Of Side Curtains and Trains

The mill at Deepriver that has been inactive for many months is being put in shape for active service by Mr. Cullman, the new proprietor who last week began grinding feed.

That announcement appeared in the Hobart Gazette of November 25, 1910. I made a note of it and promptly forgot the Cullmans existed until a bad train accident brought them into the public view again in April of 1916.

In 1916 the Cullman family consisted of Tony — or T.J., as he seemed to prefer — who was then 44 years old; his wife, Elmira, 34; and their three children, Wilma (14), Walter (10) and Ruth (4). They had come to Deep River sometime after April 1910 from the village of Thornton, Illinois, where they had lived for at least ten years, and where T.J. had worked variously as a blacksmith and a coal dealer. But once they came to Deep River, they stayed for many years.

On the evening of April 10, 1916, the Cullman family was taking a car trip to Valparaiso. The whole family and two neighbors, Frank Easton and Charles Shroeder, were crowded into T.J.'s Case touring car.


A 1914 Case Touring Car (restored).
Image credit: cacars.com

The car had its side curtains in place. I haven't been able to find out exactly how Case side curtains looked at the time, but in 1916 Cadillac side curtains looked like this:


Image credit: cadillacdatabase.org.

If Case curtains were similar, they probably restricted visibility somewhat. That evening, as T.J.'s car approached the Nickel Plate crossing on the Joliet road, he brought it to a stop, and he and his passengers looked both ways — a wise precaution, since there were no warning signals or gates — but, if the configuration of the road and tracks is the same now as it was then, the view wasn't very good, with the road and the tracks meeting at an oblique angle and the tracks curving on both sides of the crossing.

No one saw any trains coming, so T.J. started the car forward, but as it rolled onto the tracks, the headlight of a westbound passenger train suddenly loomed up from the east. They were right in its path. T.J. braked, tried to turn into the ditch; the two neighbors jumped out; Elmira threw little Walter out of the car with such force that he landed on some soft dirt, clear of the car and the tracks. But the remaining four Cullmans were still in the car when the train caught its front end, spinning it around and flipping it over.

The train screeched to a halt. Crew members and passengers spilled out to help extricate the Cullmans from their overturned car. All four of them were rushed to Christian Hospital in Valparaiso. Most of their injuries were painful but not life-threatening: Elmira had a broken ankle, T.J. a fractured rib, little Ruth a broken thigh; but Wilma was unconscious, with head injuries that included a fractured skull, and the doctors did not expect her to live through the night.

To their surprise, she did. A few days later the Hobart News reported her condition "slightly improved." Even more surprisingly, by April 27 Wilma had recovered enough to be able to come home, while Elmira and Ruth remained in the hospital another week. (T.J. was already back home as well, apparently.) By May 4, Wilma was back at school.

In July the Cullmans filed a lawsuit against the railroad, seeking $15,000 for Wilma's permanent injuries (the nature of which was not reported), and alleging that the train's engineer had failed to blow the whistle as the train approached the crossing.

♦    ♦    ♦

Wilma graduated from high school on schedule in 1919. From the Aurora yearbook, I get the impression that whatever her permanent injuries were, they did not affect her intelligence or good humor.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Wilma Cullman as a high school senior in 1919. Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.


In this mock show bill from the 1919 Aurora, Hobart High students sketch each other's personalities and obsessions.
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.



Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ "Cullman Family Narrowly Escapes Death." Hobart News 13 Apr. 1916.
♦ "Cullmans Bring Suit for $15,000." Hobart Gazette 28 July 1916.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 25 Nov. 1910.
♦ "South of Deepriver." Hobart News 27 Apr. 1916; 4 May 1916.