Inklings of Truth

 

Of Wrecks and Reckonings

By Audrey Stallsmith

What would compel the so-called “wealthiest man in Cleveland” to go into his bathroom one May afternoon in 1883, lock the door, and shoot himself? Some think that was just the final death caused by the Ashtabula River Horror.

An appropriate name for the collapse of a railroad bridge into a 76-foot ravine, that wreck of the Pacific Express killed approximately 92 people on December 29, 1876. A few years ago, our local PBS station announced that they planned to air a documentary on that disaster. The subject interested both Dad and me as many of my late mother’s family live in that area of eastern Ohio.

We also knew that the famous hymnwriter Philip Bliss had died in that crash, along with his wife, when he was on his way home to Chicago to help in one of D. L. Moody’s meetings. (That might be considered the opposite of a miracle as he actually wasn’t supposed to be on the Pacific Express and had only taken that train after he missed another one.) Since he resided in Crawford County here in western PA for a couple years when a child, he was something of a local boy.

Also, when I was in the process of writing a newspaper article on a nearby cemetery for freed slaves, I learned that the town closest to that cemetery had not been named for the ex-slave who established it—as it should have been. Instead, after most of the freed slaves fled to Canada due to the Fugitive Slave Act, it was named for the railroad executive often held responsible for the Ashtabula Horror, Amasa Stone. It was he who eventually would commit suicide in his bathroom.

So, Dad and I looked forward to seeing whether the documentary would provide any answers. Unfortunately, Covid then set in, and it took longer for PBS to make the movie than was originally planned.

However, we were eventually able to view it. According to that film, Stone’s original designer had resigned rather than complete plans for the bridge because he thought an all iron structure wasn’t safe for a span that long. Apparently a railroad bridge should have some give in it, which wooden beams provide.

But Stone was, from all accounts, about as inflexible as the iron in that bridge. Still, inspectors would have had to sign off on it, and it apparently did hold up for eleven years. But there was a blizzard on the night of the disaster so severe that there were two engines pulling the train, one of which actually made it to the other side of the bridge.

However, in a story involving a hymn writer who dies in his 30s, leaving two young children behind, we must have a villain. And a railroad baron will serve nicely.

There were others besides Stone who didn’t come off looking well, including the fire chief who failed to fight the flames which had already pretty much engulfed the railroad cars by the time he and his men arrived. However, apparently the only way to descend into the ravine was via a steep staircase which led to a water plant below, so getting horse-drawn pumpers down that slope during a blizzard would have been hazardous at best.

And Charles Collins, a railroad construction engineer, would be found dead of a gunshot wound to the head not long after the accident. Although not involved in the original construction of the bridge, he had at one point recommended turning of the I-beams which had been installed incorrectly. And that change required other changes which may have weakened the structure.

His office also was responsible for inspecting railroad bridges, including the Ashtabula one. So, since he had been distraught over the accident, people assumed his death to be suicide. However, an autopsy on Collins’ skull conducted later by a New York expert would call that demise murder.

But Stone’s death apparently was indisputably suicide and happened seven years after the Horror. Since he was experiencing both financial and health problems—such as painful ulcers and chronic insomnia, we don’t know whether a sense of guilt was a factor. He and Collins had been found to be partly responsible for the bridge collapse, though the actual problem proved to be a hidden air hole in the iron which eventually caused the shearing off of a lug.

However, everyone suspected that if the bridge had been better constructed to begin with the loss of one lug wouldn’t have caused it all to come tumbling down. Also, Stone had chosen to disregard a law which required self-extinguishing stoves in railroad cars.

Considering that one spunky and apparently strong young woman did succeed in pulling many of the wounded passengers out of her car, we have to conclude that the crash itself wasn’t necessarily fatal. So, prevention of the fires probably could have saved more lives.

When considering what might have been, we also have to wonder what other songs Bliss could have come up with if he had lived. Recently, when reading some of the stories behind famous hymns, I ran across the fact that his “Let the Lower Lights Be Burning” supposedly was written in response to a shipwreck that took place near Cleveland Harbor. A lower navigation light which had to be aligned with the upper one for safe passage wasn’t burning that night.

However, Google’s AI politely informed me that the supposed shipwreck probably was just one of the stories Moody told during his campaigns to illustrate a point. But Bliss’s name would come up again, connected to yet another wreck, that of the Titanic.

No, he didn’t write “Nearer My God to Thee.” But passengers in the lifeboats were supposedly encouraged to sing his hymn “Pull for the Shore,” perhaps to distract them from the fact that the earthly shore was very far away. Not to mention that he composed the music, but not the words, for “It Is Well with My Soul,” written after the poet’s daughters perished in a shipwreck.

All of Bliss’s connections with ships make it ironic that he died in a train accident instead. But he had abandoned a lucrative career in the music business to sing at revival meetings, so I’m thinking he had little to regret at his death.

It appears to have been the seemingly successful Stone who actually crashed in the end. I’m guessing that his suicide may have been due to an accumulation of factors, including financial problems, poor health, and the fact that his only son had died in a swimming accident years earlier. But the question of whether or not he really was responsible for the loss of so many lives could well have haunted him and perhaps raised depression to despair, i.e. loss of hope.

Despair is one of Satan’s favorite tools and all the accusing voices in Stone’s head may well have left him longing for silence. Or, as with his bridge, it could have been a very small thing that precipitated his final collapse, which may not have happened if he had been building his life with better materials.

Although he was a churchman and philanthropist, I’m afraid he may have failed to fully realize that God loves us anyway. So, He will forgive us if we are truly sorry, no matter how many questionable decisions and deaths we may be responsible for. That is what Brennan Manning calls The Ragamuffin Gospel, that all of us are poor in God’s eyes but loved and adopted anyway when we allow ourselves to be.

At a funeral for all of the unidentified victims, the choir sang two of Bliss’s hymns: “We Are Going Home Tomorrow,” for which he had written only the music, and “There Is Light in the Valley” for which he wrote both words and melody. The lyrics of “I Will Sing of My Redeemer” were found in his trunk and set to music by another composer. Bliss had spent a good percentage of his life doing just that.

He had been a literal ragamuffin, after all, who once crept into a lady’s elegant parlor to hear her play the piano. Her reaction was to snap at him, “Get out of here with your big, bare feet!” But he received a much warmer welcome from the Lord of the Universe, which provided him plenty to sing about.