horace holcomb died, too

A blogging friend recently asked me to check their facts in a Cap Garland blog. (I haven't left a comment yet, Mary; I will!) The De Smet newspaper archive doesn't include papers during the time Cap's death was surely reported, so there are fewer details about his death than one would expect.

Apparently Cap ran the "separator" part of a threshing machine rig for a man named Walter Holcomb. Mr. Holcomb was the engineer (not Cap). Mr. Holcomb found that he needed to be away from home for a few days, so his brother - a stranger in the county who was there on his wedding trip, having married the week before - offered to take his place on the rig. The steam engine wasn't in good repair and the safety valve was most likely out of commission at the time, but Mr. Holcomb was familiar with the machine and managed to keep it running.

In his absence, it was decided that Cap was more familiar with the machine than Mr. Holcomb's brother, Horace, so Cap would take the position as engineer, and Mr. Holcomb's brother would operate the separator.

A setting of grain was threshed at the E.E. Reeves farm and the rig was moved a mile and had just turned toward a setting of grain on the August Larson place (in the south part of 21-112-56, in the extreme northeast corner of Kingsbury County), when both ends of the boiler blew out. A team and wagon and men were standing 100 yards from the threshing rig when it exploded, and the front end of the boiler buried itself in the ground just in front of the team.

Cap Garland was standing just behind the boiler and he was blown over the top of the separator and landed in a field more than thirty feet away. Both legs were broken and he was horribly scalded, as there had been a full boiler of water at the time of the explosion. Cap was alive when picked up, and men hurried to bring his mother to the scene because they knew he wouldn't live long. Cap died a few hours later. It is not known if his mother reached him before his death; it would have been at least a 20-mile trip to bring her to the site from De Smet. Cap was buried in Willow Lake Cemetery in Clark County, South Dakota.

As sad as it was for Cap to have died in this tragic accident, your heart can't help but ache for the wife of Horace Holcomb, who became a widow on her honeymoon.
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:59 AM