Nadawah scene of horrible train accident in September 1923

I look through old newspapers all the time, and one thing that often strikes me is how much safer things seem to be nowadays. That’s not to say that we still don’t have accidents from time to time, but they were frequent occurrences in the old days when safety standards were basically non-existent.

By way of example, I was reading the Sept. 27, 1923 edition of The Monroe Journal the other day and on the front page of that century-old newspaper, I saw the headline, “Train Wreck Is Fatal To Engineer Parnell: Burned When Pinned Beneath Engine, Dies In Selma.” Aside from the gruesome details of this story, it also contains much of interest to local history enthusiasts.

According to the story, 28-year-old B.H. Parnell was pinned under his overturned train engine for four hours when his train was wrecked at the junction of the Nadawah logging track and the Louisville & Nashville track. Parnell was finally extricated from beneath the “heavily laden” logging train “by being cut out with axes.” Parnell was pinned horribly with his legs about the boiler of the “superheated engine and was terribly burned.” His lower right leg was also completely crushed from knee to ankle.

The accident happened on a Friday – probably Sept. 21 – and Parnell was taken to a Selma hospital that night around 9 p.m. He died from his wounds the following day at 11 a.m. His wife was at his side when he passed away, and he left behind two small children, both under the age of five.

The story noted that Parnell had moved from Andalusia to Nadawah about four years before the accident. The story indicated that he was buried at Nadawah on Sun., Sept. 23, but I could find no record of his burial site among local burial records.

Many modern readers may be unfamiliar with the old Nadawah community, which faded from prominence with the decline of small sawmills and logging railroads. Most maps show that “downtown” Nadawah was located northeast of Beatrice, less than a mile from the Monroe-Wilcox County line. Through the woods, Nadawah is also close to Chestnut and McWilliams.

According to “Place Names in Alabama” by Virginia O. Foscue, Nadawah was founded as a sawmill town and was named for the Nadawah Lumber Co. According to “Alabama Logging Railroads” by W. George Cook, the Nadawah Lumber Co. operated 15 miles of standard-gauge railway from 1912 to 1928. It was at the junction of this railway and the larger L&N Railroad that Parnell’s fatal accident occurred.

I have to admit that, as best that I can remember, I have never been through Nadawah before. Modern maps show that Nadawah Road runs from State Highway 21 North and on up into Wilcox County. This road will take you over Flat Creek as well as the old railbed that ran between McWilliams and Corduroy. Maybe one day soon, I will take a field trip up there to see the place for myself.