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Historian Marks 100th Anniversary of Glen Rock's Deadly Trolly Crash
Historian Phil Jaeger visits site of North Jersey Transit Railway accident that killed three near Prospect Street.
William Hutchinson was a 40 year-old motorman who operated a trolley car along the rails of the North Jersey Rapid Transit system. He was just a day from retirement. He was supposed to have retired the day before, but his boss Superintendent Francis Pilgrim, 41, had “prevailed upon him to work one more day” and on that day, July 21, 1911, Hutchinson would be killed in a trolley car collision. The collision occurred near the intersection of Prospect and Grove streets and behind where the Sri Guru Sing Sabah Inc. temple is located today.
The accident would claim the lives of the aforementioned Pilgrim and a fellow motorman, John Frotaillo, 21, and leave 12 people injured. The accident would ultimately prove to be the beginning of the end of the Rail System that connected Elmwood Park with Suffern, New York.
With the accident’s centennial anniversary less than three weeks away, historian Phil Jaegaer spoke with the Glen Rock Patch about the accident and how the Glen Rock surrounding communities reacted.
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“When this happened 100 years ago, this affected everyone,” said Jaeger. “Something like this did not occur regularly.”
Much of Jaeger’s information came from the book “Interurban Interlude” written by E. J. Quinby about the history of the North Jersey Rapid Transit Company.
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“Quinby was a former lineman with the transit company and I had bought his book over 40 years and I always wanted to trace where the Rapid Transit tracks had been,” he said and after having been a retired math teacher, he decided he walked from Elmwood Park to Suffern and found it to be an enlightening trip.
Since he retired, Jaeger, a resident of Cedar Grove, explored his love of local history with his books “Montclair: A Postcard Guide to Its Past” and “Images of America: Cedar Grove.” When not discussing the history of the North Jersey Rapid Transit, he regularly speaks on the Castle of New Jersey, New Jersey’s forgotten mills as well as deserted villages.
Yet he said the story of that tragic accident has a special place in his heart.
According to The New York Times, it was just after 3 p.m. when Hutchinson was “running downhill at about thirty miles an hour” and Hutchinson “had no reason to suppose the line was not clear.”
Quinby explained that a “severe lightning storm” had knocked out some of the signals and Pilgrim and Frotaillo left the Ridgewood station to begin making the necessary repairs. Hutchinson had been traveling northward from the direction of Elmwood Park “with a load of passengers that included [persons attending] a Sunday School picnic.”
After Hutchinson dropped off his passengers “he had every reason to expect that…he would be relieved at [the] Ho-Ho-Kus [station] where he would turn in his badge, collect his pay and say goodbye to the NJRT.”
But with the signals knocked out and because it was July and the vegetation was thick, neither cars saw the other until it was too late. A writer for The New York Times explained it “was impossible for him to see far ahead, as on either side of the track are woods and the road curves a great deal.” With Hutchinson’s vehicle traveling at a high rate speed and Pilgrim’s car matching the speed that “by the time the two motormen could see each other it was impossible to do anything to avert the accident.”
Hutchinson’s car was forced upwards and he was flung to the ceiling of the car and the first half dozen seats were toppled and he had been knocked unconscious and he would expire at 7:30 p.m. that evening. Poor Pilgrim would end the day having both legs amputated, and he would later die from his injuries at 5 p.m. and Frotaillo would die before he even made it to the hospital in Paterson.
The rest of the passengers were rushed to hospitals in Ridgewood and Paterson and were able to recover, but Jaeger explained that because of the settlements and lawsuits, the company was unable to pay its bills. He pointed out that Quinby said the settlements “exhausted [the NJRT’s] resources and selling the mid-Patrerson terminal site” but it would never recover.
“Perhaps this is the saddest event of all to occur to the NJRT,” said Jaeger. He said that he hopes his exploration of history will help bring back the sad day for the residents of Glen Rock to remember Hutchinson, along with Pilgrim and Frotaillo, and prevent them from becoming just a footnote to history.
