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<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>
nw-mailing-list-bounces@nwhs.org [mailto:nw-mailing-list-bounces@nwhs.org] <b>On
Behalf Of </b>NW Mailing List<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, December 23, 2009 8:45 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> 3N&W Mailing List<br>
<b>Subject:</b> N&W in 1910--Fatality<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tunga'>Bluefield
Daily Telegraph<br>
July 12, 1910</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span
style='font-size:13.5pt'>THE GRAHAM DAILY NEWS</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'>------<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal> The thirteen-year-old son of Chas. Gray,
colored, of east Graham, was run over by a freight train west of Graham and his
body terribly mangled under the wheels. The boy was on his way to Falls
Mills, where his father was employed at the stone quarry of the Walton Company,
when he met his death. It is presumed the lad had stepped from the
westbound track to allow a westbound train to pass, only to step in front of an
eastbound train. The body was taken in charge by the section gang and as
soon as his identity became known his father was notified of the accident and
came home and conveyed the remains to his home. Interment will take place
today in the colored cemetery in west Graham.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>Well, not so surprising! Funeral Homes (as we know them now) are
a relatively late invention. And I suppose there wasn’t that much help
and time available in emergency rooms just to pronounce somebody dead. Quite
frequently, families prepared the body for burial, and sometimes even made the
coffin themselves. I would think this was particularly common among poor
colored families. Later on, funeral homes got legislation passed requiring
embalming, and even where that was not the law, they made people think it was
required, just to get the business. Jim Nichols<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'>------<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>[<em>It is surprising how many articles of that era in the
Bluefield newspapers reported that people were killed by stepping out of the
way of one train only to step in front of another on the double track.
Also, to us today it is hard to imagine how common it was for a body to be
taken directly to the deceased's home, but that was often done according to
many of the newspaper articles of that time.</em>]<em> </em><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><em><span style='font-size:24.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>Gordon
Hamilton</span></em><o:p></o:p></p>
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