From Don Covington

bilde, a photo by bucklesw1 on Flickr. Unnamed circus-train fire victims get new headstone! Patti Morgan stands in front of the grave of 10 men who died in a circus train fire in 1884 on Wednesday morning at Linn Grove Cemetery. Morgan helped get the a new headstone put in place for the victims of the fire as well as searched for their names. Photos by JOSHUA POLSON / jpolson@greeleytribune.com Patti Morgan replays one sentence from an Associated Press story in an 1884 publication of the New York Times over and over in her mind. “The odor of the roasting flesh and the distant cry of the coyote added to the general horror,” the story read. “The voices of the dying grew fainter and soon ceased.” The story was about 10 men who were employees of Orton’s Anglo-American Circus Show. In 1884, they were on their way to a show in Golden when the train they were on caught fire near Greeley, burning them alive and injuring dozens of others. According to a coroner’s report, 60 men were crowed in one railroad car that was also carrying two barrels of gasoline. The report said a torch used to light the car ignited the gas. Luggage blocked one end of the car and the fire blocked the other, leaving only a small window to escape through. After the accident, the circus continued on its way and the victims were buried in a mass grave. The image that one sentence conjures up is terrifying, Morgan said, but the idea of those men being buried in the same grave has left her with nightmares. “It just messed with my head,” Morgan said. “It was the saddest thing I’d ever heard.” Then she learned the men were never identified. It made it even worse for the 33-year-old Greeley woman. “It was a very haunting thing to think of 10 men buried together,” Morgan said. “They burned together. They were literally thrown away. The circus just threw them away.” Morgan first learned of the accident earlier this year when she bought a ceramic bowl from Goodwill that was wrapped in newspaper. When she got home she was looking at the newspaper and read a story by retired Tribune reporter Mike Peters about the number of unmarked graves at Linn Grove Cemetery. Again, one sentence stood out and replayed in her mind. “The most famous of the unknowns were 10 circus workers who died in a circus train fire in Weld County in 1884,” the story read. For more than a century the grave went unmarked, but several years ago, Debbie Dalton and Michael McBride, owners of Greeley Monument Works, put up a stone up to give it some closure. It read: “Burial Site of ten circus men. August 29, 1884. An early morning railroad car fire killed ten unknown men en route from Ft. Collins to Greeley for a scheduled performance of Orton’s Anglo American Circus Show.” But that wasn’t enough for Morgan. She immediately began researching the accident and was amazed at what she found. “For 120 years they sat there with no names,” she said. “But the names were always there at the bottom of that Associated Press story.” Alexander McLeod, Thomas McCarthy, John Kelly, Frank, Andy, Frenchy, George, Smithy, Silverthorn and only one unknown. She tried to find the full names for all the men, searching hundreds of papers state-by-state, but couldn’t. “Circus people don’t usually have any family and go by stage names,” she said. “But at least I had these. It was better than unknown.” All that was left for Morgan was to raise the money to pay for a new stone. She contacted Peters and asked for his help. Peters did another story, which generated about $500 in donations from readers, and Greeley Monument Works kicked in the rest. “I would have done the whole thing for nothing,” Dalton said of the stone that cost about $1,500. “But Patti was insistent she raise the money.” Dalton has owned Greeley Monument Works for 25 years, but it has been in her family since 1935. She said she hates unmarked graves. She has donated many stones over the years to Linn Grove Cemetery — just last week she put a stone on the grave of a baby who died 1930. “It’s mind boggling,” Dalton said. “We’re using stories about our history out there, and they don’t even have markers.” David Naill, the cemetery manager, said about 5 percent of the cemetery’s 26,000 graves remain unmarked. Naill also contributed to the effort, donating the removal of the old stone and the foundation for the new one, about $200. “Patti just took the ball and ran with it,” Naill said. “We really only made sure it had a foundation.” The new stone was placed in October, and Morgan said she feels much better now that the men are accounted for. “I can’t fix the fact that they burned to death,” Morgan said. “I can’t fix the fact that they are all buried together. But I can fix the fact that they had no names. Three people were there when they were buried, the coroner, a preacher and a grave digger. One hundred and 20 years later, a bunch of people with nothing to gain came together to give them names. That is a beautiful thing. People cared. And that is the coolest thing.”