In early October 1896, life in Danville was good. Merchants in the downtown advertised their wares, and the colors of autumn were on display. At the corner of Mill and Mulberry Streets, J.H. Cole had stocked his “new room” with a new and clean line of hardware and tools. John F. Tooley had just opened a new grocery store at 318 Mill Street in the room formerly occupied by the Grand Union Tea Company. 

And on Thursday, Oct. 8, 1896, nothing appeared out of the ordinary at the Montour Rolling Mills of the Reading Iron Company. The Number 5 boiler exploded shortly before 8 pm. The explosion ripped through the building, sending part of it into a Northumberland Street home like a rocket. Most of Danville felt the explosion, which shook some buildings and rattled windows. 

By the time the dust and debris settled, a six-week-old baby had been killed in its mother’s arms. The explosion also resulted in the deaths of five others, all workmen inside the mill. Thirty-three other employees sustained injuries ranging from critical to minor. Mrs. John Baron, the mother of a six-week-old, suffered broken ribs. Part of the 28-foot boiler crashed through the home and landed 100 feet away, 180 yards from the explosion. One of those injured in the blast was the woman’s husband. 

After exploding, the explosion forced part of the boiler backward inside the building, scattering scalding steam, bricks, and pieces of iron in various directions. 

News of the disaster spread quickly, and hundreds from the town rushed to the scene, looking for friends and family members and to help the injured. 

Robert Reid, the mill manager and one of those scalded by steam and injured by debris, pulled a coworker from under a pile of rubble. 

The dead included two brothers, Thomas and Oliver Cromwell, brick masons who were under the Number 5 boiler at the time of its explosion, repairing the roof of the furnace. The others killed included Johnson Lovett, a charger at heating furnaces; John Castleman, a plumber; and John Mullen, employed on the hotbed. 

What caused the boiler to explode has never been determined. Just the day before the fatal accident, someone from Reading had been inspecting the boilers at the Rolling Mills. And some five minutes before the explosion, several men and women were standing on a line where the boiler exploded but had moved on to another area of the mill. 

Within days of the mishap, laborers were clearing away debris and making repairs, allowing the mill to resume operations in less than two weeks. 

Ironically, the blast on October 8, 1896, occurred almost forty-two years to the day of another deadly explosion at the mill. On October 7, 1854, a boiler exploded, killing up to ten people and injuring many more. The explosion also went through a home adjacent to the one destroyed in the 1896 blast. In the 1854 explosion, those killed included two children who had been sleeping in their beds. The body of one of the children was found inside the boiler, which landed in the same area as the 1896 one. 

Also in 1868, a boiler exploded in the puddling mill of what was part of the original mill and landed in the basin below the mill, three hundred yards away. 

Another irony is that they rolled the first “T” rail in America on October 8, 1845, fifty-one years after the 1896 boiler explosion. The “T” Rail forever forged Danville’s place in the history books, but hard labor and lost lives came at a cost.