Griffith’s Grove, located between the Burrillville villages of Pascoag and Harrisville, was the setting for hundreds of 19th-century festivities. From old-fashioned clambakes to balloon ascensions, baseball games to vaudeville shows, a single event could draw thousands of people to the grove.

On May 30, 1912, the grounds were teeming with men, women and children who had come to partake of a picnic and all the entertainment planned around it. The very popular six-piece Union Leader Orchestra from Massachusetts was there to provide the music for dancing. Ragtime was making a resurgence, and the dance floor of the grove’s pavilion was the stage for personal exhibitions of the one-step, the turkey trot and the castle walk. Lively piano-based melodies such as “Ragging the Baby to Sleep” and “My Melancholy Baby” got people up and moving, celebrating the excitement of summer and the fun of togetherness.

The music was temporarily halted in the late afternoon for a scheduled performance. The nearly 1,000 people in attendance that day moved to the outer perimeter of the pavilion, except for approximately 100 women and children who wanted to stand close to the performance. They remained on the dance floor. About half an hour later, with no warning, that area of the dance floor caved. The monstrous crash of the cracking wood echoed through the building. It was later discovered that the post holding the floor up had given way. The women and children standing upon it tumbled into the gaping hole like the collapse of dominos.

High-pitched shrieks and screams echoed from the hollow as the victims struggled to pull themselves to the surface. One of the injured was 23-year-old Sarah “Sadie” Ethel (Madigan) Gross of Cranston. The daughter of Ed-ward Madigan and Annie (Black), Sadie lived with her husband of three years, Anthony Gross, and his parents. She and Anthony, who was employed as a conductor on the electric railroad, had a two-year-old daughter named Ethel Frances.

Sadie suffered a sprained ankle and a broken bone in her left leg. Hysteria seemed to take over. Wailing dramatically, the women and children emerging from the hole in the dance floor began running toward the exits as if running for their lives. Police officers stationed at the event made great attempts to calm everyone down. Sadie and the others who were injured were taken for medical treatment.

Sadie recovered from the effects of the picnic in Griffith’s Grove. It wasn’t long before she and Anthony were divorced. She moved to Boston and, on May 19, 1915, she married wholesale meat company bookkeeper Cecil Atkinson.                   

Once the chaos had been quieted, the orchestra resumed its music and those who remained in the crowd were told they were free to utilize what was left of the dance floor.

Despite repairs and renovations over the years, Griffith’s Grove eventually stopped hosting dinners and dances, galas and gatherings. During the 1960s, a North Providence man was granted a license to open a junkyard on the site.