A fraternity stunt went horribly awry on the evening of Oct. 28, 1905, just outside Gambier, Ohio. Kenyon College freshman Stewart (also spelled Stuart in many sources) Pierson was killed by a train on the railroad trestle over the Kokosing River near Gambier. The accident happened because a train should not have been there, and the fraternity members were unaware that an engine could be sent up the line for maintenance. It was a fatal mistake. The students rushed Pierson’s body to the home of Kenyon College president Rev. William Peirce. Part II of this story was published on Oct. 8, 2022. Part I of this story was published on Oct. 1, 2022.
Kenyon College president Rev. William Peirce immediately summoned Kenyon College’s physician, Dr. Irvin S. Workman, and an undertaker. Newspaper reports are vague, but somehow Newbold Pierson was informed of his son’s death.
Pierson, accustomed to being in charge, announced that he was going to take his son home to Cincinnati for burial, and he wanted to be able to tell his wife about her son’s death in person, before she would read about it in the newspaper.
Dr. Peirce agreed, and they contacted the railroad to arrange a special train to come to Mount Vernon and pick up the father and the body of his late son. Kenyon alumnus and Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity member Charles F. Colville volunteered to accompany the Piersons on the train.
After Dr. Workman’s examination and the preparation of young Pierson’s body by Undertaker Wright, there was a period of waiting until the special train arrived. The body was loaded onto a wagon and taken to Mount Vernon, where the train arrived at 4 a.m. Stu Pierson left Knox County forever, but a century-long controversy was about to erupt.
Early Sunday morning, the evidence of what had happened on the railroad trestle was horrifyingly obvious. Dr. Peirce deputized a group of students to clean the bridge of blood and gore. Only after this was done did Peirce finally contact Knox County authorities and inform them of what had happened.
Knox County coroner Dr. William W. Scarbrough and prosecutor Lot C. Stillwell were furious.
Not only had there been a substantial delay in their being informed of the situation, the body of the victim had been removed from the county and the scene of the incident had already been cleaned up.
Coroner Scarborough said that this conduct was unacceptable, and he boarded the next train to Cincinnati. Other Knox County officials wired the Cincinnati police so that detectives could meet Scarbrough and assist him in his own examination of Stewart Pierson’s body.
In Cincinnati, Dr. Scarbrough was joined by Detectives Crim and Kuhfers from the Cincinnati police. They went to the Pierson family home in the College Hill neighborhood of Cincinnati Monday morning. They were not happy with what they found.
Detective Crim noted deep scars and bruises on the right wrist and left ankle. The right hand was nearly torn from its socket. Rope fibers were found on the body. Scarbrough and the detectives believed that these signs indicated young Pierson had been tied with a rope.
Dr. Scarbrough informed Newbold Pierson that he intended to hold a “rigid investigation,” and that Pierson would be asked to testify in an inquest. Pierson replied that the coroner should do whatever he felt was right, and that he would assist in any way possible.
What Pierson did, instead, was to issue a statement in the newspaper exonerating the college and fraternity and saying that he firmly believed his son was not tied to the tracks.
Dr. Scarbrough and prosecutor Stillwell were joined by Sheriff Clements and Mount Vernon police chief Dermody in the inquest, which ran for several days and called on numerous people involved in the case to testify. On Saturday morning, Nov. 11, 1905, Dr. Scarbrough issued his final ruling.
“The testimony establishes beyond a question of doubt that Stewart L. Pierson was lying about 20 feet west of the abutment between the rails of the main track of the C. A. & C. Railway company west of Gambier station. From the condition of the body of the said Stewart Pierson, which I examined after the same had been sent out of Knox County to Cincinnati, and from which examination I found evidence of having been bound or tied at the wrist and at the ankles, and which in conjunction with all of the evidence adduced, I find therefore that the said Stewart Pierson was either tied fast to the railroad track or railroad ties or otherwise bound and tied in such manner that he could not extricate himself from his perilous position, and while so tied or bound in that manner, was run over by an engine and tender going west on said railroad, which struck him while lying flat between the rails of the main track on said bridge, and in that manner met his death.”
Scarbrough said the evidence was clear, and that the only reason the inquest took so long was because he was trying to ascertain who the guilty parties were that tied up Pierson.
Due to the answers he received, and the removal of the boy’s body, and the cleanup of the bridge site, Scarbrough said that it was impossible to determine who was at fault, and that it was unlikely the case would be submitted to the grand jury for prosecution.
That was a generous act by the county officials, who likely recognized that the guilt the fraternity brothers felt was a punishment in its own right. Questions of legal liability of the fraternity and college were never addressed.
Meanwhile, the story exploded not just nationally, but internationally. The incident was cited as a prime example of fraternity hazing run amok. Newspapers around the world ran satirical cartoons exaggerating the circumstances, and would continue doing so for years. In the following months and years, the case in fact led the United States’ first anti-hazing laws.
These laws are still tested today by situations that sometimes spiral out of control on college campuses. Fraternities and institutions of higher learning have been called upon to better supervise such events, to protect the safety of involved students.
The Pierson case, though, had special resonance. The fraternity involved was no minor entity. The Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity was in fact the leading such organization in the United States, and it boasted many prominent members, including none other than the then-sitting president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt.
Many powerful mover and shakers rushed to defend the fraternity’s name.
Kenyon College, already an august institution in those days, was nonetheless a small and vulnerable one. Boasting a student body of only 148 young men in the 1905/1906 school year, the bad publicity of this hazing incident would send enrollment plunging into the double digits before it began slowly recovering.
In the chaotic aftermath of Pierson’s death, the small college was in jeopardy of folding.
The one ace that Kenyon had up its sleeve was an impressive collection of alumni with social and legal influence. They began a letter-writing campaign to both local and national media, denouncing the local authorities and portraying them as semi-professional country folk.
Kenyon’s legal allies droned on at length in a series of articles that were compiled and published as an actual book.
Not surprisingly, they also agreed that Stewart Pierson could not possibly have been tied on or to the railroad tracks, and that the local officials were not competent enough to determine otherwise. And, what’s more, via further publications, alumni bulletins, and, in more recent years via the internet, the college has controlled the narrative and has continued to paint the incident as an unfortunate case of a sleepy student falling asleep in a dangerous location, and that’s where it remained for the next 100 years.
A reexamination of the case, however, overturned that version of the events when a journalist for the Mount Vernon News began an in-depth exploration of the case in 2009, with help from modern forensics.
Your present author is in a good position to talk about that later investigation, because I was that journalist. What I found was to ruffle a few feathers.
NEXT WEEK: Modern forensics reveals startling details about the Stewart Pierson case, uncovering the true horror of what happened on the Gambier railroad trestle that dark fall night in 1905.
