Distinguished:
William Elmer Hammer page 2
It develops that 7 p.m. Saturday evening, Mr. Hammer called at the dormitory with his horse and carriage for Miss Pye to go out riding, not an unusual circumstance as they have been intimately acquainted as classmates for years and were about to graduate as members of the same class next Wednesday. The young people went downtown to the "merry-go-round" on Center Street and with other young people they took a swing and then gaily departed for the lake, three and a half miles distant at 7:30.
At 8 p.m., Mr. Hammer engaged a row boat at the Chautauqua boat house and the two went out on the lake for a rowing excursion. Towards 9 p.m., they were seen at the west end of the lake and at 9:30 they were observed by several fishermen near Sioux Falls Point, whence they must have turned their course and started across the lake homeward. Soon after this, someone at an upper window in the Grand View Hotel heard cries of distress out on the lake and ran down to the shore to inquire of Capt. Smith if anyone was out with a boat, and being informed that two young people were out, said that the party must be in the lake as they cry was one of distress.
A search was at once instituted by a party from the hotel going across the lake towards Sioux Falls Point but no trace or hearing of the young people could be discovered. The party then returned to see if the young people reached shore and taken their carriage for home, but the horse was still tied to the tree where originally left, and the boat had drifted ashore, bottom side up with one oar under the seat.
Proof was now almost conclusive that the young people had been drowned, and Landlord Jones at once started with the horse and carriage for the city to have the young people identified. It was near midnight when he called up President Beadle who immediately commenced a specific search among the resident students' homes to have the horse and carriage identified. By 2 a.m., he had discovered that the two young people who had started out with the carriage were Mr. Hammer and Miss Pye.
He at once aroused the faculty and others, procured barbwire, ropes and men and organized a thoroughly systematic method of searching for the missing bodies, so that when daylight came everything was in readiness and the search by dragging the lake began.
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Completed by Spring 2004 Class of English 401
Last updated Spring 2004