DISTRESSINGLY SAD.
A Woman and Child Burned to Death in A Prairie Fire.
One of the most distressingly sad cases of death that ever occurred in this section is that of Mrs. Schroeder and little child who perished in a prairie fire about twenty miles north of this city Tuesday afternoon. The family are well known in town having lived on Second Avenue north for a year or more in a comfortable house which they still own and into which they intended soon to move for the winter so that the children could attend school.
The particulars of the sad affair are as follows, as related to us by the eldest son, a young man about 21 years of age: He and his father, Carl Schroeder, were about four miles from home threshing, they owning and running a thresher, when the fire was discovered coming towards their house and wheat stacks. The father told the young man to take a horse and ride over home and see to guarding the stacks against the fire. When he arrived the fire was very near to the stacks and he found his mother and four children out beating back the flames. The heat was so intense that the young man told his mother and the smaller children to go to another point where the heat was not so great. This they did but were soon compelled to seek refuge from the flames. One boy succeeded in reaching the plowed ground, two of the other children, a girl and boy, ran into a pond of water near by and by ducking themselves in the water counteracted the heat and prevented their clothing from taking fire. The mother with the youngest child, about three years old, succeeded in getting behind the fire on the ground just burned over, but were strangled by the dense smoke that arose from the smoldering ashes, fell exhausted and perished, the child in its mothers arms, their clothing taking fire and burning on their bodies.
The bodies of the unfortunate victims were brought into the city yesterday evening to their former place of residence on Second Avenue from which the sad funeral will take place this afternoon and burial at Highland Home cemetery. Mrs. Schoeder's age was about 42 years. The children that escaped with their lives are more or less scorched but not dangerously injured.
The fire, after burning Mr. Schroeder's wheat and oats stacks swept along toward where they were threshing, consuming the thresher and wheat, the horses and mules to the horse power being saved by being cut loose and turned out to take care of themselves. Mr. Schoeder's {sp} house escaped destruction.
Jamestown Weekly Alert, 10/23/1884
