This day in The Record in 1916

Saturday, August 26, 1916

A Brunswick farm worker is killed at the Middleburgh Street grade crossing this afternoon when a Boston & Maine train smashes his wagon, the weekend Sunday Budget reports.

John Seband works for Augustus Mittlestead. The two men are driving horse-drawn wagons into Troy when the accident takes place around 2:30 p.m. Mittlestead’s wagon, on which his wife is riding, crosses the track first. Seband is right behind, with an unidentified boy on board his wagon.

“He had, however, but little time to spare in avoiding the fate which befell Seband, who immediately followed,” the Budget’s reporter writes.

“Persons who saw the train coming shouted to Seband to hold back, but the warning came too late. The boy on the wagon with him, however, had presence of mind enough to jump, and he escaped injury. The locomotive of the train struck Seband’s wagon about in the center, the horses being thrown by the collision but not seriously hurt.”

The driver’s seat is the worst possible spot to be in at that moment. Sparing no details, the reporter writes that Seband is “thrown under the wheels of the engine, both of his arms being cut off and his skull crushed. He died instantly.”

Seband’s death demonstrates “the deadly danger of the railroad grade crossing.” A coroner’s inquest “may, appropriately, be the occasion for an emphatic demand for the elimination of the dangerous grade crossing, a demand made many times, but without result.”

BASEBALL BENEFIT

The Laureate Boat Club hosts a benefit this afternoon for soldiers from Troy’s Thirteenth Ward currently stationed on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Mayor Cornelius F. Burns is on hand to toss out the first ball for a baseball game between the Boat Club and the Goats, a neighborhood squad. The crowd of “over 600 persons” reported by the Budget is larger than the turnout for most Troy home games this year, while the city still had a New York State League franchise.

“There was a lot of fun if not of fine work in the ball game,” a sportswriter reports, “and every one on the ground became an enthusiastic fan, including the ladies.”

Former minor-league star Jack Evers presides as umpire as the Laureates beat the Goats, 7-5.

The Goats also field a basketball team that plays St. Peter’s Lyceum. It’s not the Goats’ day in any sport, it seems, as they fall to the Lyceum, 14-13. Along with the sports action, there’s “a fine program of vocal music.” The day’s events were “enjoyable from start to finish, and netted a handsome sum which will help make the men at the front happy.”