A Rancher, a Falling Fir, and a Daughter's Terrible Discovery
F. O. Hall was clearing land at Vaughn Bay when a lodged tree came down; his nine-year-old found him beneath it.
Tacoma, May 5.—Special.—F. O. Hall, a prominent rancher of Vaughn Bay, was struck and instantly killed by a falling tree on his farm early last evening.
Mr. Hall was engaged in clearing land in an isolated part of the ranch. He felled a huge fir tree, but as it neared the ground it caught in the branches of a still larger monarch of the forest and stuck there. Mr. Hall, in order to release it, commenced chopping the larger tree. A stiff breeze springing up at the time dislodged the half-fallen fir and brought it tumbling to the ground. Mr. Hall dropped his axe and started to run, but was caught by a huge branch, his skull crushed and he was killed.
Some time after the accident Minnie Hall, the nine-year-old daughter of the deceased, came to call her father home to dinner. She found him dead and crushed to the earth under the tree.
Her shrieks alarmed the neighbors, who came and bore the body to the house. Today friends chartered the steamer Susie and came to Tacoma for a coffin. The interment will take place probably tomorrow.
The deceased had long been a resident of the county and was well known here. He was about 56 years old and leaves a widow and five children. One of his daughters is the wife of Deputy County Assessor Levi Vail Klyeke and resides in this city.
“She found him dead and crushed to the earth under the tree.”
Land clearing was routine work in 1890s Washington, and the hazards of felling and bucking timber were part of rural life. The detail of a child finding her father is the kind of intimate tragedy that rarely makes official history but fixes a place in memory. Modern logging safety rules exist because this era produced so many such deaths.
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