Terrible Accident

Correspondence of the State Register.

WEBSTER CITY, April 24.

ED. REGISTER:– A shocking accident occurred about one o’clock today at the crossing on Boone River, near Hook’s point, in the South part of this county resulting in the death of three persons – the wife, child and mother of Capt. Charles A. Sherman, of Fort Dodge! Owing to the high water, the stage passengers and mails have been taken across the river – ordinarily fordable – in a skiff, a team and hack being always in readiness on the side of the river opposite from which they arrive. These ladies and child of the youngest, were en route for home, having left Des Moines in Wednesday morning’s stage. A young man at the crossing undertook to convey them over the river in a skiff, together with their baggage and the mails. The skiff was rather heavily loaded, and was considerably “top heavy.” Upon striking the swift current one of the oars struck some brush or other impediment in the river, causing the boat to tip down so as to take in water, and at the same time one of the mail sacks slid into the river. The boy in his efforts to save the mail-bag tipped the boat so that it filled and sunk, probably striking a concealed snag in the swift current at the instant his effort to recover the sack. The boy succeeded in reaching the shore but the two unfortunate ladies and the child were drowned in a few moments. One of the drivers was unable to swim, with the other swam out into the river, but was unable to render any assistance. One of the ladies swam down with the current several rods, and had sufficient presence of mind to call to the driver on the right bank, asking him if he could swim.

The eldest lady was the wife of S. M. Sherman, Esq., Postmaster at Fort Dodge. The party were returning from the East, where they had spent the winter. Chas. A. Sherman, former Postmaster at Fort Dodge, left home last fall, a private in the company of Capt. Stratton, which joined an independent regiment from Pa., and has been for some months at Fortress Monroe. He has just been appointed Commissary of Subsistence, with the rank of Captain, and is now performing the duties of his position somewhere in Eastern Virginia. No persons in Northwestern Iowa are more widely known, or more highly respected than the families of the deceased, and the blow will fall with heart-sickening effect upon a wide circle of relatives and friends. Capt. Sherman has always from a boy been noted for his extraordinary reverence for his mother – a lady whose intelligence and amiability of character made her a distinguished ornament of the society in which she lived – but their present cruel fate has deprived him at once of wife, mother and only child. God pity him in this hour of almost unparalleled bereavement and affliction!

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 3, 1862, p. 3