Mount Union borough, Huntingdon borough

The March 1853 Wreck at Newton Hamilton

On the night of Thursday, March 3, 1853, an eastbound freight on the Pennsylvania Railroad, with emigrant cars attached, stopped in a deep cut near Newton Hamilton when its engine gave out. The Huntingdon Journal described it as the train that passed through town about two hours ahead of the passenger train. The papers did not agree on just where it stopped. The Journal said "this side of Newton Hamilton," the Harrisburg Item said the big cut above the town, the Juniata Sentinel said a short distance below it, and the Pittsburgh Gazette said near Newton Hamilton, in Mifflin County. The Item first said the freight had run out of fuel, then said the trouble was not fuel but a burst boiler flue. The Gazette also reported a collapsed flue.

Someone went back along the track to stop the passenger train coming behind, and the reports that tell this part say whoever went fell asleep. They differ on who and where. The Journal said two persons stepped into a house to wait beside a warm stove, without setting their red lamps on the track, and woke too late, when they heard the passenger train go by. The Item said the conductor took the lantern, walked as far as the bridge below Mount Union, sat down in the cabin and fell asleep. The Juniata Sentinel said a light went back, the passenger train happened to be more than an hour behind time, and the conductor went into the watch house to wait and fell asleep there. The Gazette said a messenger lay down on the road, and a Philadelphia report said a man sat down in a shanty.

The passenger train came on at full speed, thirty miles an hour by the Item's figure, and ran into the emigrant cars. The Item said the first car was broken to pieces and the second was lifted onto the top of the engine. The Gazette said the boiler's steam passages were torn off and scalding steam poured in on the passengers.

The papers gave different death tolls. The Gazette of March 8 said four passengers were killed. The Item of March 5 said two were killed outright and five more scalded past recovery, and later added that nine of the injured had died. By March 7 it was writing that it could hardly get at the truth, that the road's agents kept a close mouth, and that a conductor on the line counted four: a very young child, its mother and two men. A Philadelphia report of March 6 said four emigrants were killed at once, two more had died since and two were not expected to live. The Journal said five or six on March 9. The Juniata Sentinel said seven on March 10, with the remaining two not expected to live. A Journal editorial of March 23 described a passenger train running into a freight near Newton Hamilton, which it said happened "only a few days ago," and put the loss at eight lives, with others expected to die. The Item and the Sentinel both said nine people were in the car lifted onto the engine.

The Item said most of the nine in the car were drovers tending horses and hogs on the train. It could not learn the names of the dead, but believed they were all emigrants, the two men German and the woman and child Irish.

The Journal blamed "the most culpable negligence on the part of Railroad agents" and said there ought to be some hanging done, according to law. The Item blamed the conductor, who it said was an hour ahead of the passenger train's time and had ample time to stop it, and reported that he had been arrested and committed to jail. The Juniata Sentinel said a coroner's jury had brought in a verdict of manslaughter against him.

A second collision was reported that week. The Journal said that on Saturday, March 5, in broad daylight, two freight trains met about two and a half miles "below town," and that it was told another train behind ran into them, with a general smash-up of cars and engines and nobody hurt. The Juniata Sentinel also said Saturday, near Huntingdon, with no loss of life. The Mountain Sentinel of Ebensburg said near Huntingdon, on "Friday week," with no one injured. The Philadelphia report, naming no place, said two persons were reported killed in another collision between two freight trains.

Checked against the record. Checked against eight pages of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive, read from the page scans and listed below. The date of March 3 comes from the papers' "Thursday night" and the calendar. We saw the Harrisburg Item only as reprinted in Lancaster and Pittsburgh, and the Juniata Sentinel only as reprinted in Carlisle. One line of the Carlisle page is cut off in the scan, so we do not say who carried the light back. We found no list of the dead, so the story gives each paper's count and does not choose one. Still open: we did not see the coroner's record or learn how the charge against the conductor ended. The Journal's March 23 editorial says the accident came "only a few days ago," about twenty days after March 3, and gives no date. We take it to be this collision because it describes a passenger train running into a freight in the same place, and the other papers on our list describe no second such collision there. That is an inference, so the eight-life figure is attributed to the Journal and not treated as settled.

Sources

Checked 2026-11-01 · Primary sources and the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive

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