SWITZLER'S' ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF MISSOURI, FROM 1541 TO 1877

CONTRIBUTORS.
ARCHEOLOGY, - - - A. J. CONANT, A. M.

HISTORY, COL. W. F. SWITZLER.

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY, - G. C. SWALLOW, LL. D.

MATERIAL WEALTH, - - R. A. CAMPBELL, C. E.

C. R. BARNS, EDITOR
AND PUBLISHER
SAINT LOUIS,
1879.

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CHAPTER XIII.
EARTHQUAKES AT NEW MADRID, 1811-12. — DESCRIPTION OF THE CATASTROPHE.— HON. LEWIS
F. LINN'S LETTER. — THE VENERABLE GODFREY LESIER, AN EYE WITNESS, DESCRIBES IT. — REELFOOT LAKE, TENNESSEE, A RESULT OF ITS VIOLENCE.—" NEW MADRID CLAIMS." — ACTS OP CONGRESS LOCATING AND CONFIRMING THEM.

Four remarkable events occurred near the close of the year 1811; namely, the battle of Tippecanoe, November 7 ; the building of the "New Orleans," the first steamboat constructed west of the Alleghanies; the burning of the Richmond Theater, December 26 ; and the great earthquakes at New Madrid, December 16, the latter of which will render New Madrid imperishable in history.
This place lies about seventy miles below the mouth of the Ohio, and was one of the old Spanish Forts. It was settled as early as 1780.
Seven years after, it was laid out by General George Morgan of New Jersey on an extensive scale. In consequence of some obstacles to his designs, created by the Spanish Government, and the fact that no stone for building or other purpose could be found, he finally abandoned it and retired from the country. Nevertheless, it grew to be a town of considerable importance and population.
The first shock of the earthquake at New Madrid was felt on the morning of December 16, 1811, about two o'clock, and was repeated at intervals, with decreasing violence, for several weeks. The center of its
violence was near the settlement of Little Prairie, twenty-five or thirty miles below New Madrid. During the night of December 16th a flotilla of flat boats, laden with provisions for the southern trade, was at anchor some miles below the town, and the boatmen describe the phenomenon as one of terrific grandeur.
Although there have been many exaggerations of the character and extent of this catastrophe, it is admitted by all that the undulations of the earth upheaved the waters of the great river and much of the country adjacent, filling every living creature with indescribable horror. The ducks, geese, swan and other aquatic fowls that were quietly resting in the eddies of the Mississippi gave evidence of the wildest tumult in screams of alarm. A loud roaring sound, which has been likened to subterranean
thunder, was accompanied by hissing as if of escaping steam from a pipe, and attended by violent agitation of the adjacent shores.
Sandbars and the points of islands were swallowed in the bosom of

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the deep, while the tall cotton-woods crashing against each other and tossing their giant branches to and fro, disappeared in the voracious abyss.
The earth on shore in many places opened in wide fissures, and, quickly closing again, threw jets of water discolored by mud, charcoal and sand, to a considerable height. Traces of these fissures, and of the heaps of sand with which they covered the country, are plainly visible to this day.
This appalling catastrophe invaded the country inland, on both sides of the Mississippi. Hon. Lewis F. Linn, in his letter, February 1, 1836, to the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce says that
after the subsidence of the principal commotion. "hills had disappeared, and lakes were found in their stead ; and numerous lakes became elevated ground, over the surface of which vast heaps of sand were scattered in every direction, while in many places the earth for miles was sunk below the general level of the surrounding country. One of the lakes formed on this occasion is sixty or seventy miles in length, and from three to twenty in breadth. In sailing over its surface in the light canoe, the voyager is struck with astonishment at beholding the giant trees of the forest standing partially exposed amid a waste of waters, branchless and leafless. But the wonder is still further increased on casting the eye on the dark blue profound, to observe cane brakes covering its bottom."
The venerable Godfrey Lesier, but recently deceased, and a resident of New Madrid at the time of the earthquake and an eye-witness of the scene, iu 1871 fully describes it in a letter to Professor A. D. Hagar, State Geologist of Missouri. Speaking of the remarkable fissures made by the earth's undulations, he says: "Wide and long fissures were left, running north and south parallel with each other for miles. I have seen some four or five miles in length, four and a-half feet deep on an average, and about ten feet wide. After this, slight shocks were felt at intervals until January 7th, 1812, when the country was again visited by an earthquake, equal to the first two in violence, and characterized by the same frightful results. Then it was that the cry, 'sauve qui pent!' arose among the people, and all but two families left the country, abandoning all their property, consisting of cattle, hogs, horses, and portions of their household effects."
Besides these long and narrow fissures, they were sometimes forced up to a considerable height in an oval or circular form, making large and deep basins, some of them one hundred yards across, and deep
enough to retain water during the driest season, affording good watering places for stock.

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"The damaged and up-torn part of the country was not very extensive, embracing a circumference of not more than one hundred and fifty miles, taking the old town of Little Prairie, now called Caruthersville, as the center. A very large extent of country on either side of White Water, called here Little River, also on both sides of the St. Francis River, in this State and Arkansas, and also on the Reelfoot Bayou, in Tennessee, was sunk below the former elevation about ten feet, thus rendering that
region of country entirely unfit for cultivation.”
It is a remarkable fact, and worthy of notice, that so few casualties occurred during those terrible convulsions. Among the citizens there were but two deaths, both victims being women. One, Mrs. Lafont, died from fright while the earth was shaking and rocking. The other, Mrs. Jarvis, received an injury from the fall of a cabin log, from which she died a few days after."
A correspondent of the New York World, writing from Cairo (Ill.,) in February, 1877, says of Reelfoot Lake:

“Near Union City, in Tennessee, and near the southwestern confines of Kentucky, is Reelfoot Lake. Here the roof of a mighty cavern was shaken down by the earthquake of 1811-12. Lofty forest trees, the tallest that tower above the lowlands, disappeared with the land on which they grew, and a sea, broader and deeper than that of Galilee, was outspread in crystal clearness in the midst of the lowlands. Dunks and geese flock its surface, and trout abound in the modern lake that had never reflected the sun's face in its fathomless depths, till the bridge of soil and trees and cane were broken down by the
earthquake's resounding footsteps.
Where the railway from Nashville to Hickman, Ky., on the Mississippi, crosses that from Mobile to Cairo and Chicago, stands the town of Union City. It is ten miles from this lake. It has been stated that when heavy locomotives and heavily-laden trains come rushing by, hotels and station-houses quake, candlesticks are shaken from mantels and tables, and that hollowness in which the forest disappeared which bridged Reelfoot Lake, extends, it has been alleged, beneath the town and railway. The water of this lake is not that of the Mississippi. It is of crystal brightness and clearness, such as distinguishes the river in the depths of Mammoth Cave, while the great river above ground, bearing alluvium from northwestern mountains, is tawny in its yellowness and impervious to vision. When the earthquake of 1811-12 was most violent and the night was of extraordinary darkness, the Mississippi flowed backward, and flatboats in the vicinity of Hickman drifted backwards forty miles towards Cairo. A mighty volume of
the river's flood-tide receded into measureless caverns beneath the country's surface, and nowhere were the lowlands submerged.”

The losses sustained by the inhabitants residing within the circuit of the earthquake at once received the sympathies of the American people. No sooner, therefore, did Congress convene than the great earthquake was felt in that body, and so keenly and with such undiminishing power that before the vibration subsided the earthquake elevated one territorial judge to the bench, delivered the Supreme Court of the United States

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of three decisions, passed six acts of Congress, and pronounced ten opinions of attorney-generals.
Among the most important acts of Congress was that of February 17, 1815, for the relief of the inhabitants who sustained losses of real estate, an net which originated the "New Madrid Claims." This was a short act of three sections, and providing that any person owning lands in the county, as it was known on the 10th of November, 1812, and whose lands wore materially injured by the catastrophe, were authorized to locate a like quantity on any of the public lands of the territory of Missouri, no location, however, to embrace a larger number of acres than six hundred and forty.
Many of the locations were made on the most fertile lands in Boone, Howard and other counties; and in many instances without regard to the lines and angles of the public surveys. Land pirates and peculators
infested the country, and, taking advantage of the wants of the sufferers by the earthquake, bought up and speculated on their "claims." Many claims were manufactured by fraud and perjury, and sustained by whatever proof was needed to establish them, so that in the end the aggregate area of the claims was no doubt larger than the entire surface of New Madrid County.