Grayson County TXGenWeb

The Sunday Gazetteer
August 28, 1887
pg. 4

A DISASTROUS WRECK
Brakeman S.J. Mays Killed
Monday night about 10 o'clock mixed train No. 184 was coming north on the Missouri Pacific, in charge of Conductor Geo. Carruthers, when at a point 2-1/2 miles south of Deaver the second car behind the engine jumped the track and rolling over into the ditch was followed by five others which piled up on top of each other in a mass of ruins. Sam Mays, the front end brakeman, was killed, and dead and dying cattle were strewn along the track for hundreds of yards. Engineer R.W. Mays, brother of the unfortunate brakeman, gives the following account of the accident:
"Our train was the regular No. 184 accomodation train from Henrietta, but we had been ordered to leave out all local freight and take through a light train of stock to Denton, consequently the train consisted of the regular passenger coach and 15 cars of cattle. The first I knew of anything being wrong was from hearing the cars jolted upon the cross-ties, and looking back I saw the second one behind the engine leave the grade and tumble into the ditch, followed by another and another. I reversed my engine and brought her to a stand-still and lighting my torch I rushed back in search of my brother. I knew he was on the front end, and the booming crash of those cattle cars as they were hurled against each other and went to fragments in the ditch told me he was dead. I ran down along the wreck calling his name, but the only answer that came back was the maddened bellowing of the wounded cattle as they tried to extricate themselves from the splintered ruins of the wreck. Conductor Carruthers and Fireman Shirrell joined me in the search, and at last we found him. He was lying about 20 feet from the track, on the east side of it, quite dead, with no mark upon him save a cut on the side of the head. We placed him upon the rear end of the engine and brought him to Denison, taking him to my house on Nelson street, where he was prepared for burial."
Engineer Mays did not know the cause of the first car leaving the track, but it is thought to have been either the falling of a defective brake-beam or a loose wheel. The wrecker was sent out from Denison immediately upon the disaster being made known and by daylight Tuesday morning the track was cleared for travel.
Mr. Sam J. Mays, the unfortunate victim of this disaster, was a native Texas, having been born and raised in the State. He came to Denion in '82 from Caldwell, Texas, and accepted a position as night car maker in the service of the Houston & Texas Central Railway, which position he continued to fill for five consecutive years. Quite recently he resigned his place with the Central thinking that night work was not agreeing with him, and secured as position as brakeman on the Missouri Pacific, on the Denison & Henrietta run. He was just making his second trip when the accident occurred which deprived him of his life. He was 38 years of age, married, and leaves a wife and one daughter to bitterly mourn his loss.
Sam Mays enjoyed in the highest sense the love of his family and the respect of his fellow-citizens. He was sober, straight-forward, and honorable, and the railroad man's complimentary title of "good fellow," was never applied to one whom it more fittingly became. He was a honest man, who lived his wife and family, and so fulfilled the highest end of man. The Gazetteer extends its heartfelt sympathy to the heart broken widow and other sorrowing relatives.
The funera, which was largely attended, took place Tuesday afternoon at 3 o'clock from the Southern Methodist Church, the interment being at Oakwood Cemetery.