Anderson, Betty Belle (1926-1936)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 1936 Dec 16 p. 1

Birth date: 1926

text of obituary:

KEROSENE AGAIN TAKES ITS TOLL OF LIVES

With the arrival of cold weather, kerosene-started fires are again taking their toll of human lives over the country. At Mcgregor, Ia., last Wednesday seven persons, Mr. and Mrs. Jay Anderson and five of their children, were burned fatally when kerosene Mrs. Anderson used to start a cookstove fire exploded and turned their home into a blazing trap. The only one of the family to escape from the flaming two-room, frame house was Gertrude, 13, who found her way out a door and rolled in the snow to extinguish her burning nightdress. The other children, Alice, 15, and Erwin, 8, pulled out of the inferno thru a broken window by Frank Curiel and C. O. Gerndt, neighbors, died. The others, mother, father, Betty Belle, 10; Stanley, 4; and Richard, 2 burned to death within the house, screaming their agony.