Mason - Thomas - 1902 - Montgomery InGenWeb Project

Thomas Mason, the thirteen year old son of D. Mason, of Linden, met death Sunday morning by drowning in an old gravel pit on the Boots farm about ten miles north of this city. Together with two other boys he went to the pit, which is quite large and which has become filled with water, making a large artificial pond. The water is in some places twenty five feet deep and young Mason could not swim. These two facts account for the boy’s death. With an air of bravado, he stripped off and told his two companions to watch him make a dive. He stepped back about ten feet and took a running jump, landing where the water was deepest. He never came up and his body was not recovered until last Sunday afternoon. The boy had been living the last two years with his uncle Frank Mason and he with the other neighborhood boys were in the habit of playing around the pit and had frequently been warned to stay out of the water because of its depth, but the warning was not heeded in time. The funeral occurred Monday at Linden at 3 p.m. -s