OBIT: Nancy RHODES, 1886, Taylor Township, Blair County, PA

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A TERRIBLE ACCIDENT.
Burned to Death by the Accidental Upsetting of a Lamp.

  Our Roaring Spring correspondent sends in the following account of an 
awful accident which occurred near that place.
  Mrs. Nancy Rhodes, a widow, who resides on Plum Creek, about two 
miles east of Roaring Spring, was sitting in her house about 10 o'clock 
Wednesday night engaged in knitting.  By some means she accidently 
overturned a coal oil lamp, which in its fall, struck the stove and was 
broken.  Fire communicated to the oil stove and the burning fluid 
saturated her clothing, which were almost instantly a mass of flames.  
She made a heroic effort to extinguish the fire but was unsuccessful, 
when she called for her children, three little girls, who had retired 
for the night.  Fearing that her home would take fire, she ran out and 
screamed for help.  Shortly after she was found by her eldest daughter 
in the yard and enveloped in flames.  The girl endeavored to wrap a 
blanket about her mother's burning body to extinguish the fire.  Her 
brother, Henry G. Rhodes, who lives about a quarter of a mile distant, 
happened to be at his barn and hearing the screams of the mother and 
daughter, ran to the rescue.  He found Mrs. Rhodes lying near the house 
in a helpless condition, and carrying her in sent for her physician, 
Dr. A. A. Stayer.  The doctor found that her injuries were necessarily 
fatal.  With the exception of her face her body was burned to a crisp.  
All that was possible was done to ease her sufferings and about five 
hours after the accident she breathed her last.  She was perfectly 
conscious to the last, conversing freely and relating all the 
particulars of the terrible accident of which she was the victim.  She 
was aged about 36 years.  The funeral took place at Sharpsburg at 10 
o'clock Friday morning.  This is the saddest affair that has happened 
in Taylor township for a long time.

Morning Tribune, Altoona, Pa., March 18, 1886