THOMAS - EDWARD JR. - Salisbury Cove

Bar Harbor Times
April 29, 1954

Edward Thomas Jr, Salisbury Cove, tractor operator for Harold MacQuinn, Bar Harbor general contractor was found dead yesterday morning at the base of a 20 foot road bank within ten feet of the one-half yard shovel loader which he had been operating on a construction job on the Acadia National park Paradise Hill road.  Thomas was found by MacQuinn who said that he had arrived at the job and asked of the construction superintendent the where abouts of the shovel and operator.  When he was told that Thomas was at the South end of the road with the loader MacQuinn went looking for him and found the rubber-tired machine upright at the foot of the road bank near the stone overpass at the new Eagle Lake Road.  MacQuinn said that Thomas was lying face down about half way down the bank.
He was pronounced dead by a physician who was summoned immediately.
Maurice Staples, a MacQuinn employee, said that he drove the shovel from the Paradise Hill road to the MacQuinn shop on Holland Avenue following the accident.  He told the Times that there were no mechanical defects apparent in the piece of equipment and that he operated it without difficulty on the way to the shop.
Police Chief Howard McFarland investigated the incident and reported that according to the tire imprints made by the tractor, that the machine apparently left its normal course in its progress along the road and moved diagonally across the roadway and started down the steep bank at the same angle.  The machine rolled over he said and landed right side up.
Maximum speed of the tractor, MacQuinn said, is 10 miles per hour.
Thomas, who lived at Salisbury Cove, was born at Bar Harbor, Sept. 28, 1915, the son of Edward Pettengill Thomas and the late Orra Hadley (Thomas).  He was a resident of Bar Harbor in early life and attended Bar Harbor High School.
Surviving are his widow Shirley (Duffey) Thomas, a son, David, both of Salisbury Cove, and a brother.