Tragedy interrupted preparations for what would otherwise have been a pleasant family dinner Sunday at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Sardis McQueen, near Clifford, in Bartholomew county, when Mrs. Emma May Oltman, 52 years old, wife of William A. Oltman, of Jackson township in Shelby county, fell from a kitchen doorway to the hard floor of a fruit cellar below, fracturing her skull and breaking her neck. She died fifteen minutes later, at about 11:30 o’clock.
Mrs. Oltman was a sister of Thomas and George Stoughton of Shelbyville. She and her husband and two of their children, Robert Samuel and Mary Katherine Oltman, had gone to the McQueen home earlier on Sunday morning to be dinner guests of the McQueen’s. Mr. McQueen is an uncle of Mrs. Oltman. She made no outcry when she fell. Others in the room did not realize what had happened until they heard the sound of her fall.
The body was taken to the Fix & Son mortuary here in an ambulance, summoned immediately after the accident. Death had occurred before the ambulance arrived.
Besides the husband and the two children and brothers already mentioned, Mrs. Oltman leaves two daughters, Mrs. John Hughes, of Jackson township, and Mrs. Jerry Lewis, of Edinburg; two brothers, Robert Stoughton, of Hendricks township, and Clabe [Claybourne] Stoughton, of Alexandria, Indiana, and a sister, Mrs. Minnie Moore, mother of Frank Moore, who is trustee of Addison township, this county.
Mrs. Oltman was a daughter of Samuel and Belinda Stoughton and was born in Illinois June 30, 1880. At the time of her death, she was aged 52 years, seven months and twenty-four days. In addition to other survivors, there are also seven grandchildren.
She was a member of the Hawcreek Baptist church, of Bartholomew county. Funeral services will be from the Blue River Separate Baptist church in Jackson township Tuesday morning at 10:30 o’clock, in charge of Rev. John Ford. Interment will take place in the Conover cemetery in charge of C.F. Fix & Son, local funeral directors.
The Shelbyville Republican, Monday, February 27, 1933
Contributed by: Shelli Steedman