Baldwinsville (N.Y) Gazette, March 12, 1964
Cleverley Recalls Cannon Firing at Jordan Tree
Olin
Cleverley,
Warners resident, called The Gazette by telephone recently to remind residents of an incident that occurred at Jordan near the New York Central tracks at the time that the Abraham Lincoln funeral train passed through
enroute between Washington, D.C., and the martyred president's final resting place in his home state of Illinois.
The story had been passed down through the years in Jordan that a group of crack artillerymen home on leave at Jordan fired a cannon as the Lincoln train passed through that community and that the ball from the cannon lodged in an elm tree on the Otis farm.
When that tree was taken down, a piece of the tree containing the old cannonball was saved and kept in the old Jordan High School for many years.
What brought the story to mind, Mr.
Cleverley stated, was the recent article appearing in The Gazette which was a story appearing in the papers of the late Miss Sophia
Voorhees of
Baldwinsville which had described how residents living along the New York Central tracks at
Warners had attached flax to sticks and soaked the flax in kerosene. When the Lincoln train passed through, the flax was lit and formed a colorful avenue of light in the darkness between which the funeral train passed.
Visit this website to view the chronology for the train:
http://www.fortklock.com/lincolntrains.htmThank you George B.
