Fire kills 2 children of Samuel Conover, carpenter at Brookfield

TWO CHILDRED BURNED TO DEATH IN FIRE WHICH

DESTROYED MAN'S HOME AND SAVINGS AT RUNYON

Lamp Exploded on One-Story

Bungalow Was Burned to the Ground

in Less Than an Hour.

BOTH PARENTS WERE IN YARD

In Confusion, Among Crowd of Neighbors'

Little Ones, Father Did Not

Miss Two Victims.

MR. CONOVER BADLY BURNED IN RESCUE EFFORTS

(Special from a Staff Correspondent.)

Runyon, May 14: — Two children were burned to death in a blaze caused by the explosion of a lamp in a one-story bungalow near here occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Conover and family.

The fire started at 1 o’clock this morning. The father was terribly burned in his frantic efforts to rescue the little ones, but his in­juries will not prove fatal.

The five children were sleeping and their parents were in the yard, while a lamp was left lighted on a table in the sitting room. Suddenly Mr. Conover noticed a burst of flame in the house, which is one of a row of five in a settlement of fifteen or twenty bungalows in a settlement near the Brookfield Glass Works, between Runyon and Old Bridge.

Mr. and Mrs. Conover ran to rescue their children and the neighbors were attracted by the blaze. Soon a considerable crowd gather­ed, among them being a number of the neighbors’ little ones. In the excitement they did not percieve [sic] perceive that only three of the Conover children had been taken from the house, which burned like tinder.

When Mr. Conover found that Frank, aged five years and one month, and George, aged two years, three months and seventeen days, were still in the house, he ran to the window of the northwest room where the two lads were asleep in separate beds. The father, now almost insane, made several heroic attempts to climb through the window into the room, but the flames licked his hands, arms and face and the burns he received rendered it a physical impossibility for him to enter the room which was now a mass of fire. The entire house burned rapidly and, within less than an hour, was nearly level with the ground.

The neighbors formed a bucket brigade and pumped dry the pumps of the Conovers and their next door neighbor, there being no fire department near there. The older boy’s corpse was carried out on the springs of his own bed and the other body was taken out with rakes. The remains, each minus an arm, were beyond human recognition. They were placed in the Pioneer Catholic church, where they remained, one still on the bed springs, until Mr. Conover went to Old Bridge shortly before noon today and summoned an under­taker.

County Physician J. L. Suydam, of Jamesburg, arrived shortly before 11 o’clock this morning, and acted as coroner in the place of Coroner Beekman, of Sayreville, who was unable to come here owing to injuries received recently in an accident. In an interview with a NEWS reporter Dr. Suydam said the fire was purely accidental and no inquest would be necessary.

Mr. and Mrs. Conover are prostrated with grief and the father told the story of-the fatality to the reporter in agonized tones. His hurts were dressed this morning by Dr. I. C. Crandall, of Old Bridge, and Dr. Suydam at the home of John Albacker, whose bungalow adjoins the destroyed one. The parents and their three saved chil­dren were cared for at the Albacker home from the time of the fire until daylight. The rescued are an infant boy, who was saved by the mother; a boy aged seven and a girl aged twelve.

Everything in the bungalow was burned, including Mr. Con­over’s savings of the past year.

Last June Mr. Conover came here to take a position as carpenter in the Brookfield Glass Works, where he is still employed. He is thirty-five years old. The family were beloved by all who knew them and the fatality has cast a gloom over the entire community. People from neighboring towns came here today to view the ruins.