A Widow’s Gritty Resolve in the Chehalis Wilderness
After her husband was crushed by a falling tree in the remote woods, a woman used a saw to free his body and kept vigil alone through the night.
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.
Mail advices from Chehalis, W. T., are that W. H. Terry, a farmer, living near the head of Chehalis river, was killed on Thursday by a tree which he was cutting down falling upon him. Not returning home his wife started in search and found the body. No neighbors were within two miles, so she got a saw, cut a section out of the log, freed the body and dragged it home, remaining with it all night. Terry arrived at Chehalis from Indiana last summer, and was a hardworking, honest man.
“No neighbors were within two miles, so she got a saw, cut a section out of the log, freed the body and dragged it home, remaining with it all night.”
This account captures the extreme isolation of early homesteading life in Washington. While the physical geography of the Chehalis valley remains largely the same, the 'two miles to the nearest neighbor' scale of life has been replaced by modern infrastructure and emergency services.
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