Nitroglycerin accidents causing deaths in the 1890s

By Fred Steiner
www.BlufftonForever.com

Recently this column revealed that DDT was poured into Riley Creek for nearly 20 years.

An earlier chemical, dangerous for a different reason, killed many persons working on oil rigs in the Bluffton area in the 1890s and 1900s. While the oil boom brought prosperity to Bluffton, it also brought bad news in an extremely dangerous chemical called nitroglycerin. 

Shorted to "nitro," it was the leading cause of death of Bluffton oil field workers. These deaths were often described by the Bluffton News in the most gruesome detail. Here are several examples.

Jan. 17,1895, Bluffton News – A horrible accident occurred near Wapakoneta last Thursday which resulted in the instant death of three men and the almost complete annihilation of one of them.

They were engaged in thawing nitro-glycerine by immersing the cans in hot water when the stuff exploded, searing everything in the immediate vicinity into fragments and scattering it in every direction. 

The horses had their heads blown off and their bodies terribly mutilated. No part of the wagon could be found. The victims of the accident were Frank McNelly, shooter, John Pettigrew, driller and Frank Logan, tool dresser. 

The body of the shooter was torn to fragments and those of the others were dismembered and scattered all about. McNelly was the man who shot the well on the David Anderson farm near Bluffton only a few days before the accident. 

He was a married man and lived in Findlay. Logan’s home was in Arlington where he leaves a wife and six children. He was a cousin of Frank Huff of the Bluffton creamery.

Dec. 16, 1897, Bluffton News - Rasty “Dan” Levan of Findlay, an employee of the American Nitro Glycerin Co., was blown to fragments in a glycerin explosion in Radner one day last week. He leaves a wife and two sons.

July 1899, Bluffton News - A number of citizens were awakened about midnight Monday night by a shock as a nitro-glycerine explosion or an earthquake. Up to the time of going to press we have be unable to learn the cause of the shock, but whatever it was, there was power behind it as houses were shaken and window panes and dishes rattled as though the buildings were coming down.

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