July 16, 1894 – In the midst of the Pullman strike
Light Battery F, Second Artillery, is proceeding down Grand Boulevard, today’s
Dr. Martin Luther King Drive, escorted by a cavalry escort, when disaster
strikes. The Chicago Daily Tribune reports the following day, “ . . . going at a
gentle trot over a smooth boulevard a shell somewhere in one of the ammunition
chests exploded, the detonation set off all the cartridges and all the rest of
the shrapnel shells—a storm of powder and leaden balls and scraps of iron
sufficient to stop the charge of a brigade of cavalry. There was first the booming, deafening crash
of the power; it smashed every bit of glass in the neighborhood, jarred the
whole southern side of the city, tore the caisson that had held it into bits of
twisted iron and splinters of oak, crushed the life out of the four horses
attached to it and to the gun following.
Two cannoneers had been sitting on the ammunition chest that exploded
first. Their comrades found the
fragments of them, one to the right, one to the left, 150 yards away. They did not look as if they had ever been
men.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 17, 1894] The men had left camp that morning for a
25-mile ride along the city’s boulevards to exercise the horses, learn more of
the streets of the south side of the city and to convey the image that in the
midst of the labor crisis the troops were there to maintain order. Joseph Gaylor, Edward Doyle, and Jeremiah
Donovan are buried at Fort Sheridan, where their graves can still be found
today. Relatives claim the body of Private Fred Stoltz, and his remains are
sent home to Sago, Michigan. The photo above shows Grand Boulevard about a half-dozen years after the tragic event.
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