You have found my great uncle Wilson. Uncle Wilson was a wonderful man, talented Engineer who worked for Celanese. I have his sliderule that my father Raymond (also an engineer) gave me when I graduated engineering school.
Uncle Wilson's father, my great grandfather was Wilson MacFarlane, born in Scotland and emigrated to the US via Philadelphia in 1904. Sadly, he died at the age of 33 in Scranton PA. Here is the source and the news (translated from a local German language paper)
Scranton Weeksheet. Volume (Scranton, Pa.) 1865-1918, February 01, 1912, Image 1
Image and text provided by Penn State University Libraries; University Park, PA
Persistent link:
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86053936/1912-02-01/ed-1/seq-1/ Translated from German:
"The 12-year-old Mabelle McFarlane of Greenridge Road returned home from school on Monday afternoon, To stop her father Wilson McFarlane, as he told his wife that he would leave and not return. The child asked the father not to continue, but to stay and work here, so that the mother and the other five children would be taken care of, but McFarlane did not pay any attention and went out to the road and to the railway crossing. The daughter followed. The man wanted to cross the crossroads, and at the same time a train came thundering; The girl, who had clung to his pant leg, could still jump off the rails at an early stage, but McFarlane was hit and crushed by the wheels. He was an Englishman, 33 years old, and formerly in the Allis Chalmer's works, but in the end without work, and had been drinking for a few days."
The Allis Chalmers company went bankrupt in January 1912 closing its doors. In those days there was no unemployment insurance and it must have been devastating. I would like to believe he pushed the little girl to safety and lost his own life...
