The New York Times -- August 30, 1911 PALLBEARERS FALL AT LIGHTNING STROKE

Knocked to Earth with Coffin When Tree Is Felled While Canonsburg Buries Dead.

17 FUNERALS IN THE RAIN

Victims of Moving Picture Show Fire Panic Borne Through Mourning Town – A Wedding Makes Trouble

Special to the New York Times

CANONSBURG, Penn., Aug 29. – Seventeen funeral processions moved through the streets this afternoon bearing victims of the Morgan opera House disaster to their graves. High winds whipped the cold driving rains into the faces of hundreds of mourners and lightning added terror to the scenes that continued from noon until nightfall.

The six pallbearers who were conveying the coffin of little Stephen Mastwicz, ticket seller for the moving picture show that occupied the house when the fire panic came, were knocked to the ground when lightning struck and felled a tree near them. John Hodie, one of their number, a brother-in-law of the deceased, was unconscious for some time and is badly injured. The others were hurt also, but they picked up the little white coffin and continued the solemn procession to the grave, where a hundred fellow pupils of the child, together with his family, stood in the rain while the body was committed to the earth.

Throughout the streets of Canonsburg hearses and livery wagons moved slowly, the drivers in oilskins. Every clergyman in the town and neighboring communities was called to minister for the dead, and every school, church, church society, and Sunday school took its part in the funerals.

Throngs stood silently in the streets while the funerals passed, the scene being repeated almost every hour until the last of the unfortunates was buried. Graves had been prepared yesterday and last night, the grave diggers working in a blinding rain.

By nightfall, seventeen victims had been buried. Double services were held over the bodies of Mrs. Mary Laird Campbell and her eight-year-old daughter in St. Patrick’s Church. With their death, the entire family was wiped out after a series of tragedies. Three years ago the father was drowned in the reservoir of the waterworks at Liverpool, Ohio and a year later two children were burned to death in the fire which destroyed the family home.

A wedding in the foreign settlement seriously interfered with some of the funerals. Two grave diggers failed to complete their work in the cemetery, in order to attend the wedding. When the funeral parties arrived it was necessary to secure other laborers while the people waited in the driving rain. Owing to a scarcity of hearses and carriages, many of the mourners were driven back to town and the services at the graves ended without them. It was necessary to have the vehicles for other waiting funerals.

State Inspectors are pursuing their investigation into the causes of the frightful loss of life in the stairways. The name of the man who yelled “fire” and caused the panic will probably never be known. The reward of $500 offered by J. C. Ferguson, proprietor of the Morgan Opera House, stands, but no clue has been forthcoming.