Alfred Cragin, Killed by the Explosion of a Cannon

Every fourth of July, I think about Cragin Cousin Alfred. I found news of his death on a July, 1895 front page of the (Fitchburg, Mass.) Sentinel years ago when researching Eleanor Norcross. My copy is totally gray, so here's a transcription (by the way, this gets quite graphic and gory):
"Alfred, the 13-years-old son of Mr. and Mrs. C.W. Cragin, met with a frightful death at his home on Franklin road, West Fitchburg, Thursday afternoon, by the explosion of a cannon. All the morning the young fellow had been celebrating with the cannon which was simply an axle box from an old wagon wheel, with one end plugged up."

Okay, me again. You have to applaud the lad for having that Cragin farmer-mechanic ability to adapt a tool. But celebrating all morning? Let's continue...

Shortly after 2 o'clock in the afternoon, the boy took the cannon just across the road from the house and placed it, loaded, on a stone. In lighting the fuse a spark dropped in the powder and a frightful explosion followed. His two brothers were witnesses of the scene from the doorway of the house, and running over found him lying with his forehead crushed in and his brains oozing out of the wound. It was a terrible sight and the effects on the young lad's mother, who rushed to the spot immediately can well be imagined. Dr. Pierson was summoned at once and found a gash three and one half inches long and over an inch wide on the left side of the forehead. The lower jaw was broken and the mouth and tongue were badly cut by the flying pieces. It was apparent at once that death was only a matter of a few hours and he was unconscious til he died at 6:30 pm. The mother is nearly heart-broken over the blow and has the sympathy of the entire community. Alfred was one of the brightest pupils in the eighth grade of the Ashburnham Street school, and was universally loved by teachers and pupils."

This totally kills me ever ytime. Aside from the part about Alfred playing with gunpowder, I wonder what his brothers were thinking? Ralph would have been 20 and Ray 17. Where were they when he was fooling around? I'm assuming they lived on a farm (Franklin Road still is quite rural, despite recent construction of gigantic condovillages). So the boys would have been out in the fields? Or, because it was the 4th, perhaps they were all taking the day off.

I looked up Alfred in the genealogy, and I'll look at a city directory to see where on Franklin Road the house can be found (we live not far from this neighborhood, oddly enough). The brothers who survived were Ralph and Ray. Ralph became a chef and Ray became a railroad postal clerk, running from Syracuse to New York. But Alfred's mother was an interesting character and my next entry will probably be about Mary Josephine Eaton Cragin who, it turns out, was a poet! But my heart goes out to her still, to have lost two children (another son died in infancy).