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- Edgerton Reporter, Thursday, April 26, 1951
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Last Friday morning a steam boiler used for steaming tobacco beds exploded taking the lives of two Indian Ford residents, Arthur Witt and Walter Roll, and injured another man, Herman Witt, brother of Arthur. After being treated at Memorial hospital, Herman Witt was discharged last Sunday.
The accident was one of the most unusual recorded in this area for years. The violent blow-up threw the bodies of the men who lost their lives completely over a 35-foot tobacco shed, across a highway and into a field hundreds of feet away.
The boiler, estimated to weigh a ton, went in the same direction, digging a deep hole in a pasture where it landed, 375 feet away. The two bodies and the boiler were tossed so high in the air that they not only cleared the shed, but soared over a roadside power line.
Mrs. Witt, mother of Arthur, was standing in the farm yard at the home and witnessed the explosion.
Arthur Witt, owner of the machine, and Roll were standing on the wheels of a trailer upon which the boiler was mounted when the explosion happened. The entire boiler section of the machine flew into the air, carrying them with it. The rear part of the boiler, including rear wheels of the trailer, were tossed in the opposite direction.
The engine, converted from an old steam threshing machine, was being fired up to steam tobacco plants on the Witt farm. Another boiler of similar type, was nearby. Witt made a business for years in the leaf growing area around Edgerton and owned six outfits of the kind which exploded Friday. The seed beds for young tobacco plants are heated with live steam to kill seeds of weeds or grass and insects which might case damage.
It was Roll's first day for this season as an employe[e] of Witt in the steaming process.
Herman Witt, who was fortunate in escaping with only minor injuries, was only a few feet away when the explosion occurred, standing between the boiler and a water tank wagon. He was thrown in the [opposite] direction from the other two men, landing in a plowed field. In the same vicinity, 100 feet from the explosion, were the rear wheels of the trailer upon which the boiler had been mounted. Parts of the firebox and rear of the boiler were scattered over a wide area in nearby fields.
Herman Witt, 44, suffered only superficial burns, a sprained ankle, some shock and had cinders blown under the skin in a number of places.
