I am sending a short story that happened to my family in 1911. Tom Price one of the people that was listed in this story was my Grandfather and most of the rest were cousins. He told me that this was the only time he got the better of his father in a deal. He had just sold the horse that his sister Amanda Price was riding. It was one of the animals that was killed by the lighting. Le Grand Advocate, Friday, July 29, 1911 TRUE VERSION OF THE ELECTROCUTIONS IN YOSEMITE. Full details of one of the most thrilling accidents on record in which nine out of a party of 18 sightseers had horses stricken from under them and killed by a flash of lighting in the Yosemite Valley, have just reached this city. Three Stocktonians, two of them teachers in the Stockton schools, were members of the horse-back party which was en route from Yosemite Valley to Glacier Point on Sunday the 16th when nine of the horses were killed on the trail. The Stocktonians who figured in the accident were Miss Effie McMurray, a teacher of the Jefferson school, sixth grade, Miss Alma Pool, daughter of Deputy City Treasurer T.. G. Pool, and teacher of the River district school, and Miss Amanda Price, a sophomore student at the Stockton high school whose parents reside at Cathey Valley, Mariposa county. STARTLING STORY. Miss Mamie Brennan, another Stockton teacher, has arrived from the Yosemite, bringing particulars of the affair. According to her story, the meager details telegraphed out from El Portal early in the week barely hinted at the facts. It was reported in the first story that the horses were tied to a tree, where as they were stricken down beneath their riders on the trail and only the leather saddles, which acted as insulators, saved the riders from instant death. Miss Brennan states that she was coming down from Glacier Point when she met the party on the trail about two and a half miles from the top. She stopped to talk to Miss Pool, and a man who was riding with her and the other 16 members of the party rode on up the mountain. The main party had been traveling scarcely more than ten minutes, when a thunderstorm broke and lightning struck a tree beside the trail and ______________instantly the legs of nine of the horses doubled and they fell dead, while the tree was shivered from butt to tip. One of the members of the party, a man, was standing on the ground, cinching his saddle girth. He was knocked down by the shock, but was unhurt. One of the Cornett boys of Cathey Valley was burned about the ankle, but was not seriously hurt. THEORY OF ACCIDENT. The theory of those in the party is that the ground became charged with electricity from the lightning stroke, and that the steel shoes of the horses, which were reeking with sweat, acted as conductors and resulted in their electrocution. By a peculiar freak of nature, the nine horses were not killed consecutively as they stood in single file on the train. Miss Brennan states that the lightning killed one horse, skipped two or three, killed two more, and so on until nine of the 16 were dead. Misses McMurray and Pool left Stockton early in July, going to the home of Miss Pearl and Virginia Cornett of Cathey Valley, where the party of 18 was made up for a horse-back ride to the Yosemite Valley, a distance of 51 miles. Those in the party beside Miss McMurray and Pool, and Miss Price, who had preceded the others to Mariposa county were a Miss White of Los Angeles, Misses Pansy and Violet Wills of Merced, and the following from Cathey Valley Misses Pearl and Virginia Cornett, Miss Ethel Merrill, Irwin Cornett, Ben Cornett, Walter Wilkinson, Tom Price, Will Lansley, Joe Hammill, Ernest Day, Thrift Givens and a man whose name was not learned. BURN CARCASSES OF ANIMALS. Miss McMurray has written to Stockton relatives stating: Nine out of 16 horses dropped dead on the path leading to Glacier Point yesterday afternoon. Not one of us was injured in anyway. We certainly consider ourselves extremely fortunate, and so does every one else. People in the Valley refused to believe it until they went up the path and saw the nine horses dead beside the trail. I don't know how I ever got out of the saddle. I can't remember anything except that I left here for Glacier Point, and that I have returned. The boys just finished burning the carcasses of the horses today. The dead horses were all owned by the Cathey Valley members of the party, and were valuable riding animals. Mondays Sun. -- Thomas and Paulette Hilk 1725 Wildwood Ct. Merced, CA. 95340 E-mail address: paulette@elite.net