Warning: Might be uncomfortably graphic. Describes an accidental death. 

This MBOB describes a part of my husband’s heritage and is shared with his permission.
The physical context is his childhood surroundings. The river mentioned is where he fished as a young boy. The house described is the one in which his father was born, and is the house in which he grew up.
I find it a poignant representation of what life and death was like – back in the day. This article was published on September 22, 1892 in the hometown paper and presents aspects of community, pioneer life, and journalism of the times.

Gundar…..Pitched from His Wagon and Killed

Although the story is graphic I am glad to have found it in the local museum a few years back and to have what it represents of my husband’s mailboxes and old barns.
The writing is characteristic of newspaper reports and obituaries of the time – very colorful in terms of reporting events and describing folks they respected.
It was not even unusual for family members to take formal photographs of the deceased in the coffin during those years so plain talk about the manner of their death in the course of daily events was considered neither offensive or macabre. The photos were taken because they wanted to remember them and the blunt reports of death were a simple documentation of the facts, and became part of the family’s history and memories.

Tuesday afternoon, Gundar ….. a respected citizen of the town, came to his death in a singular and shocking manner. He started to drive to town during the afternoon. Just after reaching the road near his residence on Section 28, he met a neighbor and stopped to talk.
The neighbor drove on after a short conversation but presently, heard a rattling behind him and looking back saw Gundar’s team galloping madly up a hill with the empty wagon behimd them. Hills blocked him from seeing what was going on in the valley below. He quickly drove back and found Gundar hanging by one foot, head down, from one of the outside girders or braces of the new iron bridge which spans the river at that point.
One of Gundar’s daughters arrived at the place soon after. More help was obtained and the unfortunate man was taken from his terrible position and cared for as well as possible, but he died within an hour or two, before a surgeon could be brought to the spot. His arm was smashed at the elbow and broken in several places; there were many bruises on his body, and his temple had received a terrible blow, the concussion from which probably caused his death.
It is supposed that one of Gundar’s reins got under the whiffletree, and that when he started up after his talk with his neighbor his horses, which were young and and spirited, got away from him and ran down the steep hill leading to the new bridge. The wheel tracks show that one of the front wheel hubs must have struck the iron framework of the bridge.
The shock evidently pitched Gundar out against the iron work from which he fell head first but was prevented from dropping into the water by one of his feet catching between two of the iron rods where they come together in a V shape. There he hung until rescued.
He must have been knocked insensible before he caught in the position where he was found, and he never regained his senses sufficiently to explain how the accident happened.
The team ran away and was not recovered for several hours. The rattle of the wagon’s passage across the bridge and up the hill made Mrs. Gundar suspect that something was wrong, and she sent her daughter to see what it was. The girl found the lifeless body of her father who had left home only a few moments before in full health.
Mr. Gundar was one of the old settlers of the town, a sober, industrious, intelligent farmer who has acquired a competence by hard work and economy. He was about 60 years old.
He leaves a wife and large family of children, several of them grown up. Everyone will sympathize with them sincerely.

Many deaths of the time were unattended. Many were unexpected, although a high number of deaths from disease were both expected and accepted since there was little to be done to prevent them. This man was buried in the family burial plot a mile up the road from the farm in the church yard where the entire family line continued to be active members until the church burned to the ground in the 1970s.

They celebrated life, worked hard and trusted God for outcomes, whether temporal or eternal.