The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-07-21
ThttY-one Men, Women and Children Are Killed and
 Seventy Injured
FATAL MISTAKE MADE
 BY FREIGHT TRAIN CREW 

Dl r1[lulll lnhlh GnLW Passenger Train Laden With 800 Pic
 nickers Crashes Into Freight
 While Travelling at High
 Rate of Speed
 Salem, Mich, July Thirty -one people are dead, and more than seventy injured, several of them seriously, as the result of a head-on collision today between this village and Plymouth, when a Pere Marquette excursion train bround from Ionia to Detroit crashed into a westbound freight in cut located at a sharp curve of the Pefe Marouette railroad about mile east of Salem.
 Following is list of the dead: Homer Smith.
 Albert Trautwein.
 John Tifel.
 Charles Hess.
 Herman Hess.
 Daniel Hess.
 William Cornell.
 Dick Jones.
 Mrs. Abraham Eddy
 Edward Gallagher.
 Frank DOuse.
 l.. IA. Merrell.
 Henry Reynolds.
 Charles McCauIey, ST.
 A. F. Herbert.
 Edward Durling.
 Charles Broad.
 James VIsard.
 Willard Stnger.
 William GOtt.
 Mrs. August Richter.
 Mrs. Fitzgerald, all of Ionia.
 Don Rogers, Lowell, Mich.
 Brakeman Ed COrwnn.
 Fireman knowless
 William Evans, Ionia.,
 Frank Latham, Ionin.
 Benjamln During, Ionia.
 Charles Fenton, fireman freight en- zine, Grand Ledge.
 Harry Williams, Ionia.
 E. J. Pixley, conductor passenger train.
 The most seriously injured are: Nelse Pensan, Ionia, scalp wound. Mrs. Jennie Smith, Ionia, hurt inter- nally.
 Mrs. Kate Smith, Ionia, concussion of brain, serious.
 Mrs. Charles Dawson, Ionia, possible fracture of spine.
 Mrs. Charles Dolson, Ionia, Crushed abdomen.
 J. B. Anderson, Ionia, condition seri- ous.
 Many Cut and Bruised. Of the remaining three score or more injured nearly all live at Ionia. Their hurts consist of cuts. bruises and frac- turss and all are expected to recover. The passenger train of eleven cars, carving the Pere Marquette shop em- ploves of Iona and their families to the Michigan metropolis, for their annual excursion, was running at high speed probably fifty miles an hour down steep grade. It struck the lighter loco- motive of the freight train With sueh terrific force as to turn the freight en- zine completely around.
 The wrecked locomotives this afternoon lay side by side, both headed eastward. Only a few of the freight cars were smashed and it was only few hours work to remove all traces of them from the scene. But behind the two wrecked locomotives six cars of the passenger train lay piled in a hopeless wreck. Four of the passenger coaches remained on the track undamaged and were used to convey the dead and injured to 1onia; one coach was entirely undamaged with only its forward trucks off the rails. These were the rear five cars The two coaches next ahead of these were teescoped. The next car worward stood almost on end after the wreck, it's forward end resting on the roadbed and the rear end high in the air upon the two telescoped coaches that had been following it. Two coaches were thrown crosswise of the track and lay suspended from bank to bank of the cut five or six feet above the rails. Of the baggage car not eonugh remains to show where it had been tossed. Portions of the baggage car and or the locomotive tenders and freight ears were piled in a tangled mass of debris.
 Farmer Sees Crash.
 James Boyle, a farmer, was working in a field 400 feet away from the track when the two trains approached from
 
 ing slowly up the heavy grade and had just reached the curve when the passen- ger train appeared, running at high speed. Boyle saw the passenger engineer shut of his steam and apply the brakes and saw the crews of both engines jump just before the crash. He ran to the KS where he found the uninjured pas sengers from the rear coaches running for ward and joined with them in pulling out the injured, who could be seen on every hand The dead were placed in a how alongside the track and the in- jured were made as comfortable pos sibie until the arrival of wrecking trains rom Saginaw, Detroit, and Grand Rapids made it possible to send them to Ionia and Detroit
 The twenty-eght bodies first taken from the wreck were shipped to Ionia and the injured were placed on two trains. one of which headed for Detroit and the other for Ionia. There were about thirty five injured people on each train.
 Later in the day the body of Ed Corwan, the brakeman of the passenger train, was taken from the wreck.
 Fireman Knowles died on the relief train en route to Detroit. bringing the list of dead to thirty. with a possibility that more bodies might be found in the wreck
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