Last Surviving Victim of Old Mill Disaster Dies

Friday, June 25, 1915

Rock Springs Park after fire of June 5, 1915, showing Old Mill

On this day in Rock Springs Park History, the Hancock County Courier reported that Hyacinth Mackey age 16, the last surviving victim of the disaster which destroyed the Old Mill at Rock Springs Park on the evening of June 5, had died.

Hancock County Courier- Last Survivor Of Old Mill Fire Dies


Hyacinth Mackey age 16, the last surviving victim of the disaster which destroyed the Old Mill at Rock Springs park on the evening of June 5, died at 8 o'clock Sunday evening the Chester General hospital, where she has since been confined. Dr. G. W. Wentz of the hospital staff, who has been in attendance, stated that the general condition of the girl was improved but her heart failed at the last. Her burns most serious about the back, arms, neck and face. The physician stated that she was the least burned of the four victims.


The Mackey girl, in company with Eva Dales and Glenna Stout, all of Newell, went to Rock Springs park on the night of the accident. All three of the girls together with Albert Rayner, aged 12, of Chester, were the most seriously burned and all except Miss Mackey died within a few hours after the accident.


The Mackey girls condition for a time seemed greatly improved. Last Tuesday, a change for the worse was noted and since that time she has been hovering between life and death.


She is survived by her parents and the following brothers and sisters: Mrs. Pittswater and Bessie, Lee, Gladys, Geneva, Wm., Ralph, Harold, Evelyn, Frances, Margaret and Robert all at home. She was employed at the Laughlin pottery with the Dales girl who succumbed to her burns on the Sunday following the accident. She was a member of the M. E. church and also of the choir of the M. E. church of the Newell and a member of the Sunday school class taught by Miss Reardon. Funeral services were held Tuesday.

Fire at the Old Mill

Saturday, June 5, 1915

Fire swept the Old Mill ride at Rock Springs Park taking the lives of three children who were attending a school picnic day. Read more at http://rockspringspark.blogspot.com/2011/03/accidents-and-injuries-at-rock-springs.html.

Clarence O. Durbin

Chaney’s Service Station as seen from the trolley loop entrance of Rock Springs Park in 1970. (From the photographic collection of Clarence O. Durbin, Courtesy of Rich Brookes)

Just days before my December deadline to complete Images of America: Rock Springs Park, I was told about a book of photo negatives which belonged to Rich Brookes of Pottery City Antique Mall in East Liverpool. The book was a family Bible of sorts in that it had been passed down to several different owners and each one had written his name inside the front cover. The original owner, and the man who took all the photographs assembled in the book, was Clarence O. Durbin of Chester.

My father told me that Mr. Durbin lived just a few doors down from our home on Virginia Avenue in the western end of Chester when I was growing up; something I did not remember, but now deeply regret not understanding at the time. I’m sure Mr. Durbin would have had some wonderful and interesting stories about the park, as well as, the pictures to go with them. He did share one dramatic tale with Roy C. Cashdollar who wrote about it in his book, A History of Chester: The Gateway To The West by Roy C. Cashdollar. Roy wrote:

Mr. Clarence Durbin of Chester tells about an event that happened on the day of the “Old Mill” fire. He got on the street car in East Liverpool and the motorman headed for Chester. He made no stop to pick up or discharge passengers and had the car at full speed. He came to a stop on Carolina Avenue, just past Sixth Street near the old Ludovici Service Station, and took off running up over the hill toward the park. He had heard about the fire and the death of some children and his little daughter was at the picnic. Mr. Durbin and the other passengers followed and tell of the terrible sight of the bodies being wrapped and loaded to be taken to the hospital or the morgue.

If you’ve ever lost a child in a department store or at the beach for a brief moment or worse, you can begin to understand the panic and actions taken by the trolley motorman who worried that his own daughter might be among the dead. It’s easy to imagine the trolley racing across the bridge with the driver ignoring passengers and those waiting at the stops. One wonders if he shouted some sort of explanation or just drove on without saying a word. Did they think the driver had lost his mind? Were they angry, before learning why the man had disregarded his duty?

This is an example of one of the trolley cars used to carry passengers to the park in 1915. (Courtesy of Richard Bowker)

I was given a brief extension to my book deadline in order to process as many of the negatives from Rich Brookes’ album as possible. Mr. Durbin had meticulously created little hand folded envelopes for each negative with a tiny proof label including names, dates, and places of subjects. My only challenge was to decide what to cut from the original page layout in order to add some of Clarence’s collection.

This photograph taken by my mother, Margaret Comm, is of a park bench which used to line the sidewalk of our home for many years. The image was cut from the final copy of Images of America: Rock Springs Park to add some last minute images.

One of the things I included on pages 106 to 107, is a series of photographs showing the final turn of the Cyclone. Based on the date and the perspective of the pictures, Clarence must have walked the length of the Cyclone on Memorial Day 1971 to record the view and the condition of the 44 year-old wooden coaster before it was removed. If Clarence was a young man when he saw the accident at the Old Mill in 1915, he must have been in his late sixties or seventies when he scaled the tracks of the Cyclone – a daring prospect, as the photos suggest the coaster was missing sections of guardrail and planks in many parts of the the maintenance walkway.


Some of the other photographs I chose were of park patrons enjoying the park during the years 1968 – 1970. I had many pictures of employees and owners, but was lacking park guests riding rides and eating treats. Mr. Durbin's photographs, courtesy of Rich Brookes, were the perfect finishing touch I had been looking for.

Fans of Rock Springs Park owe a debt of gratitude to Clarence O. Durbin for his years of service to the park and the amazing document he left behind for all of us. This image of the Ferris wheel shows Durbin’s artistic eye.

Chester Resident Named for Child Killed in Old Mill Fire 1915

The Old Mill at Rock Springs Park (top left) and the Old Mill at Kennywood Park (bottom right) share a similar design as is evidenced by these two postcard images. Kennywood’s dark ride still thrills park visitors while Rock Springs’ burned to the ground in a tragic fire on June 5, 1915.

In November 2009, just before the book’s due date, I traveled to Chester, West Virginia, to give a slide show talk on Rock Springs Park at Peachtree Inn, an independent living community on the grounds of Fox Nursing Home. It was my hope that by showing pictures and reviewing the general history of the park with residents, I could glean some interesting stories and firsthand accounts of the trolley park from those who remembered it while growing up in the area during the Great Depression. They did not disappoint.

Many of their memories have been captured in the pages of Images of America: Rock Springs Park, Including Evelyn Fersch’s mother’s tale of traveling to Rock Springs Park by horse and buggy from New Cumberland in the 1890s (page 11). Sadly, Evelyn passed away just months after inviting me to her home at Peachtree and never saw her story in the book, but her memory, often shared with family members, is now shared with hundreds of readers. Just 3 sentences long, her humorous anecdote beautifully encapsulates the joy and excitement felt by young children at the end of the 19th Century when on their way to “Nature’s Beauty Spot” with a picnic basket in their buggy.

As I mentioned before on this site, one of the reasons I began researching the history of the park about 5 years ago, was to flesh out a middle grades novel I was writing entitled, “Rock Springs.” In one scene, Joey and Muna, two children growing up in Chester in the 1970s, attend a church prayer meeting in which parishioners, like the residents of Peachtree Inn, share their memories of Rock Springs in a public forum. Here is an excerpt:

“My memory is bitter-sweet, you might say, but I have a real connection to that park that most of you don’t know about,” Miss Abernathy stood, leaning on the back of a folding chair for support. “Most of you are too young to remember, but you’ve probably read or heard about the fire that burned down The Old Mill in 1915. It was such a tragic fire; so many children were in the park that day. It was the annual school picnic day.”

Muna and I stopped writing and exchanged looks.

“The Old Mill was a dark ride with boats and historic scenes. It was never called the ‘Tunnel of Love’, but my mother told me that a lot of young teenagers got their first kiss on that ride.”

Someone giggled in the back.

“The cause of the fire was never determined. The park blamed it on a patron’s cigarette and the public, well they blamed the park, of course. Witnesses said it started in the dynamo used to power the big paddle wheel. The sad thing, of course, is that three youngsters died in that fire, and a fourth, Hyacinth Mackey, passed away two weeks later from burns sustained from the accident.”

“But Miss Abernathy,” Bert Langston called out. “Hyacinth’ is…”

“Yes, Bert. Hyacinth’ is my name. My mother was pregnant with me that summer and named me after Miss Mackey.” Miss Abernathy closed her eyes as she continued. “As a child I didn’t like my name. I thought it too old-fashioned, and, of course, when I found out I was named after one of the children who died in the fire, I was haunted in my dreams. Terrible nightmares, in which, the children tried to make me ride with them.” Miss Abernathy shuddered. “Many nights I would wake up screaming. It seemed so real. My mother let me sleep with a light on, even though the Depression was still going on.”

After my talk at Peachtree two elderly twin sisters came up to introduce themselves. They were Ina and Nina France, longtime Chester residents. They asked about park owner Virginia Hand and were sad to hear she had passed away. They spoke fondly of Bob and Virginia Hand and told a story about how Bob helped their father when a bad rainstorm and mudslide destroyed their home in the Thirties (page 67). But they also told me a story that sent chills down my back.

This house, at the eastern end of Indiana Avenue was moved just like the Rustic Log House to avoid the “Path of Progress” when Rock Springs Park was razed to make way for Route 30’s approach to the Jennings Randolph Bridge. The home was the residence of Ina and Nina France. Their father was given permission to build the house on park property by owner Bob Hand in the 1930s.

Here, the France Home is being leveled on a new basement foundation in 1974.

Ina said that her mother named her after one of the girls who died in the Old Mill fire. It was an eerie example of life imitating art, or so I thought. I questioned the sisters about their account as the only girls who were reported dead following the fire were named “Eva”, “Glenna,” and “Hyacinth”. They were confused about the details, but were firm in their conviction that their expectant mother had been friends with one of the young mothers who lost a child that day in 1915 and so named one of her twin daughters in her memory, almost the exact account of the fictional Miss Abernathy in my novel completed four years earlier.

Then, when reviewing Roy C. Cashdollar’s History of Chester: The Gateway to the West (Part II) recently for a blog post, I was reminded of another story, perhaps one that had been lodged in the back of my mind and resurfaced as Miss Abernathy’s tale. Roy wrote:

Here is an interesting and full account of the fire that swept the “Old Mill” ride at Rock Springs Park on June 5, 1915. The fire hit at 7:00 taking three lives; Albert Raymer [sic], age 12 of Chester, Eva Dales, age 14 and Glenna Stout, age 17 of Newell, West Virginia. I was given this account by Glenna Miller of Chester whose mother named her after one of the victims. Mrs. Miller was born a few weeks after the fire.

I don’t claim to be psychic or even necessarily believe in that sort of thing, but there have been more than a small number of unusual coincidences involving my work on the book and subsequent experiences sharing the history of the park. Keep checking back for MORE!