Crossville Chronicle, July 29, 1903 Volume XVII Number 30
FOUR DROWNED
Four lives were lost by drowning in the Calfkiller River two
miles above Sparta last Tuesday, caused by the capsizing of a
skiff.
Those drowned were Jason Ramsey, aged 65; Ollie May Oakwood,
aged 7, daughter of Jake Oakwood, a prominent farmer, who lives
near Sparta; Olga Hull, a leading merchant of Sparta and Lizzy
Usury, granddaughter of Jason Ramsey above.
The old man was taking the little girls on a pleasure ride,
when it is supposed he was attacked with a spell of heart trouble,
from which he frequently suffered. He was a very heavy man and
his weight easily capsized the frail craft.
As dark grew on the parents of the children became uneasy,
and soon the alarm spread over the community. At 9 o’clock
the steamboat, which plies on the Calfkiller River was sent up
the river with a dredging outfit and a crew of forty on board
and the river banks were lined with citizens for a mile or so.
A large part of the weary crowd returned to Sparta at midnight
and gave up the search till morning, but the steamboat party kept
up the work and at early dawn Wednesday morning the skiff was
espied in a dark eddy overhung by a high cliff. Then Ramsey’s
hat and the children’s hats and a paddle began to tell what
had happened. Here the river was dragged with barbed wire. First
the little Usury girl, then the old man, followed by the Oakwood
and Hull children, were lifted from the bed of the stream, cold
in death, before the bereaved parents and placed on the boat.
The bodies were found in ten feet of water, within fifteen
feet of each other. The girls were rigid in the attitude of grasping
at the skiff.
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