Stephen Collins Foster, perhaps America's most famous popular song writer at the time, had died the week before in New York City's Bellevue Hospital. The train transporting his remain to his Pittsburgh home for burial derailed in central Pennsylvania and threw several cars down an embankment. The coffin was undamaged in the incident and his funeral service was held in Pittsburgh's Trinity Episcopal Church, four days later. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Ken Emerson, Doo-dah!: Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 301.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Crime/Disasters
