USA > Texas > Galveston County > Galveston > The great Galveston disaster : containing a full and thrilling account of the most appalling calamity of modern times. > Part 7
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"It is hard for men to sit still and do nothing when in mortal fear of their lives, and I saw men sit, clench their hands and set their teeth, and sweat breaking out all over them. It was an awful strain on the nerves. We reasoned that we were in as good a place as we could get, though no one expected to live through it.
OLD GENTLEMAN WITH BAROMETER.
" There was an old gentleman in the depot who seemed to be a scientist. He had a barometer with him, and every few minutes he would examine it by the solitary lantern that lit the room, and tell us it was still falling and the worst was yet to come. It was a dire- ful thing to say, and some of the crowd did not like it, but the in- strument seemed to be reliable. About 9 o'clock the old man ex- amined it and announced that it stood at 27.90. I give the figures for the benefit of any one who wants to know the reading at the heighth of the storm. He announced to the crowd that we were gone and that nothing could exist in such a storm.
" At that time the hurricane was awful. Once in a while I could hear a muffled detonation, a sort of rumbling boom. I knew that it was a house falling, and it did not add to my comfort. There was no lightning or thunder, and at times the moon gave some light. The clouds did not appear to be up any distance, but to drag the ground.
" About 10 o'clock the old man looked at his instrument and gave a whoop of joy : 'The worst has passed,' he shouted. ‘We are all safe. The storm will soon be over.' Few took in the full meaning of his words for the wind was still a hurricane. Within almost as many minutes it had risen ten points and we felt safe.
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mittees are doing noble work on the island. The people of Galves- ton are rising to the occasion and I never saw braver, stronger- hearted or more intelligent men. It is wonderful the way they face the fearful disaster. They have made no mistakes.
"Some negroes were killed for looting, but since that time it has stopped. The work of cleaning up is being pushed as rapidly as possible. Every Galvestonian is confident that the city will rise from the disaster and sustain its commercial and industrial position."
HON. MORRIS SHEPPARD'S ACCOUNT.
Hon. Morris Sheppard, son of Congressman John L. Shep- pard, returned to Texarkana from Galveston, sound and well, though a little broken up from the shock. When seen he said concerning his experience in the Galveston storm :
" I had gone there to address the Woodmen Saturday night, but the weather got so bad I concluded to leave. I went to the Uniou Depot about 5 o'clock to catch a train that was to leave for Houston a little later. When the storm broke we all ran up stairs. There were about 100 men and three ladies, and all remained in one room for thirteen hours. While the storm was at its height and the waters were wildest a number of men in one corner of the room struck up the familiar hymn, 'Jesus Lover of My Soul,' and sang with great effect, especially the lines 'While the nearer waters roll, while the tempest still is high,' etc.
" We all expected death momentarily, yet nearly all seemed resigned; several actually slept. The wind ripped up the iron roof of the depot building as though it were paper. A wooden plank was driven through the iron hull of the Whitehall, a large English merchantman, whose captain said that in his experience of twenty-five years he had never before known such a fearful hurri- cane. One lady clung to her pet pug dog through it all, and landed him safely at Houston Monday morning. When daylight finally came, an old, gray-bearded man was seen near the building wading in water to his armpits. We hailed him and requested him to get us a boat. He turned upon us and cursed us with a perfect flood
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the best building at his disposal. Relief is coming as rapidly as the crippled transportation facilities will admit. No one need fear, after seeing the brave and manly way in which these people are helping themselves, that too much outside aid will be given."
Reported dead several times, their obituaries printed in Gal- veston and Houston, Peter Boss, wife and son, formerly of Chicago, were found, after having passed through a most thrilling expe- rience.
TRIED TO ESCAPE WITH HER MONEY.
Mrs. Boss' story of her experience in the disaster was a thrill- ing one. With her husband and son she was seated at supper in her home on Twelfth street when the storm broke. She seized a handkerchief containing $2000 from a bureau, and, placing it in her bosom, went with her husband and the son to the second story.
There they remained until the water reached them and they leaped into the darkness and the storm. They lit on a wooden cistern upon which they rode the entire night, clinging with one hand to the top of the cistern. Several times Mrs. Boss lost her hold and fell back into the water, only to be drawn up again by her SO11. Timbers crashed against their queer boat, people on all sides of them were crushed to death or drawn into the whirling waters, but with grim perseverance the Boss family held on and rode the night out.
Mrs. Boss was pushed off the cistern several times by her excited husband, but young Boss' presence of mind always saved her. With her feet crushed and bleeding, her clothing torn from her body and nearly exhausted, the woman was finally taken from her perilous position several hours after the hurricane started.
Her companions were without clothing and were delirious. They were the only persons saved from the entire block in which they lived. They were taken to emergency hospitals, where they all tossed in delirium until Sunday. Mrs. Boss lost her money, and the family, wealthy a week before, was penniless. They had to appeal to the city authorities for aid, and got but little.
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A Chicago journal established a Relief Bureau at Galveston, and sent thither a special commissioner who, under date of Sep- tember 15, gave the following account :
"I spent part of last night with the Chicago American Relief Bureau. I had no business there. The nurses and doctors had done all there was to do. They have worked like great big-spirited Trojans. The babies were all abed and asleep. The women were fed and the homeless and destitute men who had wandered in for shelter had been tucked away in the gallery and made as comfort- able as possible.
A HEROIC LAD.
"The gas was out in the great theatre, and a few candles shed a flickering light. A lad told this story: He lost every one on earth he loved and who loved him in the flood. He swain two miles and over with his little brother on his back, and then saw his brother killed by a piece of falling timber after they had reached dry land and what he supposed was safety.
"He is sixteen years old, this boy of mine ; tall and strong in every way, and when he had dug a shallow grave in the sand for his little brother he went up and down the prairies and buried those he found. Alone in the declining sun, without food or water, impelled by some vague instinct to do something for some one, this boy did this, and yesterday they found him fainting in a field and brought him to us. We put him to bed, made him take a bowl of soup and gave him a bath.
"He seemed perfectly amazed at the idea that any one should want to do anything for him. We only got his story out of him by persistent and earnest questioning. He said there was none to tell. Last night he was talking in his sleep.
"'That's all right, Charley,' he said over and over again. ' Brother won't let you get hurt. Don't you be scared, Charley, and I will save you!' and he threw his arms out and about as if he was swimming.
" Hour after hour he swam and hour after hour he comforted his little brother, and when I laid my hand on his forehead and he
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" Mentally unbalanced by the suddenness and horror of their losses, men and women meet on the streets and compare their losses and then laugh the laugh of insanity as a newcomer joins the group and tells possibly of a loss greater than that of the others. Their laughter is something to chill the blood in the veins of the strongest inien. They are maddened with sorrow, and do not realize their losses as they will when reason returns, if it ever returns.
"Some of them are absolute raving maniacs. One man, Charles Thompson, a gardener, as soon as he was out of personal danger that awful night, commenced rescuing women and children, and saved seventy people. He then lost his mind. Two police- men were detailed to capture him, but he heard them approaching and leaped from the third-story window of an adjoining building and escaped.
THE YOUNGEST NURSE.
"The Chicago Relief Corps has the youngest, and, consider- ing her years, most efficient nurse among the hundreds engaged in relief work. She is Rosalea Glenn, eleven years old, a refugee from Morgan Point. Together with her mother, Mrs. Minnie F. Glenn, and two smaller children, she was received at the hospital last night.
"To-day Rosalea asked to be assigned to part of one of the wards. She astonished trained nurses by her cleverness, and her services proved as valuable as those of any one on the force. She is now the hospital pet. Her father is Albert W. Glenn, a boat- man. The home of the Glenns was washed away, but the family were saved by a flight of seven miles into the country.
"Some of the advertisements in the Galveston News are very striking. Garbadee, Iban & Co. make this announcement : 'Our help has generously volunteered to work to-day to assist the neces- sities of the flood sufferers. Our store will open from 9 A. M. tin- til 5 P. M. Orders from the Relief Committee will be filled.'
CHAPTER XIV.
Dead Babes Floating in the Waters-Sharp Crack of Soldiers' Rifles-Tears Mingle With the Flood-
Doctors and Nurses for the Sick and Dying.
OM NE of the most harrowing experiences during the scene of destruction and death at Galveston was that of a young lady
belonging to Elgin, Illinois. Stamped upon her mind until she shuddered and cried aloud, that she might forget all its horrors and terrible memories, Miss Pixley stood in the Dearborn Street Station and told of the Galveston flood. Surrounded by her rela- tives and friends who had given her up as dead, Miss Pixley, who was the first arrival from the storm swept district, told her story between outbursts of bitter tears.
"Oh, those eyes," she cried, " that I might put them from my mind. I can see those little children, mere babies, go floating by my place of refuge, dead, dead ! God alone knows the suffering I went through. Thousands, yes, thousands, of poor souls were carried over the brink of death in the twinkling of an eye, and I saw it all."
MISS PIXLEY'S GRAPHIC STORY.
This is her story, as she told it : " I had been in Galveston for about six weeks, visiting Miss Lulu George, who lives on Thirty- fifth street. It was not until after the noon hour of Saturday that we were frightened. Buildings had gone down as mere egg shells before that death-dealing wind.
"About 1.30 o'clock I told Miss George that we must inake our way to another building about half a block away. The water had risen over five feet in two hours, and as I hurried to the front door the wind tore down my hair and I was blinded for a time.
"I turned my eyes to the west and for three long miles there was not a building standing, everything had been swept away.
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Reports show that three-fourths of the Velasco people lost their homes and four persons were drowned. Eight bodies were washed ashore at Surfside, supposed to be from Galveston. At Quintana 75 per cent. of the buildings are destroyed. No lives were lost there, though a number were injured. Velasco has hardly a house that will bear inspection. People are suffering for the necessities of life and many who are sick need medicines.
At Seabrooke, Texas, thirty-three out of thirty-four houses floated away and twenty-one people were drowned. At Hitchcock a large pile-driver of the Southern Pacific works at Galveston, and also a large barge partly laden with coal, are lying in the pear orchards several miles from the coast. Box cars, railway iron, drawbridges, houses, schooners and all conceivable things are lying over the prairie, some fifteen miles from their former location.
A TRAGIC WEDDING CEREMONY.
At the Tremont Hotel in Galveston a wedding occurred Thursday night, which was not attended with music and flowers and a gathering of merrymaking friends and relatives. Mrs. Brice Roberts had expected some day to marry Earnest Mayo. The storin which desolated so many homes deprived her of almost everything on earth-father, inother, sister and brother. She was left destitute. Her sweetheart, too, was a sufferer. He lost much of his possessions in Dickinson, but he stepped bravely forward and took his sweetheart to his home.
A pathetic story of the Galveston flood is that of Mrs. Mary Quayle, of Liverpool, England, who is now on her journey home. She had only been two days in the city with her husband when the storm came. She goes home, her husband dead, and herself a nervous wreck. Mr. and Mrs. Quayle had taken apartments in Lucas terrace, Galveston. During the storin Mr. Quayle went to a window, when a sudden burst of wind tore out the panes and sucked him, as it were, out of the house. Mrs. Quayle, in the rear of the room, was thrown against a wall and stunned. No trace of her husband's body has been found.
It will be a long time before many of the survivors of the Gal-
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means of getting to the mainland, owing to the trouble with the owner of the boat.
"The sanitary conditions do not improve. Dr. Trueheart, chairman of the committee in charge of caring for the sick and injured, is going on with dispatch. More physicians are needed, and he requests that about thirty outside physicians come to Gal- veston and work for at least a month, and, if needed, longer. The city's electric light service is completely destroyed, and the city electrician says it may be sixty days before the business portion can be lighted.
" A glorious and modern Galveston to be rebuilt in place of the old one, is the cry raised by the citizens, but it would seem a task beyond human power to ever remove the wreckage of the old city.
" The total number of people fed in the ten wards Saturday, the 15th, was 16,144. Sunday the number increased slightly. No accurate statement of the amount of supplies can be obtained as they are being put in the general stock as soon as received."
"SEEMS LIKE AN AWFUL DREAM."
Destitute save for a few personal effects carried in a small valise, and with nerves shattered by a week of horror, Mr. and Mrs. C. A. Prutsman, with their two daughters, twelve and six years old, reached Chicago from the flood-swept district of Texas. They came direct from Galveston, via. Houston and St. Louis.
During all of one afternoon the little family sat at the Rock Island station waiting for a train to take them to Putnam, Ill., where Mrs. Prutsman has relatives. When it was learned that they were from Galveston, they were besieged with questions con- cerning the details of the terrible storm. Crowds of waiting pas- sengers flocked about them, and they told the gruesome story over and over.
" Yes, we were fortunate," said Mrs. Prutsman, as she leaned wearily back in a rocking chair, and tenderly contemplated the two children at her side. "It seems to me just like an awful dream, and when I think of the hundreds and hundreds of children who
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were killed right before our very eyes, I feel as though I always ought to be satisfied no matter what comes."
Mr. Prutsinan said : "The reports from Galveston are not half as appalling as the situation really is. We left the fated city Wed- nesday afternoon, going by boat to Texas City, and by rail to Houston. The condition of Galveston at that time, while showing an improvement, was awful, and never shall I forget the terrible scenes that met our eyes as the boat on which we left steamed out of the harbor. There were bodies on all sides of us. In some places they were piled six and seven deep, and the stench horrible.
"I resided with my family fourteen blocks away from the beach, yet my house was swept away at 5 P.M. Saturday, and with it went everything we had in the world. Fifteen minutes before I took my wife and children to the courthouse and we were saved, along with about 1,000 others who sought refuge there. When we went through the streets the water was up to our arms and we carried the children on our heads.
WOMAN SHOT TO END HER SUFFERING.
"I assisted for several days in the work of rescue. In one pile of debris we found a woman who seemed to have escaped the flood, but who was injured and pinned down so she could not es- cape. A guard came along, and, after failing to rescue her, delib- erately shot her to end her misery.
" The streets present a gruesome appearance. Every available wagon and vehicle in the city is being used to transport the dead, and it is no uncommon thing to see a load of bodies ten deep. The stench in the city is nauseating. Since the flood the only water that could be used for drinking purposes was in cisterns, and it has become tainted with the slime and filth that covers the city until it is little better than no water at all.
"Since the city was placed under martial law conditions have been much better and there is little lawlessness. The soldiers have shown no quarter and have orders to shoot on sight. This has had a wonderful effect on the disreputable characters who have flocked into the city.
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tion and furniture was an experience so horrible that a small pro- portion of those who started are here this morning.
" A caboose and engine are standing just above this place. In it are four train men all crippled and sick, only one of them being able to get about. With them are a father and son, the remainder of a party of eight who tried to cross the bay Saturday. A half mile farther down, or a hundred yards from the bay, is another en- gine and caboose, in it a family of six, four of them small children, are congregated. They lived at this place and had a hard fight for their lives. They are caring for a switchman, who will live only a few hours. They are in a destitute condition.
REFUGEES CRAZED BY THEIR SUFFERINGS.
" Refugees from Galveston tell awful tales of suffering and death, and in every case that came to my notice are in such mental state that there can be no reliable facts obtained from them. The only newspaper man who has got into Galveston came out last night deathly sick, and would not stop when hailed.
" Thieves have been robbing the bodies as they canie ashore. One man was caught last night and will be taken to Galveston to-day. When searched, a baby's finger was found with a ring on it. He afterwards gave the hiding place of articles and money and much jewelry was found. A cry of "lynch him" met with little favor ; enough deatlı is here.
"Frantic refugees from Galveston gave vent to all sorts of invectives against the world in general and Houston (fifty miles north) in particular, for what they believe to be dilatoriness in relief work. It does not seem that more could have been done in one day. Almost nothing has been done.
"Some in their frenzy blaspheme their God for not preventing such a catastrophe. Two relief boats are to leave shortly but only enough men to man them will be allowed to accompany then. There is no shelter here except the two cars mentioned. Box cars were strewn along the west side of the railroad grade for two miles from this point."
CHAPTER XV.
Family in a Tree-Top All Night-Rescue of the Perishing- Railroad Trains Hurrying Forward with Relief- Pathetic Scenes in the Desolate City.
A FTER suffering untold privations for over a week on Bolivar peninsula, an isolated neck of land extending into Galveston bay a few miles from the east end of Galveston island, the Rev. L. P. Davis, wife and five young children reached Houston, fam- ished, penniless and nearly naked, but overcome with amazement and joy at their miraculous delivery from what seemed to them certain death.
Wind and water wrecked their home, annihilated their neigh- bors and destroyed every particle of food for miles around, yet they passed through the terrible days and nights raising their voices above the shriek of the wind in singing hymns and in prayer. And through it all not one member of the family was injured to the extent of even a scratchi.
When the hurricane struck the Rev. Mr. Davis' home at Pat- ton Beach the water rose so fast that it was pouring into the win- dows before the members of the family realized their danger. Rushing out Mr. Davis hitched his team and placing his wife and children into a wagon started for a place of safety. Before they had left his yard another family of refugees drove up to ask assist- ance, only to be upset by the waves before his very eyes. With difficulty the party was saved from drowning, and when safe in the Davis wagon were half floated, half drawn by the team to a grove.
With clotheslines Mr. Davis lashed his 12 and 14 year old boys in a tree. One younger child he secured with the chain of his wagon, and lifting his wife into another tree he climbed beside her.
While the hurricane raged above and a sea of water dashed wildly below, Mrs. Davis clung to hier 6-month-old babe with one
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the starlight. A little farther on we saw a group of strange drift- wood. We looked closer and found it to be a mass of wooden slabs, with names and dates cut upon them, and floating on top of them were marble stones, two of them.
DEAD WASHED FROM THEIR GRAVES.
" The graveyard, which has held the sleeping citizens of Gal- veston for many, many years, was giving up its dead. We pulled up at a little wharf in the hush of the starlight ; there were 110 lights anywhere in the city except a few scattered lamps shining from a few desolate, half-destroyed houses. We picked our way up the street. The ground was slimy with the debris of the sea.
"We climbed over wreckage and picked our way through heaps of rubbish. The terrible, sickening odor almost overcame 11s, and it was all that I could do to shut my teeth and get through the streets somehow. The soldiers were camping on the wharf front, lying stretched out on the wet sand, the hideous, hideous sand, stained and streaked in the starlight with dark and cruel blotches. They challenged us, but the marshal took us through under his protection. At every street corner there was a guard, and every guard wore a six-shooter strapped around his waist.
"We got to the hotel after some terrible nightmare fashion, plodding through dim streets like a line of forlorn ghosts in a half-forgotten dream. General Mckibben, commander in charge of the Texas Division, was in the hotel parlor reading dispatches. He was horrified to see nie.
" How in the world did you get here ?" he said. "I would not let any woman belonging to mne come into this place of horror for all the money in America.
OLD SOLDIER SHUDDERED AT THE SIGHTS.
"I am an old soldier, madame. I have seen many battle- fields, but let me tell you that since I rode across the bay the other night and helped the man at the boat steer to keep away from the floating bodies of dead women and little children I have not slept
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the most part with astonishing calmness. A woman told me that she and her husband went into the kitchen and climbed upon the kitchen table to get away from the waves, and that she knelt there and prayed.
"As she prayed, the storm came in and carried the whole house away, and her husband with it, and yesterday she went out to the place where her husband had been, and there was nothing there but a little hole in the ground.
" Her husband's body was found twisted in the branches of a tree, half a mile from the place where she last saw him. She recognized him by a locket he had around his neck-the locket she gave him before they were married. It had her picture and a lock of the baby's hair in it. The woman told me all this without a tear or trace of emotion. No one cries here.
"They will stand and tell the most hideous stories, stories that would turn the blood in the veins of a human machine cold with horror, without the quiver of an eye lid. A man sat in the telegraph office and told me. how he had lost two Jersey cows and some chickens.
"THEY WERE ALL DROWNED."
" He went into minute particulars, told how his house was built and what it cost, and how it was strengthened and made firm against the weather. He told me how the storm had come and swept it all away, and how he had climbed over a mass of wab- bling roofs and found a friend lying in the curve of a big roof, in the stoutest part of the tide, and how they two had grasped each other and what they said.
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