HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY                  383

fragments in various directions to the distance of several hundred feet.
The mill had not been operated for some time and was started up on
that day. That there were no fatalities nor personal injuries attending
the disaster was owing to the absence of the employes at the dinner table
at the time.
    The Rose-Bud Mine explosion, at Seeleyville, took place on Thurs-
day, December 5, 1906, in which a number of Brazil, Harmony, Knights-
ville and Donaldsonville miners were injured.
    Three terrific and fatal powder explosions occurred in the year 1907,
not within the territory of Clay county, but so closely upon our borders
that the several shocks and reports were so perceptibly felt and heard as
to be ever memorable to our population:
    The Big Four Railroad explosion, at Sanford, Illinois, Saturday
night, January 19, when twenty-three were reported killed and thirty
injured.
    The powder-mill explosion, at Fontanet, between 3 and 4 o’clock
p. m., Tuesday, January 29, when Jacob Garner and Max Burnett,
employes, were killed.
    The powder-mill explosion, at Fontanet, Tuesday, October 15, when
many buildiiigs were wrecked, including the school-house, twenty-six
fatalities and many serious injuries reported, one of the most disastrous
explosions in the history of the country.
    A doubly fatal boiler explosion took place at the electric light plant,
Clay City, between the hours of 8 and 9 o’clock, Tuesday morning, May
21, 1907, of which Ralph Travis, the seventeen-year-old son of Jacob H.
Travis; who was the fireman on duty, and John Swinger were the victims.
Young Travis was sitting in the front door of the engine room and
Swinger on the outside shoveling a load of cinders into his wagon-bed
when the explosion took place. The boiler was riven into pieces and
hurled about and the building practically demolished, killing Travis
instantly, whose badly mangled body was hidden beneath the wreckage.
Swinger recovered consciousness and spoke a few words, when he was
carried to his home, where he expired an hour later. One of the horses
was killed, the other uninjured.
    On the morning of the 26th day of March, 1908, at the hour of 4
o’clock, the people of Center Point were awakened and shocked by an
explosion of dynamite within the business district of the town, of which
the damages inflicted were soon located at the Mader building, on West
Main street, the west room of which was occupied by Julian Ury’s drug-
store, the east room by Adam Mader’s shoe-shop. The explosive had been
placed under the floor from the west side, two or three feet back of the
ground-sill, the force of which blew up a section of the floor and tumbled
down a quantity of drugs, broken bottles, packages, etc., in a promiscuous
blending. Damage was done in other parts of the room by fragments of
the broken flooring being forced in all directions. In the shoe-shop, on
the east side, not much damage was done aside from the breaking of a
sewing-machine, upsetting the stove and throwing things into confusion.
On the upper floor, occupied as a lodge room, but very little damage
resulted. The plate window glasses in front were very badly shattered.
Who perpetrated the deed is unknown.
    As the result of a boiler explosion at Niblock, Zimmerman &
Alexander’s Coal Brook Mine No. 3, Thursday, May 10, 1877, W. Steven-
son, John Wright, Thomas Graham, John Graham, Con Coakerly, J.