MFDJ 10/24/24: An Impulsive Prospector

Today’s Reckless Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Perhaps the earliest witnessed fatal fall of a prospector in Grand Canyon was that of Daniel W. Mooney. Formerly a sailor, and then a rancher in the Williamson Valley near Prescott, Arizona, Mooney had been bitten by the lure of mineral riches. Bitten hard. Mooney and four other miners filed one of the earliest claims in Havasu (a.k.a. Cataract) Canyon. They found lead and silver, fairly common in Havasu but economically challenging to extract. Mooney and a few others among the dozen associated miners who prospected Havasu’s canyon system felt teased by the mystery of what might lay below the biggest falls along the last seven miles or so to the Colorado. This mystery tortured Mooney.

The Havasupai people apparently never traveled downstream of this point, and for good reason: the falls dropped 196 feet and offered only the most hellishly exposed, expert-only climbing route.

Finally, in 1880, Mooney decided he could pull off a descent. As Billingsley, Spamer, and Mankes tell it:

On a fateful last trip, Mooney took a rope down into the canyon and, trusting his sailor’s experience with ropes and rope climbing, let himself down over the falls. Once he was over the falls, the others in the party lost sight of him and the roar of water precluded any verbal communication. Soon they felt the rope slacken and, running around to the side of the falls, they saw the rope dangling nearly half way down. Mooney lay on the rocks below. Unable to reach him, all they could do was leave.

A prospecting associate, Edward I. Doheny, described Mooney as red-headed, red-bearded, and possessing a violent temper. Mooney was also the spokesman with the Havasupai Indians for the dozen prospectors allied in combing their canyons for paydirt. “Mooney,” Doheny said, “was very reckless and did not exercise the caution that 100 percent sanity would dictate. His fall from the place where he had started to go down over a bluff on a very small rope, was not altogether unexpected by those of us who constituted the party.”

A few years later, in 1883, Matthew Humphreys would blast out a descending tunnel along the creek’s left side. Mooney’s friends then buried him almost exactly where he fell. In less than four years, however, the thin sands atop Mooney washed away, as prospector William Wallace Bass noted, to reveal his “grinning teeth and eye sockets.”


It’s now called “Mooney Falls” which is appropriate in multiple ways!

Culled from: Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon

 

Ohio State Penitentiary Prisoner Du Jour

Arthur J. Grover

Arthur J. Grover was executed at forty-five minutes past twelve on the night of May 14, 1886. He met his death bravely, declaring his innocence to the very last moment of his life, but justice knew best, and he suffered death for the murder of an aged lady said to possess a small fortune, residing in Wood county. The people of that county were so indignant over the cowardly murder that they would not allow his remains to be buried in the county, and his body was given to the students of one of the medical colleges of this city.

Culled from: The Ohio Penitentiary – 1899

 

Garretdom: Olde News

Disastrous Explosion of Natural Gas.

PEKIN, Ill., Sept. 23.—The explosion of a gas stove in the summer kitchen of T. Hainline, a wealthy farmer living near Hopedale, this county, Sunday evening, resulted in the death of Mrs. Hainline and serious injury to Miss Ling, a teacher stopping with the family. Some time ago Hainline discovered a natural gas well on his farm and connected it with the house in order to utilize the gas. When Mrs. Hainline went to prepare supper she touched a match to the stove, as usual, when an explosion immediately followed, demolishing the kitchen and burning her so severely that she died in great agony last night. It is feared that Miss Ling will not recover.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

I found another article with additional details from the Friday, September 24, 1886 issue of The Weekly Pantagraph:

A HORRIBLE AFFAIR.

Mrs. Sylvester Hainline, Jr., of Minier, Burned to Death by a Natural Gas Explosion.

—THE PANTAGRAPH’S Minier correspondent writes as follows: We promised the PANTAGRAPH a more complete account of the gas well explosion as soon as we could learn it. From an authentic source we learn the following: Miss Ruie Ling, of Minier, was to commence school in the Hainline district last Monday, and during the term was to board at the home of Sylvester Hainline, Jr. Mr. Hainline some time ago, in boring for a well, struck a vein of gas. He built a shed over the well and, by means of a pipe from well to stove, was utilizing the gas as fuel. Miss Ling had heard of the well and on Sunday, when she went to Mr. Hainline’s to commence boarding, she expressed a desire to see the gas burn, and see the “thing in running order.” Mrs. Hainline explained it to her, and then was to light it to show it in working order. During the afternoon when there was no fire the gas had collected and, when she struck the match there was an explosion heard nearly a mile. Mrs. Hainline’s clothes took fire at the bottom, and everything but her corset and shoes was burned from her body. Miss Ling was badly burned about her neck and head, and in her efforts to put out the fire on Mrs. Hainline she had her hands and arms severely burned. The report and shock soon brought neighbors, and a doctor was sent for, but Mrs. Hainline died on Tuesday in great agony. Miss Ling is slowly improving, but will show marks of the fire as long as she lives. Too much praise can not be said of the actions of Miss Ruie Ling. At the critical moment, when Mrs. Hainline’s clothes were burning and Miss Ling using every endeavor to put the fire out, the family dog, seeing Mrs. Hainline down and Miss Ling struggling over her thought that she was injuring Mrs. Hainline, and attacked Mrs. Ling, thus placing her in a trying situation. She fought both the fire and the dog with heroic courage, and, to a certain extent, successfully. Miss Ling was reported yesterday as being somewhat better, but is still in a precarious situation.

I did additional research, and Ruie Ling was married three times and died in 1939 at the age of 74.

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