Every gravestone has a story to tell, this one involves a railroad.
164 years ago the Scioto & Hocking Valley Railroad had been running trains between Portsmouth and Jackson, Ohio on what years later would be known as the B&O Railroads Portsmouth Branch. For almost 3 1/2 years trains ran having no accidents resulting in death to any of its employees, although there had been plenty of accidents and a few pedestrians killed. That record ended December 8, 1856 on a Monday afternoon around 4 o’clock. The down train was traveling south 3 miles below Jackson when the engineer, Richard Burnes, noticed a herd of sheep standing along the tracks with a few between the rails . He blew the whistle but they just stood still. As he approached them, he blew the locomotive’s whistle again to signal for “brakes down”, which is a long steady blast, and meant for the brakeman to tighten the brakes on each car so the train could come to a stop. At the same time, engineer Burnes reversed the locomotives drive wheels to help stop the train.
Reversing the locomotive and manual hand breaking were the only means to stop a train in this era well before air brakes but this effort was to no avail. As he approached the sheep, unable to stop the train quick enough, the whole herd of forty or more sheep suddenly ran upon the tracks as the locomotive began plowing through them. The cow catcher mounted on the front of the locomotive, designed to clear animals and people away from the front, was bent down from the force causing it to dig into the crossties and buckle under the pilot wheels lifting them off the tracks. The locomotive then left the rails and went over a bank with the tender, baggage car and mail express cars following behind it
. Samuel Sindon, age 32, a native of England, was the locomotives fireman and was instantly killed. The Railroads Initials are carved into his head stone marking the event of his death. Richard Burnes was slightly injured. James Riggs, the freight master and also the president of the railroad, was severely burned and taken to Samuel Bunn’s residence a short distance from the accident where he later passed away. It is not known if he was burned from being inside the locomotive cab when it wrecked or possibly from a heating stove that was in one of the cars he was riding in. From weather reports I have found during this time, it shows there was very frigid temperatures throughout the country. I’m sure the crew would have had the cast iron coal heating stoves in the cars as hot as they could to keep warm. Charles A.M. Damarin of Portsmouth, who was born in France in 1797 and came to this country in 1816, was the only passenger named in the newspaper article of the several passengers that received injuries. He had started as a well respected wholesale and retail grocery dealer, a bank founder and got into many business ventures in the region. He was elected director of the S&HV railroad from its first conception in 1849 and stayed on the board of directors in some form until his death in 1860. He had also started Hamden Iron Furnace in 1853 and owned hundreds of acres of mineral rich lands along the railroad and was known well as a business man.
The locomotive named “Vinton” was the engine involved in this tragic event. This engine had been running upon the S&HV rails since it had arrived in
—————,,
Portsmouth by canal boat on the Ohio & Erie Canal in December 1853. It was the third locomotive the S&HV owned and was the first brand new one they had purchased. It was built by Charles Cooper & Company of Mt. Vernon, Ohio. I will post more about the locomotive, the Vinton, in the comments below. I do not know of any Scioto & Hocking Valley Railroad photos that exist. The one I chose for this article is of a 1850’s era train and I’ll elaborate more on it in the comments as well. The S&HV RR started in 1849 and ran the first train in September 1852. They stayed in business until 1863 and was eventually taken over by the Marietta & Cincinnati RR and finally became part of the B&O Railroad.
Chad Fannin
Dec, 6 2020
Ref, The Jackson Standard Dec, 11th 1856 newspaper.
Ref, A History of Scioto County, Ohio, 1903.
C&O gained access to the Hocking Valley by building a new line directly from a point a few miles from its huge and growing terminal at Russell, KY to Columbus between 1917 and 1926. It crossed the Ohio River at Limeville, KY. to Sciotoville, Ohio, on the great Limeville or Sciotoville bridge which remains today the mightiest bridge every built from point of view of its load capacity. Truly a monument to engineering, but seldom commented on outside engineering circles because of its relatively remote location.
Charles E's space 