Parachute daredevil of 1904
by Brennan Engle
Recently, in reviewing archives, we came across a letter written to and published in the Phillips County Review by Mrs. James Hardin, of Moberly, Missouri, in 1963.
Hardin described a unique memory of growing up in Phillipsburg as a child. Hardin told of a hot air balloon ascension, “and a little lady in pink tights and ballet skirt” who parachuted from the balloon to her death in the Rock Island Lake, located just north of the present-day city limits of Phillipsburg.
The lake was a source of water for decades for the many steam engines that traveled the Rock Island Railroad, and was used to water livestock during rail transport.
Hardin’s writing piqued our interest, so we looked into it. Turns out her memory was quite accurate.
In September 1904, Phillipsburg held its first-ever “street fair and carnival” in the downtown area. The nearly week-long event included a horticultural and agricultural best-of-show competition with local merchants donating prizes for winning entries. Brass bands from Phillipsburg and Stuttgart were also on hand. Some major politicians even came to town. A serving U.S. senator, former governor, and candidate for governor visited during the week, giving speeches.
Carnival attractions were brought in by an outside company, including a contortionist, tight rope walker/trapeze artist, steam powered carousel, moving pictures, trained dogs, vaudeville act, shooting gallery, and fossil museum.
A man from Downs was on hand to perform a “dead fall” act each night, jumping from a ladder 65 feet into a net below, among the onlookers. The most anticipated and advertised attraction was a “balloon ascension and parachute leap.”
This was a common attraction at fairs and festivals in the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries, where a solo performer ascended in a hot air balloon, typically suspended from a single bar, then parachuted to the ground.
The performer slated to engage in this daring feat in Phillipsburg was Mrs. Ona (Van Auken) Hendricks, wife of the carnival organizer, Silas B. Hendricks. Both were employed with the traveling show.
The balloon launch was scheduled to occur several nights, but due to windy weather wasn’t held until Friday night of the festival week. The balloon was launched near the northeast corner of the square at 6:30 p.m., where Mrs. Hendricks kissed her husband and rose with the balloon, waved, and called down, “Hurrah for Roosevelt. Hurrah for Teddy!” (Theodore Roosevelt was president at the time.)
News reports stated the balloon went off “like a rocket,” ascending to about 2,000 feet.
At the appropriate height, she jumped with her parachute and fell 300 feet before the parachute inflated. The crowd watched as she gently descended and drifted northward until out of sight.
Her husband and a few close friends became “struck with terror” when they realized she was going to land in the Rock Island Lake. The lake, or “pond” as it was also referred to, had been installed by the Rock Island Railroad by damming creeks just east of the railyards in 1895. The pond no longer exists, but was located immediately north of the city limits, a mile west of the present-day Amber Wave plant.
Mrs. Hendricks landed in the deepest part of the lake, at a depth of 20 feet. By the time help could reach her, she was underwater and trapped in the mesh and material of the parachute.
Two men, Edward Pratt and Benjamin Thomas, obtained a boat and rowed out to retrieve her, but after pulling her in, the parachute capsized their boat.
A second boat manned by two other men went after her, and she was finally ashore.
Hendricks was unconscious and not breathing, but still had a heartbeat. All four physicians in town worked on her for two hours but ultimately were unable to save her. She had been submerged for about 30 minutes, and the delay in getting boats transported to the pond had sealed her fate.
Hendricks was 29 years old and was a mother. Her body was taken to the “parlors” of the Bissell Hotel, where she was embalmed and prepared for transport to her home in Pleasant Lake, Indiana, by undertaker C.B. Lane.
Sixty years later, Mrs. Hardin, who wrote the 1963 letter to the Phillips County Review, recalled the general mood the day following the tragedy.
“The carnival troupe all dressed in deep mourning while the little balloonist lay in state in a room off the hall at the Bissell House on the southeast corner of the square.”
Local news reports also described the gloom that permeated the community. All the amusement events on the night of her death were cancelled, as were any further high dives by the man from Downs.
Attractions were held the next day, on Saturday, but all proceeds were donated toward the expenses of transporting Hedricks’s body by train to Indiana and her burial.
Hendricks had been in Phillipsburg for a month preparing for the festival, and spent six weeks constructing her parachute by hand. Local newspapers stated she had made many friends in town and entertained them by recounting her travels across the country and was an experienced “aeronaut,” having made many balloon ascensions, although she hadn’t made one in a little over a year.
A further review of the life of Hendricks’s husband, Silas Hendricks, after her death, revealed he remarried before dying himself of tuberculosis two-and-a-half years later in 1907 in his hometown of Aurora, Nebraska.
Interestingly, the Phillipsburg community held a similar festival the following year that included a nightly balloon ascension and parachute leap. This type of attraction was being held locally as late as 1915 during a Fourth of July celebration.