I Jumped the Tracks

(This post originally appeared on Elling Family News on May 9, 2009).



Never assume...

In an earlier post about the Elling immigrants coming to Henry County from Toledo, I stated that no trains were in the area at the time. But in thinking about the death of Henry Elling, Johann's Friedrich's son in a train accident...well, you have to have a train to have a train accident. They immigrated in 1859 and he died in 1862, so some railroad line had to be in the area. I had researched the B & O and some others, but should have read more. I was narrow-minded in my thinking, as I thought of trains moving from the east to the west.

BUT one railroad company of that time moved from west to east - The Wabash. In 1853, a railroad line was running from near Springfield, IL eastward just in Illinois and it was known as the Great Western Railroad. The folks in Indiana and Ohio were excited about the prospect of connecting the Great Lakes with the Mississippi River for economic purposes, and by 1852 the Lake Erie, Wabash and St. Louis Railroad had also been formed and would connect with that Illinois line going through Indiana into Ohio. By the summer of 1856, the Great Western and the Lake Erie, Wabash and St. Louis companies merged into the Toledo, Wabash and Western Railroad.

The Wabash Railroad History online states, "The Toledo, Wabash and Western, with lines running west and southwest from Toledo, enjoyed a better situation in 1859 than any other railroad in the area. The lines crossed Indiana and Illinois and connected the lake port of Toledo with the Mississippi River ports just above St. Louis and St. Charles."
http://home.comcast.net/~wabashrr/wabhist.html

The Henry and Fulton County history has several references to the Wabash line going through Napoleon. So now we have a train and an accident, but no details.

I'm going to have to find some newspaper with a report of Henry's accident and not too many have survived since 1862. I've checked Napoleon's papers with no luck, so next I'll try Defiance. Could Henry have left home at the young age of 16 to work for the railroad? It seems he might have been needed for farm work. Where did the accident occur? What happened?
The search goes on...