SIDENER Child Killed by Lightning - 1901

[Roma Jean Turner]

(Moline Review, May 17, 1901)

    Last Friday morning the little son of Lewis Sidener, living five miles northwest of Moline, went out in the pasture to catch a pony.  While he was gone there came a very loud clap of thunder and the father, fearing for the safety of his son, rand down to where the boy was last see and found both boy and pony lying dead, side by side.  The boy had caught the animal anhsd was riding it, to the house when the bolt fell.  They were lying some thirty feet from the fence.  Opposite them the barbs had been melted and it seemd that the bolt had jumped from the wire to the boy and horse, killing both instantly.
     The funeral was held in the Star shcool house Saturday morning, May 11th and was largely attended by the friends and neighbors of the stricken family.  Rev. Geo. Eller of the Bretheren church, to which the family belonged, preaced a beautiful sermon from Job 14-2: "He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down."  He spoke of the human life as being a flower and like the flower, constantly exhaling its frangrance, that of the righteous being a sweet perfume that strengthened and soothed all with whom it came in contact.  He compared the life of a child to a bud with all the possibilites of the embryo flower, and if it was cut off before it flowered it would bloom and fruit in the better land.  The boy was buried in the Moline cemetery.