wafer had been used to handling powder for 20 years. His
moustache and upper lip were found in the afternoon in an apple orchard 500
yards from where he was blown up. A piece of one of his thigh-bones was
picked up near by. He carried all his money with him. He had saved
several hundred dollars. All that was found was a ten-cent piece picked up
by Quarryman Dennis Devinny.
Foreman Wafer was 40 years old, a quiet, industrious man, well liked by all
the people in the village. He was to have been married this Thursday in
Lambertville by Father Brady, the Catholic priest of the place, to Minnie
Murray, a pretty, rosy-cheeked girl, not yet out of her teens. The other
day Wafer bought the wedding ring and took it to his sweetheart's house on
Cottage Hill, just out of Lambertville. It did not fit her finger and he
was going to have it changed. He had it on his hand when he was blown
up. The ring was found and identified down in Stockton, three quarters of
a mile away, by Butcher Williams.
THE CROWDS AT THE QUARRY
There were never so many strangers in Stockton before. Hockenbury's hotel
was crowded until late in the day. The town was eaten out of provisions
before 6 o'clock. The strangers walked through the two principal streets
and entered the shattered houses and walked about through the rooms to see
the extent of the damage. The damage to property will foot up $50,000,
counting the losses at the quarry. New buildings will be erected there at
once. Each of the 300 cans of powder weighed 25 pounds and the two boxes
of dynamite cartridges weighed 105 pounds. There was enough powder and
dynamite to blow up a thousand tons of solid rock.


Dennis




At 01:52 PM 11/25/2001 -0800, you wrote:
>Hello List,
>
>I'm searching for information about a quarry explosion that occurred in
>Prallsville in May 1888. I'd like to find any newspaper articles about the
>explosion, and they should be in the May-Jun issues of the Hunterdon
>Democrat or Hunterdon Republican. My local library cannot find any library
>to lend me microfilmed copies of the newspapers. Can anyone help me with a
>lookup?
>
>Thanks,
>Jim
>
>
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