Golf Star Killed in Train Accident

Mrs. Dorothy Campbell Hurd Howe, the only woman ever to hold the American, British, and Canadian amatuer golf championships, was killed on this day in 1945. She was killed by a train in Yemasse, South Carolina when she accidentally fell off the train station platform onto the rails.

Born in Edinburgh in 1883, Dorothy Campbell achieved greatness in 1909 when she captured the woman’s national amateur title in the United States and the same year won the British Championship. The following year she added the Canadian title to her string of hardware. In the twenty or so years after her critical success, she won numerous local & state tournaments. In the 1938 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur Championship she won with a record score of 159. Her last national victory was in 1924.

She had been visiting friends in Beaufort, South Carolina and was killed while changing trains in Yemassee for the New York bound express. At the time she lived with her daughter-in-law as he son was an army Sergeant stationed in the Philippines.