Aida Rogers

It was as upsetting a scene as any he’d witnessed — the body of a young woman in a coffin surrounded by her sobbing friends. The Rev. Doctor John Martin Pike had been called to conduct a funeral in, as he’d later describe it, one of Columbia’s “houses of ill repute.” The deceased was a “beautiful young woman of 21.” She’d been pregnant, and now she was dead. How she died isn’t clear. Suicide? Abortion gone wrong? Poor health conditions?

They were so close. Three more miles and they’d be there, maybe a bit stiff from the 100-mile ride but relieved to steam into Columbia’s Union Station and step off into the rest of their lives. That didn’t happen that rainy Wednesday night in 1928. The passengers and crew aboard Train No. 16, Southern Railway’s late afternoon transport from Greenville to Columbia, smashed into a terrible fate just north of the city.

Emma Bliss brought a lot of love with her when she came to Columbia in 1898. You can tell by the great big valentine she left behind – a collection of photos of the people and places she saw exploring the city with her beribboned young daughter and Kodak box camera. A cute child and a camera? Strangers would smile; strangers would pose. And Emma, from Rhode Island, would snap her machine and move on.