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Source: The Rambler, Canton Weekly Register
Canton, Illinois

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CHATSWORTH WRECK
MIDNIGHT, AUGUST 10-11, 1887

One-half mile north on the Toledo, Peoria & Western Railroad occurred one of the worst wrecks in American rail history. An excursion train - two engines and approximately twenty wooden coaches - from Peoria to Niagara Falls, struck a burning culvert. Of the 500 passengers about 85 perished and scores were injured. [Source: Historical Marker in Livingston County, on US 24, about 2.5 miles east of Chatsworth, erected on 1/01/1954 by the State of Illinois.] 


The following sketch of Mr. and Mrs. Milton A. Murphy, Cuba, Illinois from The Rambler, Canton Weekly Register, Canton, Illinois, is courtesy of descendants Judy Painter McGregor and Mary Matthews. 
Note: Five Fulton County residents killed in the CHATSWORTH train wreck disaster are named at the end of this article. 

[SURNAMES: ARTMAN, BIERCE, BROWN, CRAIG, DEAKIN, GRAHAM, GREEN,HAVERMALE, HELLER, HENDERSON, HUFFMAN, JOHNSON, KELLY, LASSWELL, MOSHER, MURPHY, SNIVELY, SOLOMON, STIPP] 


"Mr. and Mrs. Milton Murphy of Cuba know something of the hardships of those who helped to hew out the paths in the trackless forests, cut off the timber, turn the sod and make homes for themselves in the wilderness. Milton Murphy is a native-born citizen of Fulton County, and has labored industriously in helping develop the agricultural and fruit-growing interests of Cass township. He was born in Cass township Jan 13, 1838, and is a son of William and Margaret (Artman) Murphy, who came to Fulton County from Ashland County, Ohio, in 1830. His first teacher received $9 a month for his services and boarded around among the scholars. The first school he attended was taught in an old rickety log schoolhouse, standing alone in a large space of uncultivated ground. The log building was simply pinned together with wooden pins, and there was not a nail, or spike or piece of iron in its whole construction. It was such a schoolhouse as Whittier has beautifully pictured in one of his noted poems, and which he terms 'a ragged beggar standing' by the wayside. This school was located in what is now called the Germany district, and was one of the first school buildings erected in Cass Township. 'Speaking of nails', said Mr. Murphy, 'reminds me that when father built the family residence on the old Murphy homestead in 1831, he had to go to Quincy after the nails used in the building. There were no hardware stores here then, neither were there any shoes or shoe stores in the country, and a local shoemaker made the shoes for the different families of every neighborhood. Father would kill a beef late in the fall and send one of us boys to Daniel Heller's tannery with the hide. There it was tanned, cut in halves, and half retained to pay for the tanning, and the other half was taken home and made into shoes for the family. The Heller tannery was located about half a mile south of Cuba, near the present location of the cemetery. In addition to the half of the hide retained to pay for the tanning, every settler had to haul a wagonload of red oak bark free to the tannery. We butchered our hogs late in the fall or in the early winter, left them out over night to get all of the animal heat out of them and the next day they were hauled to Canton and sold to John G. Graham, Stipp and Company, or some of the other buyers. One hog was weighed at a time on a small platform scale. I remember the saw and grist mills of Uncle Nate Henderson, Isaac Huffman and Andrew Lasswell on Put creek. These mills did not grind anything but corn. Orson Bierce also had a corn mill on Big Creek. Joel Solomon was the first storekeeper to locate in Cuba, and he was soon followed by Henry Snively. I was married in 1858, at the age of 20, to Miss Clementine Murphy, who was born in Licking County, Ohio, Feb, 14, 1840. Although of the same name we were not related. My wife belongs to the Solomon Murphy family. We are the parents of nine children, six boys and three girls, namely: Lewis, George, W. S., Elliot, E. R., Cyrus, Mrs. George Deakin, Mrs. Phoebe A. Mosher and Mrs. Martha M. Brown. We were in the tragic Chatsworth train wreck on Aug. 10, 1887. Both Zalmon A. Green and Job Kelly of Orion township were killed in this wreck, as were Noah Havermale of Canton, Oscar Johnson of Civer, and William Craig of Cuba.' The Chatsworth wreck was one of the most terrible railroad horrors in the history of the country."