There is a nice simple gravestone at Blossom Hill Cemetery. It has blended with the other gravestones for the past 133 years. As I walk the hill early on this chilly Sunday morning, I stop to admire this stone. You see, it is a work of art. If you look at the stone sitting on the hill closely you will see a beautiful engraving of a locomotive. That locomotive is the Northern Railroad Locomotive No. 23 and named the Kearsarge.
This granite gravestone is a tribute to a man that loved his job. Similar to you or perhaps me, he loved his job and his family. Tragedy took both his job and his family one night back in October 1885. This gravestone tells a story, a story about a man named Lucius Groves, engineer for the Northern Railroads locomotive Kearsarge. Groves lived in Concord and his remains do rest in peace right up at Blossom Hill Cemetery.
On Oct. 9, 1885, he lived his last day, rising in the middle of the night and bidding his family farewell one last time. He went to the railroad yard, met with his crew and departed for White River Junction, where the Kearsarge was known as Express Passenger Train 51. Groves and his fireman, Oscar Leighton, left White River Junction and arrived at West Andover at 4:46 a.m. It was here in West Andover that Groves learned that a freight train out of Concord had lost eight of their cars, somewhere out there in the dense fog near West Andover. The freight cars were being pulled by two locomotives, the Nathaniel White and the Northern.
Groves had a schedule and more passengers to pick up, the man loved his job and he decided to leave West Andover cautiously, only traveling at eight or 10 miles per hour.
Shortly after his departure from West Andover, Groves engineered his last train, tragically, he lost his life. The Kearsarge collided in the dense early morning fog with those lost freight cars, which had been retrieved by Northern Railroad engineer John Emerson. The impact totally dismantled both locomotives and actually reversed their positions on the track.
Engineer Lucious Groves and his brakeman William Harvey were instantly killed while engineer John Emerson on the opposing train was also killed. The remaining crews and passengers, though injured, survived the crash.
There was much sadness in Concord, the Groves family had also lost a son, a victim of drowning in Penacook Lake.
It is a simple gravestone on a hill with a beautiful engraving of the Northern Railroad locomotive Kearsarge. Gracing the Blossom Hill Cemetery these past 133 years, waiting to tell this sad story that unfolded here in New Hampshire on a foggy October night back in 1885.