Accident Adds to Family's Unfortunate Luck

By Margaret Leidy Harner from her book One Day at a Time: A Social History of Boyertown, PA.

July 8, 1913: Leonard Moyer, age 11, has fallen from an ice wagon, sustaining injuries that might prove fatal. A rear wheel of the wagon passed over his abdomen, fracturing several ribs and rupturing his intestines.

The accident occurred at the corner of reading Avenue and Sixth Street while Len was holding the reins, when the horses suddenly started and the jolt threw him out of the wagon, between the wheels. He was taken to his father’s house on South Reading Avenue, where he lies in critical condition.

The wagon weights 2500 pounds and was carrying 700 pounds of ice. (Households got daily deliveries of ice at that time for their “ice boxes,” a precursor of the refrigerator.)

It was later reported that Leonard was doing better, although in a lot of pain, and was expected to have a full recovery. Tragedy has dogged his family; his sister Gladys had a limb amputated after being crushed in a railroad accident and his mother Alice perished in 1908 in the Rhoads Opera House Fire.

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