Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1878-07-11

Four Children Burned to Death and
One lmpaled---Their Father Fatally
Burned in Trying to Save Them.
st. Louis Republican

Parties arriving in this city Yesterday
brought the particulars of a horrible
catastrophe which befell a farmers
family on Friday night. About three
miles east of Ricker's prairie lived John
Leonard, with his wife, married daughter
and five younger children. The
house was a substantial log struc
ture, with an attic overhead and sum-
mer kitchen on the south side, the roof
being SO made as to connect the house
with the kitchen, which stood the width
OF hallway distant from the main
house. A pair of stairs in this hallway
led up to the attic, from which there
was no other egress. On Friday night
the five children went to sleep in the at
tic,the Older people sleeping in the room
below. During the night from some
unexplained cause the kitchen caught
fire, and before the danger was discov-
cred the staircase leading to the attic
was in flames. The people on the first
floor had little difficulty in escaping, for
though the only door was exposed to
the intense heat there was a window
from which they easily gained places of
safety. But fer the children in the at
tic there seemed to be no hope. The
Oldest was boy Is years old, and when
the alarm reached him his youth and
neXperience were not proof against the
excitement of such an occasion. The
solid walls of logs imprisoned the chill
dren and the fierce flames ragged and
roared at the doorway. There was a
little window in the north end of the
attic barely large enough for a person
to crawl through, and it would seem
that with proper management this might
have become the means of saving all.
But the father in his frantic efforts to
reach the attic by the stairs had got his
clothing on fire and been so badly
burned that he was entirely disabled.
There was no one to direct or manage
for the children, and finally the oldest
boy, having torn one sash from the
window, threw himself out, leaving the
four children to their miserable fate.
Their four corpses were found the next
morning charred to cinders.
But as though this was not enough
of horror, still another tragedy has to
be chronicled in connection with the
affair. When the boyjumped from the
window he had only a short twelve feet
to fall and might easily have expected
to have got off with few bruises,
but as it happened, a picket fence ran
along under the window about two feet
distant from the house. The palings
were of hard wood, split thin, and
sharpened to long, tapering points. In
his terror the boy had blindly cast him
self upon this bristling fence. The sharp
points pierced his unprotected sides and
impaled him. The mother and sister
lifted him from his fixed position, but
life had forsaken him. The fathers in
juries are so severe that there is little ex-
pectation of his recovery. In fact,
he was reported dying Saturday morn
ing, and before this time is probably
out of his misery. The calamity is one
of the most extraordinary and appal-
ling that it is possible to conceive as
happening to family living in small
low building. In the city in lofty tene-
ments there is often danger that families
will be cut off, but it is almost an I'M
paralleled occurrence under circum-
stances like this