Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

Some years ago, I had occasion to go through a lot of the old coroner inquests. Page by page. You’d think this would be tedious, but….Oh, hell, I’m not going to lie. It was tedious. But it was also sort of fascinating, though I don’t know that anyone but myself would say that. And I noticed something interesting.

In the earlier days of the county—Say, 1800s and early 1900s—There were two main causes of death: Trains and drowning. (This refers to the deaths that required an inquest, mind you—People still died plenty of old age and sickness.) But drowning and train accidents were the biggest of the accidental deaths.

I thought of this recently when a friend of mine asked me to look into 837 East Main Street in Lock Haven. I did what I do, and dug through the old city directories and archives, and I discovered it was the home of the Wier family back in the early 1900s.

Henry Wier was an electrical engineer with PP&L. He married Barbara Brock, and the two of them had several children. They built their home at 837 East Main, the perfect place to raise a family.

One baby, Harry Wier, died at two days old in 1916, which was tragic but not uncommon back then. He was buried in Dunnstown Cemetery. Surely, the parents grieved, which is understandable.

Their son Ernest was born on Christmas Eve of 1901. By all accounts, he was a decent and popular kid. He had a close circle of friends throughout his teens.

It was June 12, 1920 when the tragedy happened.

Ernest and some of his friends had gone swimming. They went up to Bald Eagle Creek, near Flemington. Along with Ernest were his friends Bertha Brown, Caroline McGinness, and Laura Darrow, Norman Probst, and Hogan Seasholtz. All of this was reported meticulously on the front page of the Clinton County Times on June 18.

“All the party could swim,” reported the Times. “The young ladies entered the water first and were wading in the shallow water when Miss Brown happened to step in a deep hole, losing her footing and sinking out of sight. The other young ladies went to her rescue and in their efforts to help each other all three became helpless.”

So one near-drowning quickly became three. The boys were changing into swimsuits just up the creek and out of sight, and there had been a certain amount of noise already, as teens having fun usually will do. It was only when Ernest took a look that he realized the three girls were struggling in the water, and a disaster was about to happen.

He dived in to help. Ernest hadn’t yet changed out of his clothes, so he was weighed down considerably by the water saturating them. (Clothes in 1920 were pretty heavy to begin with.) He got Laura and Caroline out of the water and went back for Barbara.

He lifted her from the water, but was exhausted and unable to get her to shore. He shouted for assistance, and Norman Probst grabbed her and got her to shore. Ernest sank out of sight, and they couldn’t find him.
An hour later, his body turned up. He’d drowned while rescuing his friends.

Ernest was buried in Dunnstown Cemetery, by his brother. Some years later, his parents were buried in the plot, as well. There’s a monument to the family there. Ernest Weir was young, but he died a hero. As the Times understated,” The young people showed excellent courage in assisting each other and it is unfortunate that one should lose his life after bravely battling for others.”