One of the best parts of being a reporter or an author or a historian or a detective (we suppose) is discovering where a story takes you. Sometimes the real story is not the original story.
Such is the story of Daniel M. Grissom of Kirkwood.
Your reporter, author, and historian ran across Daniel in a letter he sent to Governor Arthur Hyde in 1924 saying he was honored to have been invited to the dedication of the Capitol that Daniel described as “one of the most chaste and beautiful structures in the world—equal in the exquisite symetry [sic] of its proportions to the once matchless now dismantled Parthenon at Athens, Greece,” perhaps a reference to the structure’s condition after a 1687 explosion.
He could not attend the dedication because “the infirmities of 94 years debar me” from being there. He concluded, “I send up my faint shout of gladness to join in the glorious and mighty outburst of patriotic joy that bursts from Capitol Hill this day. If it be a cause for pride to be an American, the very next thing to it is being a Missourian.”
The letter was interesting enough to raise a question: “Who was this guy?”
And this is where the story took this author to a completely different place, a completely different time, and to one of Missouri’s most tragic moments.
The first question was how much longer he lasted. He already was 94 but he seemed from his letter still to be at full mental strength. A source for that information is the state death certificates on the Missouri State Archives webpage. And there was Daniel M. Grissom, dead at the age of 101 on May 17, 1930. But the certificate had another piece of information: “retired news paper editor.” Two words.
The Missouri Press Association founded the State Historical Society of Missouri in 1898 and for many years, the society’s magazine, The Missouri Historical Review, carried obituary notices of editors and former editors who had been society members. And sure enough, there was Daniel, in the October, 1930 issue.
Daniel M. Grissom, it said, was twenty-four years old when he arrived in St. Louis from his home state of Kentucky to become a reporter for the St. Louis Evening News. That would have been 1853. He worked for the News for a decade, becoming the editor on a newspaper with a staff of two while still in his twenties. When the News merged with the St. Louis Union, creating the Evening Dispatch, he became the editor-in-chief of the combined papers. The Dispatch eventually merged with Joseph Pulitzer’s Evening Post to create today’s Post-Dispatch, which is probably when he joined the St. Louis Republican which later became just the Republic and lasted until its merger with the Globe-Democrat in 1919.
Then the eyebrows went up when the article reported, “While working on the News he was sent on the famous Pacific Railroad excursion train to Jefferson City, November 1, 1855.”
Suddenly, Daniel becomes even more significant. That train would inaugurate passenger service between St. Louis and Jefferson City. The legislature had put up bonding money for the Pacific Railroad and the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad and was to consider in the upcoming session whether to issue more bonds for more railroads. There was some doubt that it would because construction had been slower than expected and more expensive than expected on both lines. Governor Sterling Price was skeptical. The legislature was to come into session on November 5 so the arrival of the first passenger train at Jefferson City just ahead of the session was considered extremely important for the railroad interests. The capitol had been decorated for a big welcome. A huge banquet was to be held for the passengers.
But a violent and long-lasting rain storm swept in that afternoon. And the train did not arrive. The banquet went ahead solemnly in Jefferson City, attendees fearing something bad had happened. But the storm had knocked out telegraph service and it was not until the next day that word arrived of what had occurred.
A separate locomotive and tender had been sent ahead of the train to make sure the not-quite-compete Gasconade River Bridge about nine miles west of Hermann was strong enough to support the train. The locomotive made it safely across and was waiting on the other side when the passenger train steamed into sight.
The locomotive and a few cars made it across the first segment when, suddenly, that segment collapsed. Some of the cars fell thirty feet into the Gasconade River, pulling the engine and tender back on top of them. Other following cars crashed on top of that wreckage. Only a few cars failed to go into the river. “Mr. Grissom was one of the survivors,” said the Review obituary, “and assisted in the rescue of many persons and became widely known for his reports of the catastrophe.”
Thirty-one people were dead, including two State Representatives. About two-hundred more were injured.
There are three online resources that we use for newspaper accounts of historic events: Newspapers.com, Newspaperarchive.com; and the Smithsonian’s “Chronicling America” webpage. There also are more than fifty-million pages of Missouri newspapers on microfilm at the State Historical Society in Columbia. Newspaperarchive.com produced the Liberty Weekly Tribune for November 16, 1855 and a gripping account of the tragedy.
In those days before wire services as we know them, newspapers exchanged issues with one another, which is how the Liberty newspaper came to have this account more than two weeks after the event. “Yesterday was a sad day for St. Louis—a day whose events have cast a shadow over many a heart and made desolate many a bright hearthstone,” the story began in a manner typical of reporting in those days but far different from our times.
There was no byline. Bylines did not catch on much for another forty years or so after reporters became more popular with the public although correspondents at the time of the disaster sometimes signed their stories, usually with nom de plumes such as “Publius,” the Liberty newspaper’s Jefferson City correspondent who had a brief story about the tragedy on another page.
At the end of the eyewitness account in the Tribune was another surprise. The article originally appeared in the St. Louis News. It was Daniel M. Grissom’s account—which a survey of other newspapers in the “Chronicling America” website shows became THE nationwide story of the event.
Betty Johnson Douglas, writing in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat on March 6, 1927 described him as “a young newspaper man who had come to St. Louis from Kentucky only a few years before and was already editor of a paper which had given much support to railroad building projects in the state… blue-eyed, eager for new experiences and already making a reputation for himself as a writer of strong editorials.’
Climb aboard that ill-fated train and ride into a disaster with 26-year old Daniel M. Grissom:
Yesterday morning, at the seventh street depot of the Pacific railroad, a large crowd of happy persons were gathered, prepared for the excursion to Jefferson City, to celebrate the completion of the road to that point. It was a happy hour. Gay greetings were spoken and congratulations were joyously interchanged between friends who were glad each to find that the other was going. Many who did not go came to wish a pleasant journey and God speed to those who did. Some who could not go then promised to join the excursion to-morrow (today). Two military companies, with stirring music and gay uniforms added to the pageant. At half past eight the train started, freighted with six hundred happy hearts, followed by the good wishes of all whose hearts beat responsively to those “of the parting ones.” All was bright and pleasant, and although the twelve cars constituting the train were crowded to such an extent that many had to stand in the aisle between the seats, and others on the platform outside, yet there was a universal good feeling and “all went merry as a marriage bell.” The people at the stations and villages along the road cheered us onward and shouted and waved hats and hand’cheifs in response to the merry music our Brass Band entertained them with. As we came into Herman, a cannon pealed forth the glad greetings of the hearty citizens. But how soon was the scene destined to be changed! How soon were so many of those founding hearts to be pulseless. No one dreamed that death was near, yet it lurked for us only a few miles further on. At 1 o’clock we left Herman [sic], preceded by a locomotive and tender which had been sent forward, to see what that the way was clear, and no danger impending. Soon we came in sight of the bridge across the Gasconade river, about nine miles from Herman, and thirty-five from Jefferson City. The bridge is approached by an embankment thirty feet high which terminated in a massive stone abutment. Forty yards from the abutment, and just at the edge of the river, stands another staunch pillar, three more of which reach the other side of the stream, and support the bridge. The river is about two hundred and fifty yards wide and the bridge thirty feet high, at least. The Pioneer locomotive had crossed the structure safely and was waiting at the other side to see the result of our attempt. There was no fear of danger, nor thoughts of peril. We slowly moved along the embankment and came on to the bridge. The locomotive had passed the first span and had its forewheels above the first pillar beyond the abutment—there being then rested on the first span, the locomotive, baggage car and two heavily loaded passenger cars. The weight was too much for the long, slender timbers which supported the rails and the enormous load above. Suddenly we heard a horrid crash—it rings in our ears now—and saw a movement amongst those in the car in which we were seated; then there came crash-crashcrash as each car came to the abutment and took the fatal plunge. The affair was but the work of an instant. We were running slowly at the time and the successive crashes came on at intervals of nearly a second. We were seated in the seventh car—there being three behind us—and when we heard the horrid sound that came up, as each car slowly and deliberately took the leap, we hoped that our car might stop before it reached the precipice. But no; it seemed that the spirit of ruin was beneath, determinedly dragging each car to the spot, wrenching it from its fastenings, and hurling it to atoms beneath. Six cars fell in one mass, each on the other, and were shivered into fragments. The seventh fell with its forward end to the ground; but the other end rested on top of the abutment. Those in it were only bruised. The eighth and ninth cars tumbled down the embankment before they reached the abutment. Such a wreck I never saw and hope never again to see. It was one undistinguishable mass of wooded beams, seats, iron wheels and rods, from beneath which came up groans of agony. Those who could, crawled out of the ruin immediately, and either sought to relieve their own wounds or the wounds of their friends. Some wept tears of joy to find their friends alive and others shuddered to find their friends dead, the uninjured organized themselves under the lead of Mr. Pride, the conductor, and endeavored by chopping to extricate those who were yet alive from the wreck. Here a beam was cut into to disengage a broken arm; there an iron axle was pryed up to relieve a mutilated leg. There was no shrieking and screaming, though all begged for the love of heave to be extricated from some mass of iron or beam of wood which pinned them to the earth. All begged for water, drank it when brought and prayed for more. There was hardly an entirely uninjured man to be seen. Most of those who had escaped had streams of blood flowing over their faces from splinter wounds. Others limped and hobbled about, looking for their friends. A board shanty was the only shelter to be had and that was soon filled with the wounded, whose silent speechless agony was enough to make the stoutest heart shudder. Soon after the accident the heavens grew dark and black as though in twain, and from the crevice gleamed the white lightning, and the harsh thunder bellowed its cruel mockings at the woe beneath. It seemed as if the elements were holding high carnival over the scene of slaughter.
Grissom wrote a second version of the story, cited by Douglas in her 1927 article:
Suddenly there was an awful crash, a sickening lurch—another crash—another—another. We were moving forward jerkily, sickeningly.
Horrid sounds came from ahead. We realized in a flash what must have happened—the bridge was gone—we were being pulled into the river by the weight of the cars ahead, which had already crashed over the bank! Then—our car was going too. The violent motion threw us to the floor.
I was the first to gain my feet. I may have been unconscious for a moment, for the movement had stopped. When I got up and looked around not a soul was in sight. I was staggered for another second, but then I called aloud and one by one the passengers began to crawl out from under the seats, behind doors, through the debris of the wreck. No one in my car was seriously hurt, though we were all badly shaken up and some of us were bleeding and so weak from shock that we were hardly able to walk…
When a relief train from St. Louis came to our aid it was a very different kind of crowd which started on the return journey from that which had set out so gaily a few hours before. Hardly a word was spoken as we leaned our heads on our hands, some uttering groans and low cries of despair caused by their own sufferings or by the realization of the loss of a friend or relative in the disaster.
(We pause for a while until the mental images of this extraordinary writing fade enough for us to continue.)
Jen Tebbe wrote on the Missouri Historical Society of St. Louis (not to be confused with the state Historical Society of Missouri that is based in Columbia) last November about some things other survivors had to say. http://mohistory.org/blog/what-survivors-had-to-say/
Grissom built an outstanding career in the years ahead. Historian and journalist Walter Stevens wrote a long time ago that Grissom was “among the foremost editorial writers in the West for a third of a century. He…wrote in a virile, lucid style.”
During the Civil War he and his Evening News were critical of General John Fremont, the commander of the Army of the West at the start of the war. Fremont became so upset at the newspaper’s criticism after the fall of Lexington that he jailed Grissom and fellow editor Charles G. Ramsey. They were released two days later.
The microfilmed old newspapers in Columbia tell us Daniel Grissom was 82 when he moved into the Kirkwood Old Folks Home where, said the St. Louis Globe-Democrat he “delighted to regale willing listeners with tales of the Civil War, the Lincoln-Douglas debate, the capture of Camp Jackson, and other events, the formal accounts of which may only be found in histories.”
When he was in his nineties he wrote a dozen articles for the Missouri Historical Review about the famous people he had known, personal intimate sketches of people such as Senator Thomas Hart Benton, Governors Sterling Price and Claiborne Fox Jackson (who tried to take Missouri South at the start of the Civil War), James S. Rollins, and artist George Caleb Bingham, among others. The last article was published when he was 98.
It was a surprise to him when he turned 100. He thought he was only 99 until a week before the landmark birthday when he got a letter from a relative who had dug into an old family Bible and found that he had been born a year earlier than he thought. So, actually, he was 95 when he wrote to the governor.
The Post-Dispatch reported he carried on a “voluminous correspondence with friends and relatives into his 90s but complained on his 100th birthday, “My pencil won’t do what I want it to now. It wanders all over the page. I used to walk up and down the corridor here by myself up to the last ten months but I just can’t make it alone any more. I’m getting old and my legs just won’t support me the way they used to. I’m beginning to feel my years.”
More than one-hundred friends and relatives joined him at the home for his next, and last, birthday where he cut a thirty-two pound cake decorated by one candle symbolizing all of the others there wasn’t room for.
He survived one of Missouri’s greatest tragedies to live a long and historic life for another three-quarters of a century. But his tombstone in Kirkwood’s Oak Hill Cemetery says only “Daniel M. Grissom, 1829-1930.”
When he thought he was 94 years old he wrote a letter to the governor of Missouri and another journalist read it after another ninety-four years and wondered, “Who was this guy?” This is where the story took us.
