New paper clipping on William Gross's death, Edgerton, Kent County, Michigan

Copyright © 1998 by Dennis Zank. This copy contributed for use in 
the USGenWeb Archives.  

 

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September 13, 1923



WILLIAM GROSS AND MRS. RUTH ROSE VICTMS OF TRAGEDY NEAR EDGERTON

TWO BROTHERS ESCAPE WITH MINOR INJURIED

Family Employed in Rockford, Were on Way Home From Days Work – Drivers Says Curtains, 
Rain Obscured Vision.

	Father and daughter were carried to their deaths late yesterday in the debris of an 
automovile sewpt along on the pilot of a speeding passenger locomotive and two other mimbers of 
the family were injured in the same carsh on a Pennsylvania railroad corssing a short distance 
north of Edgerton, 17 miles north of Grand Rapids.

THE DEAD:
William Gross, 50, of Edgerton, Mrs. Ruth Rose, 21 of Edgerton.

THE INJURED:
Dale Gross, 16, left leg badly cut and head injured. Earl Gross, 18, face and right arm.

Five members of the Gross family, all employed by the Wolverine Shoe and Tanning corporation 
at Rockford, left Rockford homeward bound in an automotive recently purchased by Earl Gross, 
who was at the wheel. Just before reaching Edgerton one of the party, Ralph Gross, 19 recently 
married left the car to go to his new home nearby.

	As the car entered Edgarton, a sudden shower and a heavy wind set in. Earl Gross 
stopped to put up side curtains which may have benn a contributing cause to the tragedy, and then 
continued the trip to the home of the parents loceate about a mile north of the little town.

		Driver's View Obscured.

	Just north of Edgerton the road crosses the railroad tracks obliquely and as the car 
approched the crossing the rain was falling in torrents. From the north came the train its speed 
unchceked, Edgerton not being a regular stop. The driver, his view qbscured by curtains and trees 
along the right-of-way, did not see the train and the light auto was squarely upon the tracks when 
the train hit it.
	
	Engineer George Worden, 539 Jefferson Ave. SE., applied the brakes of the locomotive 
but the train with engines drivers locked, sped down the tracks with the automobile and its load of 
human freight trapped on the rails. When the train came to a stop with the locomotive alongside 
the Nichols general store in Edgerton, Mrs. Rose lay dead on top on the wreckage. William Gross, 
his skull crushed, was unconscious beside her. Earl Gross was clinging to the wrecked car, and his 
younger brother was grasping the engine pilot with one arm and had been nearly drawn beneath 
the wheels. The car had been dragged approximately 60 rods.

			Father Dies in Hospital.

	The young woman's body and the three injured were hurried to Grand Rapiss on the 
train. At the Union station, Lyzen's ambulance carried the father and sons to Butterworth hospital, 
where the elder Gross died shortly afterwards. The bodies of father and daughter were taken to the 
Hubard morgue at Rockford and Coroner Simeon LeRoy immediately started a probe of the crash.

At the hospital cognizant of his sister's death but not yet informed of the death of his father, Earl 
Gross driver on the ill-fated auto told of the crash.

	"I didn't see the train-never saw a thing." He faltered as a physician attempted to check 
the flow of blood from a lacerated arm. "I didn't know what happened until I saw the car all 
smashed up, at my side."

	The only witness to the accident is believed to be Mrs. Ralph Gross, 19, bride of a few 
months, and in charge of the Edgerton postoffice in the absence of her father, Warren Stanton.

	Hearing the train approach, she stepped upon the platform of the postoffice across the 
street of the general store as usual. Looking up the track she saw the train the instant it hit the 
automobile and, horror-stricken saw the crushed automobile with its maimed occupants carried 
toward her.

		Girl Gives First Aid

	The girl recognizing the injured person and fearing her own husband might have been in 
the car en route to his parents' home, was among those to give first aid. She telephoned for 
physicians but the train crew quickly extricated the four occupants of the car and by the time the 
train resumed its trip to the city, she was on board it with her young husband, whose act in leaving 
the car at his home before it reached Edgerton probably saved his life.

	Gross had lived in the vicinity of Rockford and Sparta for 20 years and with his three 
sons had been employed at her shoe and tanning plants formerly the Hirth-Krause properties. 
About two years ago, the eldest daughter, killed in the crash last night, married but a few months 
ago her husband disappeared. Her home life shattered she also had entered the employ of the 
company. A little daughter of Mrs. Rose, Betty Arlene, 10 months old is being cared for at the 
home of the grandmother.

	Mrs. Gross, a frail mother charged with the care of seven small children, was told last 
night of the daughters'' death, but neighbors decided to wait until today to inform her of the death 
of her husband. Beside the two sons injured in the wreck, there are surviving Harold, 13; Ruby, 
10; Evelyn, 8; Martha, 5; Georgette, 3, and Ester a baby of five months.






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