100 years ago in The Saratogian
Thursday, May 10, 1917
A Saratoga Springs woman is killed this evening when a car swerves into the vehicle she’s taking out for a test drive with her children on the Schuylerville State Road, The Saratogian reports.
Investigators believe that Abbie Wright of 12 Avery Street died almost instantly when the impact of the collision knocked her Packard demonstration car off an embankment. The Packard is driven by Charles A. Welch, a salesman for the RossKetchum garage. In the car with Wright and Welch are Wright’s three daughters and two of their friends, Charles H. Freeman and Ruth Louber. Wright’s husband, John J. Wright, is the local freight agent for the Boston & Maine railroad.
Tonight’s drive was the second test drive of the Packard for the Wright family. John J. Wright had taken a test drive himself some time earlier.
Welch tells reporters that he was five miles out of town when he “noticed a car approaching which was going in a zig-zag manner from one side of the highway to the other.” Seeing the other car at the same time, Abbie Wright advises Welch to pull over on the right side of the road.
At the wheel of the other car is Elmer E. Baker of Grangerville, a former representative of the Town of Saratoga on the county board of supervisors. Riding with him are two of his farmhands, Sylvester Billings and Michael Mezera. They’re returning from Cold Brook Farm when the accident takes place.
Speaking through his physician, Dr. W. B. Webster, Baker tells reporters that he was blinded by Welch’s headlights and unable to see where he was going. He recalls telling Mezera, “I guess he isn’t going to dim.”
Welch claims that he dimmed his lights and sounded his horn as he pulled over. He had brought the Packard almost to a complete stop when Baker’s fivepassenger Reo “turned suddenly to the left and crashed into the side of our car with sufficient force to push the right wheels off the edge of the embankment, causing the machine to tip over on its side.”
Wright apparently panics as the Reo veers toward her party. Welch says that she had opened the passenger-side door and was “just getting out when the crash came.” Investigators believe that “had Mrs. Wright remained in the machine her life would have been saved.” Instead, she’s pinned under the overturned Packard, suffering a fractured skull, a crushed chest and a broken leg.
Baker was treated for temporary insanity last year at the McCarty Hospital. After the accident, Saratogian writers hear unconfirmed reports that Baker had relapsed recently.