Drowning of Elsie May Gates
From Brother E. H. Gates we have received a note giving some of the sorrowful particulars of the drowning of his sister, Elsie May, at Coorangbong, Dec. 3, 1899. She arrived at Sydney with Brother Gates’s family, November 25, on her forty-seventh birthday. Eight days afterward she and Sister Peck and Sister Ella Boyd were out driving in a buggy on the Avondale estate. The horse backed the vehicle into the creek, Miss Gates and the animal being drowned. Her body was recovered shortly after the accident in about ten feet of water; and from careful medical examination it was concluded that Sister Gates must, by some means, have been killed before being thrown into the water. Sister Boyd was also thrown into the creek, but was safely rescued.