Friday, Aug. 3, 1917
Two Troy men have a lucky escape today when their truck is hit by a freight train at the Grand Street crossing, The Record reports. J. P. Carroll and Harold Pomeroy work for the Troy Auto Exchange. Their truck is headed down Grand Street just as the gate drops to allow a New York Central train through the crossing. “The driver of the car was unable to stop and attempted to turn north on the sidewalk to avoid a collision,” our reporter writes, “The turn was too short, however, and the car went over the curb and was struck by the engine and carried along for about one hundred feet before the engineer was able to bring the train to a stop.” Carroll and Pomeroy jump clear just before impact and are “somewhat bruised and shaken up,” while “some difficulty was experienced in extricating the wrecked automobile, which was wedged between the engine and a telegraphic pole.”
ANYONE BUT MORRIS
City Republican leaders have not yet given up on finding an alternative to Fourth War alderman George T. Morris for the Troy mayoral nomination. Morris, a maverick fiscal conservative, “is a serious obstacle to the fulfillment of the plans of the controlling coterie,” The Record reports. His early declaration of his candidacy has scared off others who don’t want to spend a lot of money or risk humiliation contesting a primary with Morris, whose “independent stand has made him friends” among the GOP rank and file.
The “controlling coterie,” reportedly led by former state prison superintendent Cornelius V. Collins and judge Wesley O. Howard, “are leaving nothing undone to obtain a candidate more suitable to their ideas and purposes.” The Republican nominee will most likely face three-term Democratic incumbent Cornelius F. Burns in the November general election.
Now that many mayoral hopefuls have dropped out, the controlling coterie “have virtually combed the business section of the city to search for a candidate who can defeat the alderman at the primary election.”
Their last best hope may be Eighth Ward businessman William D. O’Brien, brother of former Rensselaer County district attorney Jarvis P. O’Brien and “known to be well established in the graces of the leaders who are inquiring his willingness to make the race.”
GOP leaders expect to learn this weekend whether O’Brien will run or not, while they struggle to suppress another insurgency on the county level.
Supporters of Schaghticoke supervisor Alexander Diver deny rumors that he is abandoning his primary challenge to Buddington Sharpe, the leaders’ designated candidate for sheriff. They warn that attempts to get Diver to quit “would be futile.”