Sister Antoinette Marie and the Avalanche

 

Sister Antoinette Marie (Mary Nason), Sisters of Providence

Sister Antoinette Marie, an enthusiastic young music teacher at St. John’s Academy in Indianapolis, retired for the night at the Sisters of Providence convent. It was February 5, 1907, her last night at peace for a long time. The next day, her grandmother, Eunice Nason, received a devastating telegram. Sister’s parents and five of her brothers and sisters were killed in an avalanche in a mining camp near Salida, Colorado. The headlines the next day were terrible. “Twelve Die in Snow Slide. Eight Victims Belong to Hammond (Ind.) Family.” Then: “Nason Family Await Tidings. Do Not Know Yet How Many Relatives Were Killed in Snowslide.”

     Mary Sophronia Nason was the oldest of nine in a devout Catholic family. She entered the novitiate of the Sisters of Providence of St. Mary-of-the-Woods in 1904 at age 18 and was scheduled to take her final vows in a few months. It was her first year teaching. Her father, a mining speculator, and her mother, moved to Colorado with their five youngest children where they ran a boarding house in the mining camp of Monarch. It was in the center of a rugged section of Chaffee County, with a single railroad track serving as transport for ore, with limited access in winter.

     Another telegram arrived at the home of Frank Nason, Sister Antoinette Marie’s uncle. Rescuers believed that all the children were saved, but it was clear that her parents, Fred and Florence, were deceased. Her mother’s body was the first to be found.

     “During her novitiate, Sister had a great trial to undergo,” a member of her congregation wrote decades later. “Her father had bought stock and land in one of the western mining ventures, and decided to go West on a visit to investigate his claim. In Denver, an avalanche of snow came down upon the house where the parents were and both were killed in the landslide.” The writer of this account said that an aunt took on the care of the siblings, “so as not to cause Sister Antoinette Marie to give up the religious life,” probably reflecting a concern of the order. It was Florence’s sister Lena who took them in. She and her husband already had five children of their own. 

     The details of the disaster trickled in. The Nason’s boarding house was a two story building with a saloon in part of the downstairs. An adjoining building held a restaurant. There were reported to be twenty people in their boarding house, and about 150 people living in the mining camp altogether. Old-timers said later that since the founding of Monarch in 1880, they had never seen such heavy snows as they had that year.

     Mrs. Nason had put the baby of the family, four-year old Edward, to sleep in her bed. Around 9:15, survivors said later, they heard a great noise. Before they had time to think or move, the avalanche was upon them. The three businesses that were destroyed – the boarding house, saloon and restaurant – “went down like reeds before a gale, and not a vestige of either is in sight.” The house literally flipped upside down and was buried under fifty feet of snow and dirt. “Not even a piece of furniture was left intact,” a newspaper reported. According to the same source, the four other Nason children – Margaret, Genevieve, Edna and Lillian – were thrown out of the second-story windows, then buried in snow. 

     “The force of the slide was so great that after razing the three buildings it crossed the street and caved in the front of the Farrell Hotel, but no one in this building was hurt,” the first reporter on the scene wrote. “Telephone messages have been sent to Salida for help but the immense snowfall has blockaded the roads and it will be some time before a rescue party can reach the scene of the accident. Scenes about the slide are heartrending. Strong men are weeping and panic-stricken women are crying hysterically for loved ones that are among the missing, or that have already been identified as dead.”

     It was quite the ordeal for rescuers to make it to the scene. They arrived on a special train from Salida at 5:00 the next morning, a party including the mayor, two doctors, a photographer and, “a number of citizens who happened to be on hand.” The single coach and engine departed Salida at one in the morning and the party had to get out to shovel snow off the tracks. They went up a steep gulch filled with snow to a depth of eighteen feet. It took four hours to travel the eighteen mile route. Once they arrived in Monarch they waded in snow up to their shoulders, arriving at the site exhausted. Yet they assisted those at the mining camp who’d worked all night, and loaded the bodies of the dead on sleds.

     There was one happy scene. When the four Nason girls were found – but no Edward, it was feared that he was dead. But digging deep into the snow, they found the little four-year old wrapped in a feather bed under a part of the roof unscathed – and supposedly still asleep. 

     The father, Fred Nason, was a member of two fraternal organizations, the Modern Woodmen of America and Catholic Foresters. Florence was also a member of the Women’s Catholic Order of Foresters. In a time when people felt a deep fear of a pauper’s burial, when the average working man did not have a pension or insurance, secret societies such as these provided burial and life insurance. The local Modern Woodmen lodge in Colorado made the arrangements, and paid for the Nasons’ bodies to be returned to Indiana, as well as train fare for the children. Fraternal organizations also turned out in mass to funerals, even for those they didn’t know. There were rituals they performed such as leading processions to the church and graveyard, and performing graveside rites. Sometimes they conducted the whole funeral, but in this case the Nasons had their church, All Saints, and Father Edward Barrett. He’d been their pastor for nearly twelve years and knew them well. Florence was a member of the Rosary Society. 

     “I count Mr. and Mrs. Nason among the most earnest workers that I ever had in All Saints’ parish,” he said in the funeral sermon. “Mrs. Nason worked hard both in the interests of this church and especially in the interests of her children, whose education she valued above all else. Mr. Nason was a worthy husband of this woman.” At times his voice faltered as he spoke of them, a newspaper reporter said. His sister Mayme sang. The church was filled in every pew and all available standing room, and a crowd waited outside. Afterwards, the Foresters and Woodmen led the two hearses, marching to Calumet Avenue and then to the cemetery. The Modern Woodmen paid for the funerals and paid out $1,000 to the uncle and aunt who took the children in. It was the equivalent of about $33,000 today, not enough to provide for all the children to adulthood, but a nice help. 

     Sister Antoinette Marie took her final vows and continued with what would be a long career teaching music. "She was gifted in music,” a member of her congregation wrote in an obituary. “She loved nothing more than her work and her teaching. Always pleasant, agreeable and prayerful, she however, retained some effects of the shock she sustained, and her memory of the event was very vivid.” 

Fred and Florence Nason with their four oldest children. Mary ("Sister") is standing in back.

The Nason Nemesis

     As a vowed woman religious, Sister’s time with her parents would have been very little, had they lived. In the strict rules of the orders in those days, she probably would have seen them once a year. But they would have been able to write letters, and there is a powerful psychological difference just in knowing one’s parents are alive and can be contacted, versus the permanence of death. There were more shocks to come for the family that led to the newspaper calling their misfortune the “Nason Nemesis.” 

     Two years after the avalanche, the oldest Nason son, Frank, lived with a friend and coworker and his family. The two young men, both 19, decided to try life out west. They quit their jobs and were on their way to Denver, traveling as what were called “blind passengers” on a freight train. In Blue Island, Illinois, they got off to catch a connecting ride. It was about 10 p.m. and Frank’s friend got separated from him. The friend boarded the expected train. There were no witnesses, but Frank was found on the tracks, struck and killed. His friend had no idea anything happened to him until he was told. The newspaper said the accident brought back memories of the parents’ deaths.

     Four years later, Florence, the second-oldest Nason daughter, died two weeks after giving birth to a son. She was only 25. Her husband was a 28-year old widower with a newborn, a two-year old and a three-year old. A childless aunt and uncle who lived in Spokane, Washington came to Indiana to take the newborn, Eugene, whom they adopted. 

     A month later, the Nasons’ maternal aunt, Frances Curtis King, was nearly killed when a Pennsylvania Railroad train crashed into a Hammond street car. The car was knocked off the tracks and toppled on its side showering glass on the terrified passengers. A 28-year old streetcar employee was killed instantly; about 15 people on the streetcar were injured and taken to the hospital. The first newspaper article said it was thought that Mrs. King would not survive, but she did.

     The “Nason Nemesis” seemed to abate for a while, but Edward, the family baby buried under the house in the avalanche, seemed to have nine lives. When he was 12 he was hit by a car while crossing the street. He was knocked unconscious and carried home to his aunt, where he recovered. In 1917, as a 16-year old working at a piano factory, he had his right middle and index fingers cut off while operating machinery.

     In 1927 Eugene, the newborn left motherless, died in Spokane of spinal meningitis at age 13. 

     Sister Antoinette must have offered up many prayers and decades on the rosary praying for her family. 

A Sister’s Life

     After two years at her first teaching assignment in Indianapolis, St. John’s Academy, Sister Antoinette Marie served in a variety of schools and places over a long career: Holy Rosary, St. Philip Neri, St. Patrick, St. David, St. Columbkille and Our Lady of Sorrows, mainly in Indianapolis, Terre Haute and Chicago. Her last fifteen years, from 1947 to 1963 were spent at Our Lady of Sorrows in Chicago. Her entire teaching career was pre-Vatican II.  

     In 1954 she celebrated her jubilee - the 50th anniversary of her entrance into the Sisters of Providence. There were twelve other sisters in her entree class celebrating with her.

     She was forced to retire from teaching in 1963 due to health problems and returned to the Motherhouse at St.-Mary-of-the-Woods. Remarkably, she was 77 and taught for 56 years. At the Motherhouse, she spent the last three years of her life in the infirmary. Her obituary said it remained hard for her to give up the hope of returning to teaching.

                           Sister Antoinette Marie, front row far left, with her Jubilee Class

Family Note: Mary Nason - Sister Antoinette Marie – fits into my family tree as follows: my third great-grandfather, Myron Fitch Barbour and Laura Barber were siblings. Laura had a daughter named Eunice Godfrey - Myron’s niece. Eunice’s son was Fred Nason, his great-nephew. Sister Antoinette Marie was his great-great niece. 

     

Sources:

     “Nason Family Awaiting Tidings. Do Not Know Yet How Many Were Killed In Landslide,” The Lake County Times (Munster, Indiana), 7 Feb 1907, p. 1. 

     “Big Snowslide. Brings Death and Destruction at Monarch,” The Greeley Tribune, 7 Feb 1907, p. 8. 

     “Bodies Coming to Hammond,” The Lake County Times, 8 Feb 1907, p. 1.

     “Nason Dead and Living On the Way. Will Reach Chicago Monday and Funeral Will Take Place Tuesday,” The Lake County Times, 9 Feb 1907, p. 2.

     “Nason Funeral Is Impressive. Even Strangers Weep,” The Lake County Times, 12 Feb 1907, p. 1. 

     “Monarch’s Loss. Story of the Avalanche,” The Delta Independent (Delta, Colorado), 15 Feb 1907, p. 9.

     “Strange Fate Grips Nasons. The Nason Nemesis,” The Lake County Times, 27 July 1909, p. 1.

     “One Killed 15 Hurt in Car Crash. Street Car and Passenger Train Come Together With Tragic Results,” The Lake County Times, 6 Aug 1909, p. 1. 

     “Grim Nemesis Still Grips Nason Family. Mrs. Charles King, Sister of Mrs. Fred Nason Critically Ill At Hospital,” The Lake County Times, 11 Aug 1909, p. 1. 

     “Death Comes To Claim Mrs. M’Fadden. Hammond is Shocked To Hear of Demise of Well-Known Young Woman,” The Lake County Times, 20 Dec 1913, p. 1.

     “Lad in Auto Accident. Affair Happens on State St. Last Saturday,” The Lake County Times, 24 Aug 1914, p. 5. 

     “Edward Nason Hurt,” The Lake County Times, 2 June 1917. 

     “Five Hoosiers Note Anniversary in Provident Order,” Indianapolis Star, 17 July 1954, p. 9. 

Copyright by Andrea Auclair  © 2024