OBIT: William PRUNER, 1859, Blair County, PA

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DISTRESSING ACCIDENT. - William Pruner, a citizen of this place, lost
his life on Friday of last week, by an accident so strangely sudden
and frightful as to startle the whole community, causing a general
silent pang of grief. He left home in the morning coach for Bald Eagle
Furnace - left full of youth, bright hope and jubilant joy. Playfully
bidding his wife "good-bye" as the stage rolled away, with the remark
that he would not be back for two weeks, he took his last stage ride,
thinking not, nor once dreaming of harm or ill. To make the sad and
fatal reverse which awaited him, still more terrible by contrast, he
was in an unusually humorous and pleasant mood all the way going out
to his destination, and all the time preceding the accident - so much
so, indeed, that it was remarked by his companions. Having despatched
his business at Bald Eagle Furnace, his first thought was to walk back
to town; but, seeing an acquaintance going by with a wagon-load of
shingles, he engaged a seat for himself and two companions. He took a
seat on the fore end of the load of shingles, with his feet hanging
down, whilst his friends sat at the side. The wagon had not gone more
than a hundred yards, when, moving slowly, and without any apparent or
sensible jolt, the shingles on which he was sitting gave way; having
no foothold, he fell to the ground, and, before he was observed by the
driver, the front wheel passed over his body! One of his companions
saw him fall, and immediately shouted to the driver, but not in time
to have the wagon stopped. He was carried to a house near by; medical
aid was procured, and every attention shown which kindness and
inexpressible pity could suggest. But human aid was in vain. Death had
already set his inevitable seal upon his brow; death glared? From his
eye; friendship and affection softly pillowing and bolstering his
return home could not save him; and when the darkness of evening began
to gather, he was passing through "the valley of the shadow of death."
His physical sufferings were necessarily beyond expression - beyond
possible conception; made doubly acute, too, by the fact that he was
fully sensible until within a short time of his dissolution. It's a
kind of mournful solace to know that he bore his extreme sufferings
with heroic fortitude, uttering no word of complaint or repining. The
few words he spoke disclosed a distinct knowledge of his approaching
death. His solicitude seemed to be not for himself; but the thought of
his dear wife and infant child seemed to snap his very heart-strings.
She mourned as only a young wife can mourn - with a deep, wild,
despairing, inconsolable grief. - Tyrone Star.

Altoona Tribune, Altoona, Pa., Thursday, August 18, 1859, page 3