Everyone called him “Little Wright B.,” at least the ones who were alive in 1918. Even the local paper the day after he died said “Little Wright B. the only child of Mr. and Mrs. Roan, was a favorite among many of the people here because of his lovable disposition and his unusual aptitude.”
But after three or four decades, only a few spoke his name. The grandchildren of his Aunt Winnie, who wasn’t even married when he died, called him “the little boy in the attic.” Sometimes he turned a light on and they got blamed. Sometimes they would notice marbles or another small toy trinket had been moved. And there were the footsteps heard in the middle of the night.
Families since have known there was the spirit of a child in the house. Some saw him. Others felt him pass by.
His mother and maternal aunt were sitting in the front. “The car was struck at Park Avenue but for some unaccountable reason the car hung to the front of the engine and was carried for two blocks before the locomotive could be stopped,” the paper wrote.
“The aged grandmother and the little boy were thrown out and almost instantaneously died,” the newspaper reported about the 56-year-old grandmother and the 4-year-old.
Dorothy Meadows, who died in 2017 at the age of 91, would say her older brother rushed with everyone else in the neighborhood to the crash scene. As long as he lived, he could recall the gruesome sight.
Twenty-four-year-old Zollie Roan was mortally injured. She died a few hours later on the way to a Houston hospital. Her sister-in-law, 17-year-old Mavis Roan, was not expected to live, but she survived. Mavis was Little Wright B.’s aunt. She had graduated that spring from Orange High School.
The injured and dead were taken to home of Zollie’s parents, who lived on Tenth Street close to the railroad tracks. The engine was a few yards from the house when it stopped.
The funeral services for Zollie and Little Wright B. were held in her parents’ house on October 12. The mother and son were buried next together in Evergreen Cemetery.
Zollie’s parents continued living in the house until their deaths. Her mother lived until November 1967. The family sold the house in 1968. The next family lived there for 35 more years.
Wright B. Roan Sr. was left to mourn the loss of his wife, child, and mother. The newspaper reported he was a respected worker at the Hart Garage. He was a member of the Orange Volunteer Fire Department and in 1916 posed with other firefighters with the city’s first motorized fire truck.
He sued the railroad for the loss. A jury in Orange heard testimony that the train was going faster than the city ordinance that set a train speed limit of 6 miles per hour. Some estimated the train may have been going 30 mph. Most witnesses, including Mavis, testified they never heard a bell or a whistle.
The Park Avenue crossing had a clear view of the tracks. People who were nearby thought Zollie had slowed. Some speculated she was braking and the car lurched. She was described as petite. Cars in those early days of motoring did not have automatic steering, automatic brakes, or automatic steering. Maybe the car had been hard for her to handle.
The jury awarded Wright Roan Sr. $20,000 for the loss of his wife, $306,000 in 2018 money. The jury gave an award of $15,000 for the loss of Little Wright B.
But the Texas Court of Appeals in Beaumont didn’t agree with the amount for the child. In the case of Hines v Roan, the panel of judges wrote “he was an intelligent child.” A child that young, though, didn’t have any earning capacity. They put aside the jury’s award.
Maybe that’s why the spirit of Little Wright B. has hung around for a century. The old men in the black robes said he wasn’t worth anything. Or maybe, he just likes staying over at his grandparents’ house.
Note: This is one of the stories of spirits from the past haunting the Old Orange Historic District. Many of the homeowners in The District say they share space. They love their ghosts, even though the family dog might not enter a particular room.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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