Jones - Grace - Montgomery InGenWeb Project

Source: Crawfordsville Weekly Journal, 8 September 1899

Little Gracie Jones, the 12-year-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James Jones, was struck and instantly killed. A JOURNAL representative called at the Jones home in Fiskville in the evening and from Mrs. Jones obtained the following account of the accident: "It was some time after 3 o'clock when that hardest shower of the afternoon came up that the accident happened. I was. sitting at the back door of the house with Gracie and my other children, Agnes, Howard, and Mary, and little Edgar Hampton, a neighbor's boy. In front of our house is an electric light and there is a stay wire for the pole that runs from the pole over our summer kitchen, touching the roof of the kitchen as it goes over. This kitchen is separate from the house, but is connected with it by a grape arbor. Well, we were all sitting there and when the rain began to fall in torrents Gracie stooped over to pick up a tin bucket on the steps to catch the water that was falling from the eaves trough. As she stooped there was a terrific crash of lightning, that hardest crash of the day. At the instant of it I saw the ball of fire leap from the wire to the arbor and from the arbor to the child's face.

There was a sharp report and the poor little one fell forward to the ground. For a moment I was stunned, whether by the lightning or by the horror of what I saw I cannot say, but it was only for a moment. I sprang forward and raised my darling up, exclaiming, 'My God! Gracie, speak to me!' But I saw at once that she never would. Her eyes were set in death and I realized that she was gone forever. The poor child never knew what hurt her. The other children were not even shocked, except the little Hampton boy, who says that he felt the lightning bite the end of his tongue. This seems remarkable to me, as we were in a semicircle about Gracie, I may say. She was not two feet from me when she was struck. The ball of fire seemed as big as a hen's egg and I saw it distinctly as it came, although it moved with incredible swiftness, and the whole thing happened in less than a second. Gracie was 12 years old in December and was a bright and loving child."

The little child was not disfigured by the cruel bolt that took her life, although the skull was crushed. The wound was a. small one and scarcely showed. The bolt originally struck the electric light pole and the lamp was torn to bits. The same bolt or one that struck simultaneously with it, played a peculiar freak at ,the home of Jesse Morrison, just across, the street from the Jones place. Mrs. Morrison, seeing the storm coming up, went up stairs and closed the window, going down stairs at once. The next thing she remembers is becoming conscious in the evening to find herself in bed and surrounded by anxious relatives and neighbors, with Doctors Barcus and Chambers working away on her to bring her around. She had scarcely reached the bottom of the stairs when the house was struck. The upstairs room she had just left was reduced to ruins. A feather bed was torn to bits and.every tack in the carpet was neatly extracted and piled about promiscuously on the floor. Everything was turned topsy-turvy. How the bolt got into the.room is a mystery, and how Mrs. Morrison got the shock down stairs is hard to solve, for her little son at her side was unhurt and able to run to the home of Mrs Belle Elliott, next door, and give the alarm. A telephone wire runs through the Morrison yard and the lightning probably came from this, although the house is not at all shattered, whereas the Jones summer kitchen is badly torn and twisted. The funeral of Grace Jones occurred Thursday afternoon at 4 o'clock from the residence. The interment was at at Oak Hill.- thanks so much to Kim H for this interesting yet very sad piece :( :)

       

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