Search Continues for Missing Skamokawa Boy
A young child is presumed drowned after wandering near the rain-swollen Skamokawa Creek.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Bennie, the 7-year-old son of Mr. Charles Stanard, a prosperous farmer of Skamokawa Creek, has been missing since Sunday afternoon, and is now given up for drowned. When last seen he was following his father, who was going to see a neighbor. Mr. Stanard ordered the boy home, and supposed he obeyed, and was surprised on returning home himself to find the child missing. The alarm was given, and ever since the neighborhood has been hunting for the child in the creek, but up to a late hour this evening no trace of him could be found. The heavy rains of the past few days have turned the creek into rapid water courses, and it is supposed little Bennie has been throwing pieces of wood into the creek to see them whirl past, and that he has ventured too near and fallen in. The creek is bringing down tons of sediment, and it is thought his body may lodge in some eddy or against some obstruction.
“The creek is bringing down tons of sediment, and it is thought his body may lodge in some eddy.”
Seasonal flooding remains a persistent danger in Washington's rural creek valleys, as it was in 1893 when the region faced heavy autumn rains.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.