History of Montgomery County, Kansas, Part 2

Author: Duncan, L. Wallace (Lew Wallace), b. 1861, comp
Publication date: 1903
Publisher: Iola, Kan., Press of Iola register
Number of Pages: 1162

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I'ntil Sunday no loss of life had been reported in the county. but dur- ing the forenoon came the melancholy tidings of a pathetic fatality at the

HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.

mouth of Card creek in Rutland township. Saturday morning Dr. I. H. MeVoy. of that neighborhood, who had recently been engaged in business in Independence, with Mr. Greer, a neighbor, had hastily constructed a square box boat which could have been little more than a raft, as the work on it is said to have taken them but forty minutes. With this they resened the family of a Mr. Wallace, living in the path of the flood, in whose house the water had risen to the ceiling of the first story, and brought them safe- ly to land. Finding no more people in danger in their neighborhood, they next ferried a cow ont of the food. one of them holding her by the horns while the other paddled. About noon John E. Rice, an unmarried young man 23 years of age, took Mr. Greer's place, but Dr. McCoy, though a man of family, refused to permit anyone to become a substitute for him. Manned by MeVoy and Rice, the boat put off to a knoll lying a little to the west of the month of Card ereck and south of the river, where a number of people were to be seen. Here were found Mrs. Eliza Woods, a widow who had resided in the county from the date of its first settlement, and several other people, among whom were John MeCarty and Maurice and George Heritage. The two latter were at work upon an old and heavy boat with which they had been engaged during the morning in reseuing those who were in danger, but which had sprung a-leak. The story of the fatal accident which followed is as told the writer by Maurice Heritage. When he went to the Widow Woods' residence to take her away, he found her nearly beside herself with fright and excitement, and engaged in con- strueting a raft with which to start for the shore. When McCoy came to the knoll, she eagerly assented to his proposal to take her to the mainland, though the water had already fallen a foot and a half and all danger was past.

With her youngest child. Tommy, a boy six or seven years of age, and another little boy about the same age, the son of Tra VanDuzen, a neigh- bor. Mrs. Woods got into the box boat with Medoy and Rice. It was only sixty rods to the shore, but they had not gone more than three before they were in a strong current, and their boat, which was evidently overloaded, became unmanageable and was sucked through an opening in a hedge where this current was setting most strongly. Seeing their peril Mr. Her- itage and M. Mccarty rushed toward them. thinking they could make a sort of living chain of themselves, and while one of them held to the hedge, the other holding fast to the first conld reach the boat and swing it out of the current and into safety. By the time Heritage had got with- in twenty-five feet of the boat it went under and he was sneked in after it just where the boat had disappeared, the water being eight or nine feet deep. Here Heritage says he lost consciousness, until when he came to the surface ten yards away, he was recalled to a knowledge of his peril by MeCarty calling to him, and swam out of the current.

Mr. Rice.though an expert swimmer, did not arise again, and it is

HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.

thought that he was stunned by a blow across the bridge of the nose which left a bruise perceptible when the body was recovered. The boat was afterward seen floating down stream with MeCoy and Mrs. Woods both clinging to it, but it kept rolling over in the waves so that they soon lost their hold. As McCoy was also a good swimmer, it is inferred that but for an attempt to resene Mrs. Woods he would have saved himself. The boat did not upset until its occupants attempted to jump from it as it was going down: it simply foundered from overloading. The bodies were found about seven o'clock the next morning, from seventy-five to a hundred yards from where they disappeared. having lodged in a hedge. at right angles to the one through which they were passing when the boat sank.

In this connty no other fatalities were reported. though the losses in the destruction of growing crops were almost beyond computation. On Sunday W. H. Linton's fouring mill, three miles southwest of Liberty, fell into the river, entailing a loss of $3,000. McTaggart's mill, northwest of Liberty, and near the sight of the original town of that name, was flooded to a depth of thirty-three inches, which was sixteen more than had been observed there since its erection in the pioneer days. At Elk City the water was three feet deep in the depot, and many residences were damaged by the flood, but the business quarter was not inundated. The railroad was overflowed three miles north of Coffeyville at Kalloch station, and during the first of the week that city was cut off from mail communication with the outside world, except by back to Independence.

The "elondburst" which caused this flood originated in Chautauqua county. and in that county the loss of life was greater than in Montgom- ery, no less than eleven fatalities being reported. Two bodies were re- covered at Matanzas and three in the neighborhood of Caney; while six deaths occurred in the vicinity of Sedan. The following vivid and strik- ing story of the storm and its work in that county is from the columns of the Sedan Graphic of the next week :

"Last Friday commenced like a balmy spring morning, with southerly winds, and it bade fair to be the most pleasant day of the week; but be- fore noen dark clouds had begun to rise in the north, and by half past eleven the northern part of the county was the center of one of the most disastrous rainstorms ever recorded in the annals of the state. The rain and hail, accompanied at times by winds of a cyclonic nature. fell for eight consecutive hours. The water stood on the level prairie at times nearly two feet deep. The clouds from this place looked as if they were rising and moving off, when other clouds. if anything of a more fearful character. would revolve around and take the place of the one which had just spent its fury. The northern sky all the afternoon was a dark mass of revolving clouds. The clouds would appear in the northeast, and fol- lowing the circle, disappear in the northwest with terrible regularity.

HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.

At about five o'clock in the evening the first approach of the storm was announced here by the dark circling clouds overhead, accompanied by a deluge of rain, which converted our strets and water ways into boiling torrents. A few minutes after the rain had commenced to fall it was re- ported that the river was out of its banks, and in less than half an hour from the time of the first indications of the rise, the river was fifteen feet higher than it had ever been before since the first settlement of the county, and our people. for the first time. began to realize that those farmers liv- ing in the low river bottoms had either escaped by marvelous exertion or been carried to destruction. Horses, cattle. hogs, wagons and farming im- plements were driven past by the mad torrents at a frightful rate. The water came down in walls four feet high, crushing and carrying away everything that opposed its forces; fences and farm improvements disap- peared in an instant, and great trees that had stood the test of ages were uprooted and leveled to the earth ; while the roar and swish of the waters made the bravest stand back and shudder as he contemplated the awful consequences that must inevitably follow. People began to move out of the lower part of town to the high points. Night coming on and the rain still falling, nothing could be done till morning to relieve the sufferers on the bottoms.

"Next morning the cries of the sufferers in tree tops were heard. and rafts and boats were speedily constructed to render assistance. One raft was made ont ot the side of a honse and set afloat by William Harbert and others, and resened Ben Adams, his wife and two children out of the tree tops, where they had taken refuge the night before. Their house started off about six o'clock. The woman caught in a tree top and lifted her two children on to the same limb, her husband going still farther and watching to another tree. The plucky little woman sheltering her children all night and fighting the drift wood and everything, to keep from being dragged off their only hope of safety. Just above them, and four miles from Sedan, Mr. Witt. his wife and one child. also Mr. Green, seeing the food coming. tried to make their escape to the highlands in their wagon, but were carried down with the flood. Mr. Witt making his escape, and the child. woman, and Mr. Green being drowned. Their bodies have all been recovered. Ed. Chadburn. a freighter from this city, was on the road to Moline, and was drowned in a small rivulet north of town. His body was discovered early Saturday morning, and was brought home and interred Sunday evening. Two children of Mr. Rogers, on North Caney, east of Sedan, were drowned ; their bodies were recovered. Mr. and Mrs. Rogers escaped after a perilous swim of a mile."

The next great food in the Verdigris came in September. 1895, but was accompanied by loss of life, and while it ruined most of the corn tields in the valley only injured wheat in the stack.

In the latter part of May. 1903, the highest water since the settle-

HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.

ment of the county swept through both the Elk and Verdigris valleys, and at midnight on Friday, May 22d. it reached its maximum at Indepen- dence, three feet above the high water mark of 1895. The wheat erop in all of the valley lands of the county was ruined by this food, but the only loss of life reported was in the upper part of Sycamore valley, where J. W. Burke was drowned by the upsetting of his buggy in the rapidly flow- ing stream, which was not more than three feet deep at the ford where he attempted to cross. His wife, who was in the carriage with him, was rescued. He was a pioneer and a well known citizen and had been prom- inent for years in the councils of the Populist party.

The Volcanic Upheaval of 1894 at Coffeyville

Viewed from the standpoint of the geologist and the student of physi- cal phenomena, in the entire history of the state of Kansas, from the days of Coronado to these opening years of the Twentieth century, there has been no more interesting spectacle than was witnessed by those who vis- ited Major Osborn's pasture adjoining the city of Coffeyville in the summer of 1894. The location of the volcanic upheaval which occurred there on the night of Sunday, July 22d, was only about four blocks north of the Eldridge House and the business centre of the city, and not more than seventy-five yards west of Ninth street, which there marks the west- ern limit of the town, Had the upheaval occurred fifteen hundred feet south of where it did, it would have made utter wreck of most of the business buildings of that city.

As compared with the underground disturbance on that July night, the Dalton raid which brought Coffeyville so much unenviable notoriety, was but a ripple on the surface of events. That affair was transitory and left no such abiding scars on the earth's surface as did the elemental up- heaval that occurred two years later. Aside from events which are of interest because they affect those of our own race, there has been no other happening in the entire history of Kansas so far out of the usual order of things. nor so significant in its suggestions. Elemental commotion above the earth's surface we are accustomed to. and the violence and destruction wrought by cyclones and tornadoes do not excite our special wonder, as they would if they were new to our experience. But when the solid earth itself begins to rock and vomits forth stones by the ton from depths that have not seen the light for unnumbered acons, people have reason to panse and question whether there is anything stable, anything abiding in this old world of ours.

The writer of this article visited Coffeyville two days after the ex- plosion. and this is what he saw as he then recorded his observations :

The main crater extends in a northwesterly and southeasterly di- rection about a hundred feet. It is oblong in shape and varies in width from thirty to fifty feet. The pile of stone and earth that surrounds it

HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.

is ten or twelve feet high at the southeast corner, but the crater is scarcely lower on the inside of this pile than the ground just south of it, so that the bowl-shaped or crater-like appearance is due in large measure to the piling up of earth and stone around the region of upheaval. Most of the central depression, as well as the surrounding elevation, is covered with jagged and irregular stones of various sizes, giving the scene a slight resemblance to some of the stone gardens among the Rocky mountains. These stones are principally fragments of sandstone, but among them is some bluish soapstone. The gas men who have drilled here say that the latter is not found nearer the surface than thirty or forty feet. And yet right in the center of the crater is a great mass of this stone, consisting of four or five layers, all tilted up on edge. about six feet in thickness and fifteen feet long. with their lower edges concealed by the debris about them. This is the mass which has been repeatedly described as "about the size of a wagon box." As a matter of fact there is stone enough in that mass to fill a good sized wagon train and to weigh from fifty to one hundred tons.

The force required to tear this stone loose from the horizontal strata in which it lay so quietly imbedded a week ago. as it had been ever since it was mud and ooze in the bed of a great inland sea, to break up and lift all the layers of sandstone that lay above it, and to instantly raise the thousands on thousands of tons of rock and soil between it and the sur- face, is beyond all computation. It must have been something titanic -something compared with which the charges of dynamite used in shooting oil wells are as toy pistols to the great Krupp gun we saw at the Chicago Exposition. That an explosion of gas in a pocket scores of feet below the surface might have stirred the bosom of the sleeping earth and opened a seam to ease the pressure would be credible ; but what kind of a force, how sudden the explosion, and how beyond measure the pres- sure, the force, required to produce so stupendous a result !

Yet this one minature crater, where a bit of smooth, grass-grown Kansas prairie had been. in the twinkling of an eye, transformed into such a scene of stony desolation, by no means told all the story. Running thence southwest for nearly fifty yards were great cracks from six to eight feet deep and a foot or more in width. They terminated in another small- er crater where the eruption seemed to have been much less violent, the soil merely boiling up from the effects of the blow-out by the pent-up forces below. Still farther to the southwest, traces of the explosion and smaller fissures could be perceived for a thousand feet or more out into the pasture.

The main crater could have been little short of a full-fledged volcano at the time of the explosion. Eye witnesses say that stones and earth were thrown to a vast height-some think as much as four hundred feet, which I am inclined to believe is more nearly correct than the conservative

HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.

estimate of one hundred and fifty feet. The ground from the center of the crater east to Walnut street, a distance of seventy-five yards, is thickly strewn with stones varying in size from the smallest particle up to broken pieces of rock weighing two hundred pounds or more; and there is hardly a bit of ground large enough to place your hand upon that is not covered with this crumbled stone. There are plenty of pieces in the street, too; and so heavy were the rocks falling along its east side that a wooden sidewalk, not less than a hundred yards from the erater, built of plank two inches thick, was broken in several places by the falling fragments. For a block farther, more or less of the stony rain fell, some of the pieces of blue soapstone here being large enough for building slabs. In the lot directly east of the crater is a two-story residence probably twenty-five feet square. Here the window glass was all broken on the exposed side, and in one place the weather boarding had been crushed by the bombard- ment. Mr. R. P. Kercheval occupied the upper story of this residence. and his bedroom window was shattered and stones thrown over on to the bed. fortunately without injuring any one.

At the northeast corner of this honse is a small cistern about six feet deep and eight feet in diameter. It is of the shape of an inverted bowl. and the native rock formed the bottom and a portion of the east side. Here the effects of still another explosion were perceptible, the rock in the center of the floor being torn loose and thrown up with such foree as to crush the arch at the top, leaving a hole in the bottom where the firmest possible foundation had been before .. Of course the cistern was drained, the water disappearing down the hole. Why the only break in the surface observable east of the main crater should have been made righi in the bottom of this cistern is one of the many curious and inex- plieable facts connected with this explosion.

Looking for something to throw light on the causes of such an up- upheaval. I note that a gas well had been drilled just northeast of the crater in the pasture and not more than fifty yards distant. That this well had something to do with the explosion is an almost universal con- clusion. Indeed. Major Osborne, the owner of the property, is talking of suing the gas company which drilled the well. for damages. Again, two wells in the vicinity are reported to have behaved strangely before the explosion. One of them. only about a hundred yards to the southeast, is thirty feet deep and usually has six or eight feet of water in if. Here, before the explosion, the water is said to have risen to within four feet of the surface, a fact difficult to explain at such a dry season as had been prevailing. The water has subsided to the normal level since the explo- sion. Another well. a block farther away, had been bubbling with gas for two or three weeks, but since has become quiescent. The day after the explosion, while a luidred people were viewing the scene, one of those small boys who are never happy except when doing something unexpect-

HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.

ed that they have no business to, struck a match and ignited gas enough to cause an explosion and some trembling of the earth.

All these facts fit in very nicely with the theory that the gas well had been leaking into some fissures comparatively near the surface, and crowded them with gas until the pressure became very great, when the stuff exploded in some unaccountable way. In that case, though, it is naturally questioned why some of the force and effects of the explosion were not manifest in the well itself. That seems to be uninjured, and the gas escapes from it now with considerable roaring, burning at night with a great mass of fame and a noise that may be heard blocks away.

People who were awake at the time of the explosion say that it was preceded by a heavy rumbling and roaring that seemed to come from the southwest; that the earth rocked and then the dirt and stones were thrown high into the air. At the same time people living three miles to the northeast report that dishes were thrown from a table by the tremb- ling of the earth.

The explosion occurred at two o'clock Monday morning. A few minutes before one o'clock Tuesday afternoon. the sound of a heavy ex- plosion was heard at Caney, twenty miles to the west; dishes rattled, buildings rocked, and there were all the phenomena of an earthquake shock. The same afternoon several people from the neighborhood of Independence, who were attending a sale two miles north of Jefferson and about twelve miles northwest of Coffeyville, report having heard a loud explosion. Threshers in Rutland township observed the same thing, and their machine was shaken as if by a rolling of the earth's surface. Where this explosion heard by so many people in such widely separated localities actually took place, no one ever learned; and it seems hardly possible that it could have all been the work of the Coffeyville boy with his little parlor match, as the noise he made could not have been heard at so great a distance.

That the gas which exploded was far above the deep veins from which the gas wells draw their supply seems probable. That electrical or other conditions which accompany earthquakes couldl ignite subter- ranean gasses is well known. Why an upper vein should be exploded and the lower ones remain undisturbed by the effects of an earthquake. whose tremblings are supposed to originate hundreds or thousands of feet below the surface, is hard to understand on the theory suggested. That the gasses which filled the fissures comparatively near the surface could have been exploded by any other agency than one originating deep in the bowels of the earth seems unreasonable-the more especially as there was no thunder or lightning on that eventful night.

The years that have passed since the occurrence whose effects are detailed above have witnessed no other like phenomena anywhere in the gas belt ; nor have they thrown any additional light on the cause which

HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.

produced that blow-out. And I am still inclined to believe that it could only have been the frictional or electrical effects of a slight earthquake shock that could have exploded the gas in its underground chambers and produced the resulting volcanic upheaval.

The Reed Family Tragedy

Many terrible tragedies have darkened the annals of Montgomery county, but among them all there has been no other that has so profound- ly moved the people as that of the suffocation of the family of George W. Reed, at Independence, on the night of Saturday. December 31st, 1893. The calamity was due to the imperfect consumption of natural gas, on account of the entire stoppage of the flue of a chinmey. resulting in the formation of that deadly product of combustion. carbonic oxide gas. This fact. however, was not learned until days after the tragedy. and meanwhile the mystery and the horror which surrounded the affair so impressed the public mind that the people of the city could neither think nor talk of anything else, and for a time business was almost at a stand- still.

The Reed family at the time consisted of Mr. Reed, who was manager of the Long-Bell Lumber Company. his wife, Ella, who was a sister of E. P. Allen, president of the First National Bank. their son Allen, a boy of five years, and Miss Eda Scott. a young lady 22 years of age who had been in their employ for several months. On the night mentioned Mr. Reed had gone for a doctor for a neighbor's child, about nine o'clock in the evening, which was the last seen of him alive. On the Sunday follow- ing, at least six or seven times attempts were made to obtain entrance to the house, but every one who came found the doors locked and received no response to repeated knocks. Tom Foster, who was a step-son of a married daughter of Mr. Reed, had been invited to take dinner there on that day, and not only came at the appointed time but when he found the door locked, the curtains drawn and everything still about the house, sat down on the porch in the warm sunshine of that New Year's day and waited for an hour before going away. J. A. Sparks, then turn-key at the jail. was the affianced husband of the girl. Eda, and he not only went there once but repeatedly. in fulfillment of an engagement to take her for a buggy ride that afternoon. without learning why it was that no re- sponse came to his knocking.

Everyone of course concluded that the family had gone out and so no attempt was made to break into the house. When, however, the next morning came and Mr. Reed did not appear at the lumber yard, his friends, and Mr. Sparks as well felt that it was time to make an investi- gation. Accordingly a party was formed, consisting of Allen Brown, whose first wife was Mr. Reed's daughter. Rev. J. E. Pershing. Charles Yoe, of the Tribune. JJustice G. E. Gilmore. J. A. Sparks, H. J. Fairleigh,

HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.

and Geo. L. Remington, which proceeded to the residence and obtained entrance through an unfastened kitchen window. Mr. Brown went first, followed by Mr. Yoe. The kitchen fire was burning brightly. but the air was bot and foul. and Mr. Yoo stopped to turn off the gas. Passing on into the sitting room Br. Brown was heard to exclaim "My God, what a sight !" Seated within two feet of the steve was the body of Mr. Reed, already so far decomposed in that over-heated atmosphere that long lines of blood and corruption were stealing down his clothing to the floor forming a pool on the carpet and soaking through into the pine floor be- neath.

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History of Montgomery County, Kansas, Part 2

Author: Duncan, L. Wallace (Lew Wallace), b. 1861, comp Publication date: 1903 Publisher: Iola, Kan., Press of Iola register Number of Pages: 1162

Author: Duncan, L. Wallace (Lew Wallace), b. 1861, comp
Publication date: 1903
Publisher: Iola, Kan., Press of Iola register
Number of Pages: 1162