Corraz, Nettie - 1881

What Will Mamma Say?

Nettie Corraz went to play with her three little brothers and two other children on Indian Hill, Monday afternoon.  She would have been 10 years old next Sunday.  Indian Hill is not high, but its top affords a fine outlook upon Moffat’s pond and Ridgewood, N. J.  when the six children got tired of playing on the hill hey went down to play on the trestlework.  There is no structure above the rails, and no footpath beside them, but there is opportunity for an agile person to take refuge from the single track when a train passes on the projecting ends of the ties which are only three or four feet above the shallow water beneath them, and for the most of the way the trestlework is built over dry ground.

Mr. Wakeman, a neighbor, saw the children, and ordered them off, and Mrs. Morris, another neighbor, sent special word to the children that the train which leaves Montclair at 5:05 o’clock would come along and kill them all unless they went away.  They were near the south end of the bridge.  At 5:08 the train thundered along through the cut, around the curve, and down on the bridge.  The engineer saw the children, put on the brakes, and reversed his engine, but it was impossible to stop the train suddenly on such a grade.

All the children except Nettie and her brother George, who is about 4 years old, scrambled out on the ends of the ties.  She saw that he could not be trusted to cling to the ties, and that he must be dropped through between the ties to the dry ground beneath.  The little fellow was afraid and clung to the timbers.  This delayed her only a few seconds, but she did not have even a second to spare.  It is doubtful even whether she pushed him clear through.  He was found afterward alive and well on the ground beneath, but he says he touched the cars when they went over him.  When she sprang away toward the end of a tie it was too late.  Her body was beyond the track, but her left leg was severed at the thigh and the other crushed below the knee.

The train was brought to a stop a moment afterward, and the engineer, with tears in his eyes, helped pick her up.  She did not lose consciousness.

“Oh, I’m killed!” she exclaimed.  “What will mamma say?”  She died one hour after the accident.
~ The Lititz Record, 21-Oct-1881, Page 1, Column 5