On the eastern edge of Girard Cemetery, you’ll find an unusual headstone featuring a century-and-a-half-old consumer tip, of sorts. And talk about tragic irony.
The epitaph reads: “In memory of Ellen Shannon, age 26 years, who was fatally burned Mar. 21, 1870 by the explosion of a lamp filled with R.E. Danforth’s non explosive burning fluid.”
he fire occurred at Shannon’s workplace, the Girard Hotel, which stood on the northeast corner of Rice Avenue and East Main Street.
In the 1960s an older, broken stone with the same wording was replaced by the current one by Girard historian Hazel Kibler, who died in 1973 at age 89, said Stephanie Wincik, past president of the West County Historical Society.
Wincik said Kibler wanted to preserve Girard’s past, even the strange stuff. “She was very interested in all these weird things in history,” Wincik said. “She would think (the epitaph) was cool.”
The Shannon headstone is interesting, but R.E. Danforth’s non-explosive burning fuel might have been flat-out dangerous.
According to the La Crosse (Wisconsin) Tribune, there is evidence that R.E. Danforth’s stuff might have been the cause of a fire — also in 1870 — that destroyed the War Eagle steamship. At least six died when the vessel burned and sunk where it was docked just north of La Crosse on the Black River.
From a 2015 Tribune article:
“In spring 1870, Danforth’s oil was a relatively new product in an unregulated marketplace. Without safety testing, manufacturers could experiment with and sell highly flammable, unstable oils. New York City’s Board of Health conducted a review of Danforth’s Non-Explosive Petroleum Fluid the same year that the War Eagle burned and concluded that the New York-based product was no less than a ‘murderous oil.'”
Ellen Shannon of Girard and the people of La Crosse would have agreed. {Read}