Wabash Obituary Lesson: Hour after buying that Ticket [1899]

Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. James 4:14

As he purchased that Ticket that Sabbath afternoon how was he to know that an hour later he would be gasping his last breath on the train?

"THOMAS W McCLURE
Death of Lieut. McClure.
WABASH, Ind., Nov. 13.—News was received here today of the sudden death Saturday evening of Lieut. Thomas W. McClure, long a resident of Wabash but who lately has been making his home. In Chicago. 

 

--He had been In Arkansas on a business trip and at Rogersburg,

Mo., Saturday afternoon bought a ticket to Chicago and boarded a chair car. 

--An hour later he was discovered prostrated in his seat, and had barely strength to gasp that he had written his name on a piece of paper in his pocket, and then fell back dead. 

--His body was taken from the train, placed in a casket and sent to his wife. 

 

Mr. McClure was for many years a prominent resident of Wabash and served two terms as councilman from the Second ward. He was born Oct. 4. 1833. in Fountain county, Ohio. 

He moved to Wabash in 1858; and at the opening of the war joined the Fourteenth Indiana Battery. Later he became second lieutenant of the First Alabama Heavy Artillery, composed of Negroes. 

He was with these soldiers' at the massacre at Fort Pillow, April 21,1864, and heard the order by General Forrest to spare neither whites nor blacks. The subordinate officers did not obey the instruction, however, and Lieutenant McClure was one of the five, of the nineteen officers, who escaped the sword. 

Mr. McCIure has lived several years in Chicago. Death, it is presumed, was due to heart disease.
Date: 1899-11-15; Paper: Indiana State Journal"