When The Mississinewa Gives Up Its Dead
With the vernal equinox falling on Good Friday and full moon on Saturday, and Easter in its wake on Sunday, the most destructive flood known to Grant County occurred in March, 1913, people were convinced that it was a "hoodoo' year, and men and women of this generation hope to escape another such planetary conjunction.
The rains descended and the floods came, was certainly true of the 1913 flood disaster, and those who discredit equinoctial storms have another version of them. Easter Sunday was unusually early, the first Sunday after the first full moon after the sun crossed the line March 21st, falling only two days later, and had the equinox occurred on Saturday it would have been the earliest possible Easter. Such an early Easter will not occur again in the twentieth century. April 25, 1943, will be the latest Easter in the century. With such devastation in its wake, people are glad Easter comes later in future. While there was no loss of life from the flood direct, some died from fright and exposure and the disaster had the effect of awakening sympathy - response to human suffering in other localities. The oldest inhabitant admitted that all high water records had been smashed, and people who thought their homes high and dry, left them in canoes and Marion was a veritable Venice for a day or two, canoes being operated in many of the streets, and water entering homes where safety seemed indelibly written on the walls.
The 1913 March Flood at Jonesboro (click on photo to enlarge)
Families in Marion left their homes from upper store windows who little though the Mississinewa would ever disturb them. While it may be some comfort to know that lighting does not often strike twice in the same spot, the rain drops are apt to continue falling in the same places, and one of the sensational book publishing concerns sent out the following notice soon after the 1913 Easter flood: Cyclone, fire, flood, famine, sickness, death! A terrible visitation by the demons of destruction - the vast center of our great United States struck by disasters of gigantic magnitude. People everywhere are mourning at these awful results. Thousands swept into eternity. Five hundred thousand people homeless. $100,000,000 worth of property destroyed. Churches, schools, hospitals, hotels, prisons full of dead and dying. Gallant rescues by the brave. Heroic work of mercy by Red cross. Miraculous escapes from the jaws of death. Sell the authentic book: "Horrors of Tornado, Flood and Fire." While the announcement seems overdrawn it requires a quickened imagination to understand the horror of water when it is on the rampage - is uncontrolled.
The secretary of the Deep Water Way Association in discussing the certainty of the return of floods, said the most serious feature of the terrible disasters in Ohio and Indian is the almost unerring certainty that the floods will occur again, perhaps soon and probably often. Recurrences are certainties if present conditions continue. Nothing in the 1913 floods was unusual or unprecedented except the height of the water. The rainfall was extremely heavy, but not record breaking at all. The rains found the soil saturated and the streams were fairly full, but every winter breaks up with wet soil and full streams, and all that is needed then is a general rainfall and another disaster will result. Rainfall always comes but not always when most needed, nor even in the same months, but the annual precipitation does not vary greatly. The rain cannot be prevented and it must run off. It is what happens to the rain after it strikes the earth that is cause for concern. drainage has changed conditions. Formerly the rainfall sought the streams almost entirely by soil percolation. The surface of the earth was absorptive and the rain entered it.
Nebraska Street and the Mississinewa in the 1913 flood.
The capacity of the soil of a woodland or the heavily grassed soil of a meadow to absorb water is almost unlimited. Once the soil the entire rainfall sought the stream beds slowly and kept them bankful for several weeks, or even a month. The reason of the change is that the surface soil is no longer absorptive, and the cultivated farms, the hard roads impervious to water and the miles and miles of paved streets in the towns have replaced the ancient woodlands and meadows. While natural rain still falls an unnatural soil receives it. The purpose of drain tiles, paved streets, gutters and sewers is to carry water quickly to the rivers and natures method is have been perverted. While the rivers were once equal to the need they are now out of date as outlets to the water surplus. It is because all the rain gets into the river at the same time that causes the congestion - the floods. So far, nothing has been done to relieve the streams of this congestion, but all effort has been toward the simultaneous arrival of all the rainfall into the stream. Drainage is the science of hurrying water from lands into streams, although swamps and wet lands were all part of natures scheme for regulating conditions. While the swamps cannot be replaced and drainage is a phenomenal achievement, the rivers have not been altered to meet the changed natural conditions, and floods are bound to occur with increased frequency until there is a solution of the problem. Levee building alone will not suffice, as the flood heights are increasing year after year and it is only by controlling waters that floods are to be prevented in future.
The Easter flood of 1913 worked greater hardship in other localities than in Grant County, and just after the flood subsided there was a craze for canoes in this locality. While boats on Marion Streets were a novelty many people saw them, and boats for rescue work have been the problem each recurring flood, and conservation of life may be sub-served by precaution in this particular. Now that boating is a fad perhaps better crafts will be available in life saving extremities. While good old Noah was prepared for the flood, he had been the joke of bystanders who would gladly have entered the ark, but he closed the door against them. It is promised that the whole earth will never again be destroyed by water, and the bow of promise is still seen in the clouds, yet portions of the earths surface have been inundated periodically ever since that time, and yet none would say that Grant County is a Sodom or Gomorrah that the Mississinewa should wreak such awful destruction. Transportation was tied up, and destruction walked abroad, and yet how soon the community recovers from disaster.
While there was water everywhere there was talk about the river in the vicinity of Marion again flowing in its old channel, some having a theory that it once skirted the hills of the town, but while it inundated portions of the city it would have required several feet more of water to have accomplished that evil design. Cellars in the second story may never be a necessity, and yet people will continue to feel a certain degree of insecurity. Annual house cleaning came early in the submerged territory, and sanitary inspection was necessary. The Mississinewa is not more treacherous than other streams, and it toll of death in other years has not been more than other Indiana rivers. While there were harrowing experiences at the 1913 Eastertide, the 1904 flood brought greater sorrow to Grant County. While the water was higher at Eastertide, people seemed to take advantage of the situation better and escape its ravages.
First aid to the drowning should be given special attention by Boy Scouts and others bent on loving service, and resuscitation is sometimes possible where the odds are against it. While all high water marks of the past were submerged, the changed conditions in Marion make it difficult of comparison, and paved streets and sewers carried the water so quickly to the river that it spread over much of the town in its effort to carry its burden. The debris afloat cannot be imagined by those who did not see the swift moving current, and because the flood was so much greater than in 1904 or in 1883, many have compared it to the New Year flood of 1847, when there were no bridges across the river and little else by which to gauge the height of the water. The rain had fallen in the closing days of December, and January 1st was high tide along the Mississinewa for many years - perhaps until the 1913 deluge raised the water marks. George Webster, who was an early contractor and builder in Marion, lost a bridge by that flood that he was constructing at the present Washington Street site, the girders having been laid and washed away as well as the material on the bank, and later it was found in drift farther down the stream. The abutments were made higher and in 1847 the first bridge finally spanned the river. Since that time the bridges have been a source of apprehension each recurring flood.
It is said that it was not so much the water as the drift that swept along with the current that endangered the early day bridges across the Mississinewa, but the heavy timber has been removed and now the danger is from water and from buildings in inundated territory. The river at the Jesse Jay homestead north of Jonesboro is not much changed since 1847, when the water had come up almost to the floor, and in 1913 it was forty-five inches deep in the house - only twice had the occupants been uneasy about it - and they went out in the night, not having though of danger until the disaster was upon them. At Glencoe, the home of W.E. Mason above Jonesboro and Gas City, where his ancestry arrived by raft on the Mississinewa in 1829, all high water marks were overreached, although his father and grandfather before him had sometimes taken refuge on the hills. Thomas Coleman was the first setter, and the house built by him still stands. The 1913 flood filled the room where previous marks had been left on the walls, more than six feet of water standing there. In 1904 Mr. Mason had the foundation laid and timber on the ground for a house when the flood swept it away, and as a precaution he made the wall one foot higher than the water mark at the time, and in 1913 there were more than forty-one inches of water on the floor. Natural conditions about there remain practically unchanged except for under-drainage that carries the water quickly to the river. It is a peaceful valley except the danger from the flood, and now the family will not be surprised at any emergency.
Fourth Street at Boots Creek
Saturday night, March 26, 1904, was a wild night along the river at Jonesboro amid the harvest of death as brave men attempted the rescue of flood bound families. Two young men without family were lost in the water in an attempt to rescue a woman and children, and there is a small monument in the cemetery sacred to the memory of Teddy M'Govern and Robert Howe, whose bodies were later taken from the drift. They had been friends in life and they met death together. As orphan boys they had come to work in a Gas City factory. There were no boats in daylight hours, and after night fall some were secured from Marion and the young men went out on the turbulent water. When their boat capsized their voices were heard in the darkness, and citizens implored Wilson Carter and his son, George W.W. Carter, to attempt their rescue. Mr. Carter was ready for bed in his own home when the call came, and he and his son made the attempt, but their boat struck a submerged fence post as they were guiding it in the direction of the voices, and the son dived under in order to cling to the opposite side from his father. He was so chilled that before they were rescued next morning he had perished from the cold. They swam by the boat until they caught the limbs of a tree and climbed it and spent the night there, having gone out at 9 o'clock in the evening and being rescued at 7 o'clock next morning.
As the two men spent the night in the tree suffering from the cold, the son asked his father if he thought any one in Jonesboro would come to their rescue in the morning. Mr. Carter answered that some stranger might attempt it, and about 7 o'clock Andrew McMiller, a man they had never seen, came to them in a boat. Mr. Carter climbed down from the tree, saying his son had died from exposure after the light of day, but his clothing was frozen and held him in position on the limb. It was necessary to cut the clothing to remove him, and the boat drifted with the current until the landing was effected opposite the Hiatt homestead several rods down the stream, and there Mr. Carter was bathes in whiskey as a restorative. He was able to be taken home two days later to attend the son's funeral. It was a terrible night for relatives at home who only knew they had gone out in the night on the water and had not returned to their homes. Mr. Carter had worn an overcoat and his body was not so wet as his sons who dived under the boat in order to balance it from the other side, and he chilled to death on a limb in the tree. Miss Beatrice Ellis composed the words of a song published that year: "The Mississinewa Flood," and although too sad to sing, many copies of it were laid away as souvenirs of the awful occurrence. Since then Mr. Carter is broken in health and the subject is always avoided in his presence - an experience filled with unutterable sadness to him. It was a night of suspense for all concerned, and his companion in suffering had succumbed to the inevitable, and he had been unable to relieve him.
A few years ago a soldier in the Home, Richard Lew Dawson, wrote a sonnet on the name of the river and the last stanza is:
"Bright-hued stream so sweet and sober,
Passing bluff, ravine and field,
Where the colors of October,
Summer's ebbing perfumes yield,
Here on beauty's wings ascending
I will dwell where love is law,
In a dream of bliss unending
On the Mississinewa!"
But those who have been robbed of loved ones by the river do not feel that way toward the Mississinewa.
The river is now more frequently spanned by bridges, and in the pursuit of business people need not so often risk their lives. When a drowning occurs today it usually develops that it came about in the pursuit of pleasure rather than necessary adventure. In recalling the past along the river one hears most unpleasant stories, but they have their place in history. While there are other watery graves in the county, the smaller streams and gravel pits having collected their quota of bodies, only those drowned in the river are listed, and perhaps it is only a partial list, people preferring prospect to retrospect when asked about such things unless the tragedy has come to their own hearthstones. In the early days of the county's history there were many expedients resorted to that are no longer necessary, and the methods of resuscitation that have been resorted to at different times indicate something of the progress in science along the river.
Some early day customs have become obsolete because their practice is no longer necessary. In olden times many families who lived near the river and must cross when the ice was thin have done so in greater safety by resorting to boards or rails, thus spreading their weight over a a greater surface. In this way a man and his entire family have crossed when except for the precaution they might have gone under the ice, and when the river was frozen over was the only time they had communication with neighbors on the other side, although only a short distance from them. There were ferries before there were bridges, but the ice bridged over all difficulties in winter. While it used to be esteemed a feat to swim the river, there is not now much spirit of such adventure - sanitary conditions and cleared land having something to do with the custom. The water is neither so deep nor clean with sewers emptying into it, and bath rooms fitted up in the homes relieve the pressure with regard to cleanliness, still next to godliness in Grant County.
Years ago there were dredging poles in many of the farm houses along the Mississinewa, and there were grappling hooks attached for use in emergencies, and then they were returned to the farm house, some homestead near the river, and when wanted again they were in readiness. Ice hooks, too, were often used where the unfortunate victim had drifted, and in every community there were brave men who feared not the water. Many stories of thrilling adventure and rescue used to be told along the river, and data of recent drownings is almost as hard to obtain as what transpired years ago. While it may be regarded in the light of a psychological problem, it was nevertheless told years ago as a fact that Noah Small, who lived in Jonesboro, was impelled to drive rapidly one morning to the river, and while he could not explain the feeling he acted upon the impulse and reached the bank in time to rescue a drowning man, Thomas Curn, an Irishman known to everybody in the town. The ice had broken with him and he could not get out of the water. Mr. Small threw out a "life line" from the harness, and saved the almost exhausted man and never knew whether it was premonition or a call direct from God, although glad he followed the impulse to visit the river.
There were many terror stricken witnesses when Roy Shull was drowned near the Charles mill, but no one had sufficient courage to attempt to reach him. When Manford R. Thomas was drowned one June day near Dunn's mill at New Cumberland, there were seven boys in the water and all narrowly escaped the same fate - early in the century. They were in quicksand and men in camp heard their cries, and although they had warned the boys of danger when the water was high, the warning was of no avail and some of the boys were more dead than alive when rescued. The body of one was not found until next evening when the action of carp in the water led searches to it. In the summer of 1898 a boy named Hubert Jeffries was drowned near the McFeely mill dam, and Pearl Rowe was was a boy drowned north of town. Charles Thrift, a student in Fairmount Academy was drowned near the Rock dam many years ago. It was said that he was mentally unbalanced as a result of hard study. He came to the river in the night and clothing left on the bank led to his discovery later. Stories of drowning at the Soldiers' Home are of frequent occurrence. On November 8, 1899, the body of James Dolan was found under the railroad bridge back of the camp, and Joseph P. Patton's body was taken from the river below the Washington Street bridge where it was completely encased in ice, and the removal of the body from its icy bed was only accomplished after a great deal of difficulty. Conrad Gunther had been missing many days when his body was found along the river by a comrade in quest of frogs, and although in civilian's clothes his identity was revealed by his underwear. So many soldiers stroll along the river, and perhaps others have met similar fortune.
On January 14, 1884, Joseph B. Jadden was drowned while breaking ice with a crow bar at McFelly's mill when the head gages went out and he was precipitated into the forebay. The body was recovered in about half an hour, and all who remember the incident remember some verses in his memory published at the time. On December 19, 1893, John Mark Bacon Gage as he came from school at noon went on to the ice at the foot of Nebraska Street and passersby were horrified to see the ice give way and the boy disappear from sight, and within a short distance from his home where dinner was awaiting him. The ice had to be cut as men searched, and in about one hour the body was carried home - a sad ending of a talented young boy whose future seemed unusually bright. In the summer of 1891 Asher Kuntz was drowned between the two bridges as he returned from a north side factory, the body lying under water from Saturday till Monday noon, and a searching party worked diligently for it. Holly Carter, a seven-year old son of George W.W. Carter, who perished from exposure on the river in 1904, had been drowned a few years before by breaking through the ice, although passengers on a passing car saw the accident and his body was rescued twenty minutes later. Near the same time a French boy named Leopold Veislet was drowned below the old Fankboner mill dam at Jonesboro. He had gone fishing. It was in 1898, and dropping the fish pole, he drowned in attempting to get it again.
Birdseye View of Johnstown
Samuel Stotler, a little boy, an inmate of the Orphan's Home, was drowned just back of that institution. The body was found in a crouching position in water hardly deep enough to conceal his form and his death has always been a mystery. On June 15, 1891, William and Glenn Ives, were drowned near the old gas plant at Eleventh Street and the river. A number of boys were with them, but all were so frightened they could not tell about it. In the spring of 1863, Mathias Stotler, a Monroe Township farmer, came to town with the family marketing and a grist of corn to be ground at the mill. The water at the old ford where the McFeely bridge now stands was spread over the banks, and he was advised that the ford was unsafe, but he attempted to cross and his wife was only convinced of his fate when she saw the team in the drift. The grain he brought was afterward dried in the mill, and someone in a boat rescued the bucket of butter he had brought to market. The body drifted to the present site of Johnstown and when a few days later it was seen afloat, a coffin was taken out in a boat and it was placed within it on the water. Charles Stonetsky, of Buffalo, New York, an employee of Philip Charles at a mill a little way below Matter Park, was drowned by going over the dam in a boat. While different persons remember the incident the time was not known by anyone.
When the first railroad grade, later utilized by the C.W. & M. road, was being built in the county, a man named Steve Grady boarded a number of the laborers in a house built for the purpose near the river at Jonesboro. Two men and two women of the party started to cross the river near McCormick's spring branch and three of them were drowned, the horses were drowned and the wagon bed was found bottom upward in a drift. One of the women managed to keep her head above water until rescued by Jacob McCormick, who swam out to her. One of the men and the other woman were taken from the water there, while the other man drifted to the wooden bridge at Jonesboro. All were Irish and strangers here. years ago a traveler left a train passing through Marion, came down town asking protection and saying he was being pursued. When he came to the river at the foot of Adams Street he waded in and drowned in sight of terrified persons who had thought him demented as he told them he had been a Catholic and had denounced the faith. The body was taken from the water and brought to the courthouse, where it was held awaiting identification, and it finally found rest in the potter's field. Along in the sixties two boys were crossing at the Ink ford above Jonesboro. It was winter and they had driven on the ice. The boys and hoses were drowned and one of the bodies was not found until the next harvest time, when a fisherman made the startling discovery. While a number of persons remembered the incident, none remembered the names.
On Saturday, July 15, 1876, D. Marion Kenney, a young man from the south part of the county, came to Jonesboro for a day along the river and he attempted to swim across at a point a little below the mill dam. Three boys started and two succeeded in reaching the opposite bank, but young Kenney drifted with the current and on Monday his body was recovered from the water at the bend of the river back of the McClure farm. He was a medical student in the office of Dr. William Lomax, and was accompanied to the water by a friend named Pugh. As soon as he was in the water he was seized with cramps and drowned before his companion could reach him. The body was immediately recovered and although a funeral sermon was duly preached, Dr. Lomax who was much attached to the young man, one year later called a "remembrance" meeting in his honor.
It was in 1844 that Mrs. Polly Cook and her ten-year old son, Wright Cook, of Jonesboro, were drowned while crossing the river on horse back at the riffle below the mill dam, and when the horse stumbled and fell the boy started to swim, then returned to help his mother and both lost their lives in the water. They were crossing the river to visit Mrs. Cook's daughter, and when the horse returned without them search was instituted. Mittens worn by Mrs. Cook and a linsey woolsey vest worn at the time by the boy are in the Octogenarian Museum in Matter Park, donated by Mrs. Samuel Oliver of Gas City. It was along in the sixties that a boy named Hinshaw, who lived on Back creek, came to the Jonesboro mill with a grist of corn, and while the corn was being ground he went bathing in the river. No one witnessed the drowning and the body was never recovered, although the horse tied along the river attracted attention. After a hard day's work in the harvest field, Henry Reed, who worked for Jason Smith, went bathing above the dam that used to cross the river just opposite the north side fire station in Marion, and was drowned there, although the body was recovered immediately.
Many people will remember the drowning of Bookout and Puckett, who were swimming their horses in the river above Jonesboro at McCormick's along in the seventies, as it was on Saturday of June Quarterly meeting at Back Creek, and on the following day when they were buried thousands of people looked upon their faces at the cemetery who were in attendance at Quaker meeting. They had finished washing their horses and the Puckett boy went in alone to swim, and when it was seen that he was drowning, without removing his clothing Bookout went to his rescue with the result that both were drowned, and as immediate burial was necessary, people at Quaker meeting attended the funeral who had not heard of the terrible misfortune. Just below the stepping stones north of Jonesboro is where Mrs. Moffett, who lived on Walnut Creek, and Mike McGowan, who had lately come from Ireland, were drowned together. There had been heavy rains and the river was full, and returning from Marion they were crossing in a wagon. It is said that Mrs. McGowan, the distracted wife of the drowned man would wander along the bank, crying out: "Mike show your face," and she absolutely refused to be comforted. Five days later some one fishing discovered the bodies in a drift where they had lodged clasped in each others embrace. Mrs. McGowan, who had only been in America a short time, returned to Ireland.
It was the sad ending of a merry Fourth of July party at Conner's Mill and Battle Ground farm when Thayne Fooshee was drowned while bathing - death claiming him as soon as he entered the water, and it was a saddened group of young people who returned immediately to the city, having recovered the body without difficulty.
Along about war times David Hamaker was drowned at Conner's Mill. He was fishing and could not swim. One Sunday morning in 1907 a stranger was found in the bayou at the island whose hat was on the bank, and passerby at first thought it was a decoy, and that the coat in the water further carried out the idea, but upon investigation the police department was called and a man was taken from the water hardly deep enough to cover him - the last man drowned in the bayou, now a part of Island park along the river. Louis Newberger was drowned from the old wagon bridge at Matthews, where he plunged into the river, and S.B. Beshore was found opposite Eleventh street near his home. Could the river tell others would be chronicled in this list of dead who went down beneath the treacherous waters of the Mississinewa. The river has not always been swollen when the death toll has been taken.