The Tribune, Anadarko
October 28, 1915

FATALLY INJURED BY TRAIN
Lafayette Noland of This City the Victim

Lafayette Noland of this city was fatally injured about 6:00 last Thursday afternoon by the eastbound Rock Island passenger train. The place of contact was a short distance west of the second bridge across the Washita River west of this city. It appears that the "cowcatcher" threw him clear of the track, but not without breaking his right leg in two places and battering his scalp in two or three places, though, as far as we can learn, without fracturing the skull. The injured man died at 11:25 that night at his home here; he having been brought to this city on the train that ran into him.

Mr. Noland had been plowing on the day of this occurrence on the farm of James Farren, just east of the railroad bridge and had finished the day's work and started to the home of his son, Samuel T. Noland and family, a short distance west of the same bridge, where he expected to eat supper. But he failed to reach there. Samuel T., who furnishes us the data for this article is not clear as to why his father did not hear the rumbling of the train as it approached him, for his father's hearing, he states, was acute. He is disposed to account for the seeming lapse of hearing on the theory that, as the train was late for half or three-quarters of an hour--there about 6:00, when it should have been at the Anadarko station at 5:30--it was probably that his father thought the train had passed and was meditating along entirely different lines. At the Samuel T. Noland house, supper was held. Then, after a little while, there was a rustle and two men were observed and then it was that the awful light of what had occurred dawned upon the family. Samuel T. came to town on horseback arriving here at about 8:00. (The train had come on east before he knew of his father's death) A daughter of the deceased, Mrs. Grace Williams, was also at the home here, as was Miss Blanche, a daughter of Samuel T. Noland.

Undertaker Gish had charge of the burial arrangements. Owing to the desire to affort to absent relatives who might wish to attend the funeral services the privilege of doing so, burial was postponed until Sunday afternoon. The funeral sermon was preached by Rev. I. W. Armstrong at 2:00 at the family home on the south side of Oklahoma Avenue, between Second and Third streets. His text was taken from II Samuel 14:14. There was a large attendance at the funeral, as well as at the interment which took place in the Anadarko Cemetery. Flowers were present in profusion--the symbol of the relationship of the life that is with the life to be as reflected in the highest strain of civilzation on this planet.

The deceased was 59 years of age. He and his wife, who survives, were the parents of eight children, all, so far as is known, yet living. There is one whose place of residence is not known to the others, this is Howard Allen Noland. The others are Samuel T, Anadarko; Charles Frederick, Forest City, Missouri; Fran Austin, Page, Nebraska; Clyde Foster, Page, Nebraska; James Marion, Page Nebraska; Mrs. O. E. Plummer, Forest City, Missouri; Mrs. Grace Williams, Anadarko.

Samuel T. Noland would have The Tribune voice his thanks to Dr. Hume, Dr. Williams and Dr. Taylor, all of whom worked heroically to try to save his father.