USA > Texas > Galveston County > Galveston > The great Galveston disaster : containing a full and thrilling account of the most appalling calamity of modern times. > Part 8
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11
"He told me just how much his cows cost, and why he was so fond of them, and how hard he had tried to save them, but I said : "You have saved yourself and your family ; you ought not to complain."
"The man stared at me with blank, unseeing eyes. "Why, I did not save my family." He said. "They were all drowned. I thought you knew that ; I don't talk very much about it."
"The hideous horror of the whole thing has benumbed every
303
RESCUE OF THE PERISHING.
scenes following the storm which up to now have been untold. Accounts of personal experiences are just becoming available, and the narration of the different stories is like a long, hideous dream1.
"Quartered in the Chicago hospital in the Auditorium Theatre are persons whose minds were a blank all the week until the min- istering of the "Chicago American's" nurses and physicians restored, at least partly, the shattered nerves and senses. During this morning's early hours these unfortunates related their awful experiences.
"The story of Thomas Klee was possibly the most pitiful. Klee lived near Eleventh and N streets. When the storm burst he was alone in his house with his two infant children. He seized one under each arm and rushed from the frail structure in time to cheat death among the falling timbers of his home.
LODGED HIS CHILD IN A TREE.
"Once in the open, with his babies under his arms, he was swept into the bay among hundreds of others. He held to his precious burden and by skillful manœuvring managed to get close to a tree which was sweeping along with the tide. He saw a haven in the branches of the tree and raised his two-year-old daughter to place her in the branches. As he did so the little one was torn from his arm and carried away to her death.
" The awful blow stunned, but did not render senseless. Klee retained his hold on the other child, aged four years, and was whirled along among the dying and dead victims of the storm's fury, hoping to effect a landing somewhere. An hour in the water brought the desired end. He was thrown ashore, with wreckage and corpses, and, stumbling to a footing, lifted his son to a level with his face. The boy was dead.
"Klee remembered nothing until last night, when he was put ashore in Texas City. He had a slight recollection of helping to bury dead, clear away debris and obey the command of soldiers. His brain, however, did not execute its functions until early to-day in the hospital.
312
RESCUE OF THE PERISHING.
intich inferior that Paul's inclosed it, left it out of sight. There is no sorrow or affliction or pain or death but it worketli out in God's hands a greater good.
"The disaster at Galveston fills me with terror. It was a lovely city ; its people kind-hearted and enterprising. The destruction of that city so suddenly was God's doing, and conse- quently it must be for good. It was His doing and what He does is right. The hurricane was the necessasy outcome of all the working laws of God. He sent it and it must be for good. We can not understand that ; we sit back in our heart's darkness and say, 'God is wrong ; He is not governing the universe.'
BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE.
"The people who now live in Galveston will be better all their lives. This experience has deepened their natures, enriched their sympathies, enlarged the boundaries of their feelings, and the people of that city will be blessed by that awful experience. They are going to be better inspired, more loving toward others, more affectionate toward each other, and they are going to be different 11e11 even without their riches, for riches do not make good men. The people of Galveston have been taught that there is something more than dollars in this world. The rich will now feel what it is to be poor. It does man good to feel the depths of life. Many of the survivors will thank God they have to begin life over again.
"This great calamity is good also in that it arouses the sympathies of the whole country. When it arouses the sympa- thies of many tens of thousands it must be a gigantic force to work out an ultimate good. Just think when they begin to build the city again ! How many will be benefited ? They will order lumber from the North, where the suffering people are waiting for the order. They will order millions of dollars worth of goods from Philadelphia, and there are poor people here waiting for that work. When you consider how that disaster locally is going to bless so many people outwardly, then the measure of its good may be far greater than the measure of its evil."
315
RESCUE OF THE PERISHING.
The admirable courage and determination with which the survivors faced the terrible situation are well expressed in the following editorial of a leading journal :
" While the catastrophe at Galveston is calling forth proofs of sympathy and a spirit of practical helpfulness on every hand, the people of Galveston themselves are giving the world an equally notable proof of courage and sturdy resolution. The situation as it has developed from day to day has afforded a striking evidence of their ability to pull themselves together and prepare to face the future. The conditions which they had to confront on the days immediately following the catastrophe, when they were cut off even from communication of the outer world and were alone in their knowledge of the extent of the calamity, must have been appalling beyond conception.
NO WEAK FIBRE IN GALVESTON PEOPLE.
"Stunned by a disaster in which individual griefs werelost in a common horror and the presence of death on all sides made the finding of the dead an incident of commonplace, they could scarcely have been expected to act with energy, organization or promptitude. The blow sustained by the city must have seemed irreparable.
"Irreparable it would have been if the Galveston men and women had been of weaker fiber. It stands to their credit that as soon as the clear comprehension of their misfortune came to them they faced it resolutely, and pushing aside individual griefs, set themselves to protect those who were still living. They recognized the futility of lamentation, and the necessity of fore- going the rites and formalities which men hold to be sacred obligations to the dead. Now that the worst part of their terrible task is over, the reports indicate that they are setting themselves in the same spirit to the work of rebuilding Galveston and mak- ing of it such a city as it had never before been expected to be.
" There is no more talk about abandoning the site or allow- ing the city to pass into a stage of decadence. The town is to be rebuilt, from its ruins, and it is not merely to be rebuilt but
CHAPTER XVI.
Startling Havoc Made by the Angry Storm-Vessels Far Out on the Prairie-Urgent Call for Millions of Dollars- Tangled Wires and Mountains of Wreckage.
C OLONEL " BILL " STERRETT, a well-known publisher of Austin, went to Galveston after the storm and the sights he saw during his stay there are thus described by him :
"How to commence the story bothers. Whether to start out with the absolute truth and wind the sheet about the whole thing with the simple expression ' unspeakable ' or to go on and hint the details inexpressibly sad, intimate the horrors, is the question.
"It would be better for the heart if a veil could fall from heaven and conceal what it has done. It would be better if a fog, thick, like a wall, should come up between the sea and the land that the latter might never see the crime of the former. For if calm humanity shrieked against the awfulness of the one element, it has done it now.
"The broad pampa between Houston and Galveston had been flooded. The towns which in the last ten years had grown were scared and torn by this fiend. Its anger was shown in pastures as well as in towns, and yet none knew the fury of it. There were re- ports of destruction further on, and the truth of them impressed each man in the cars as the cars counted off its rattleteteck in toll- off the miles.
" Against a barbed wire fence the bloated carcasses of cattle had floated, their swollen limbs stiff toward the sky, and yet others browsed around in the meadow now which was a roaring sea but four days ago. The sight was the first he saw of death, and every man in the car, as to avoid the fear that arose in the mind of each, began to express wonder how this could be, that is, that some of these poor brutes were dead and others living. There were vessels of all tonnage, kinds and degrees on the prairie.
"Ont there was a tramp steamship, the other way was the
318
320
HAVOC MADE BY THE ANGRY STORM.
" There were no burial services. The men who did work were simply doing what they could to relieve the air of them. They were not gentle, but how could they be gentle, when the bodies lay there with their black faces, with their terribly swollen tongues and the odor of decomposition threatening those who lived ?
" In the debris from Galveston was everything. I was struck with the idea that this must have impressed the people that the world had come to an end. For twenty-five miles on the land into the interior this disorderly element raged. It destroyed and it mangled, and when it ceased really the sea had given up its dead and the secrets of life were revealed, for walking among the debris I found a trunk. It had been broken open by the waves.
" Letters were blurred by the waves. I picked up one, and it bega11, 'My darling little wife,' and I closed it and threw it among its fellows on the drift. She was dead. She had kept this letter. Their sacred relations were exposed by this terror to those who would read them. There were dozens of men who picked up those letters. No one read them, for man is not so bad after all.
WRINGING THEIR HANDS IN AGONY.
" Two women-I talked to them-had left two children eacli in Galveston in the destroyed district, and they sat through that whole five hours' trip wringing their hands and trying to curb the volcano of lamentation which lies in the mother's heart when those of her flesh are imperiled or dead.
"We passed corpses. We passed the corpses of inen and women and children. The moon was out, floating real brilliantly, and the boat cut past, barely missing a woman with her face turned toward God and the sky. I fervently prayed I might never the the like again. And when we reached the wharf, torn and skinned so that we had to creep to land, I saw beneath me, white and naked seven bodies.
" My very soul turned cold at the grewsome sight. Horrible ! The contemplation of it yet makes me sick, though I have seen things since then that make me and would make the world sick, if I were able to describe them, unto death."
B22
HAVOC MADE BY THE ANGRY STORM.
in which was stored during the season cotton seed oil, at the foot of Fifteenth street, was blown to Twenty-first street, a distance of six blocks. It landed on its bottom and rests now in an upright position. It is a large tank and heavy, but the elements got the better of it.
RESCUED TWO BABES FROM DEATH.
Ray Ayers, an eight year old boy, unwittingly rescued his sister's two babies during the flood. He was floating on a raft in Galveston when he passed a box with the two children in it. He siezed them, but the weight was too heavy for his raft, and so he placed them on two bales of hay on top of a floating shed. When he found his sister he learned that her children were lost, and when a searching party discovered them, they were still sleeping, unconscious of their danger.
James Battersole, of Galveston, was one of the men who were carried far out to sea during the storm, whirled back again in the rush of waters, and lived to tell of it. The roof of his house, on which he had sought refuge, served as his raft, and the spot on which he landed was very close to the location his house had formerly occupied.
Margaret Lee's life was saved at the expense of her brother's. The woman was in he Twelfth street home, in Galveston, when the hurricane struck. Her brother seized her and guided her to St. Mary's University, a short distance away. He returned to search for his son, and was killed by a falling house.
While George Boyer, of Galveston, was being carried with frightful velocity down the bay he saw the dead face of his wife in the branches of a tree. The woman had been wedged firmly between two branches.
Mrs. P. Watkins is a raving maniac as the result of her ex- perience. With her two children and her mother she was drifting on a roof, when her mother and one child were swept away. Mrs. Watkins mistakes attendants in the hospital for her lost relatives, aud clutches wildly for them.
Harry Steele, a cotton man, and his wife sought safety in
323
HAVOC MADE BY THE ANGRY STORM.
three successive houses, which were demolished. They eventually climbed on a floating door and were saved.
Though separated by the storm and washed in different direc- tions all the members of the Stubbs family, of Galveston, were rescued. Father, mother and two children were on a floating roof that broke in pieces. The father, with one child, went one way. The mother went another, and the remaining children went in still a third direction. Sunday evening all four were reunited.
L. F. Menage, of Austin, who returned from Galveston Friday night, reached the Tremont Hotel, Galveston, the Friday evening before the terrible storm began. He says it has been the most ter- rible week in huis experience, the most awful two days a man could imagine were the Sunday and Monday succeeding thie hurricane.
"ALL GONE !- ALL GONE!"
"One man would ask another how his family had come out," said Mr. Menage last night, "and the answer would be indifferent and hard-almost offish : 'Oh, all gone.' 'All gone' was the phrase on all sides.
" The night before the disaster, when I reached the hotel, it was blowing rather hard, and the clerk said we were in for a storm, and I asked him if his roof was firmly fixed, and he said, 'Well, it won't be quite as bad as that,' but by the next night at the same time there was tliree feet of water in the rotunda and the skylight had fallen in and the servants' annex been blown to pieces, and the place was crowded with refugees who arrived from all points of the city in boats. Saturday night there was little sleep, yet no one realized the extent of the disaster.
" On Sunday morning one could walk on the higher streets, so quickly had the water gone down. I took a walk along the beach, and the place was one great litter of overturned houses, debris of all kinds and corpses. I met one woman who burst into tears at sight of a small rocker, her property, mixed in among the wreck- age. She had lost all her family in the flood. People were for the most part bereft of their senses from the horror, and a single
326
HAVOC MADE BY THE ANGRY STORM.
in accordance with plans adopted prior to the storm. He received assurances that the storm would in no way affect the construc- tion of the sewerage system, and as soon as possible work would commence.
W. B. Groseclose, assistant general freight agent of the Mis- souri, Kansas and Texas Railroad, reached Galveston this evening. He says the road will commence to receive grain for shipment to Galveston on September 22. A large force of men is engaged repairing one of the railroad bridges across Galveston Bay.
A force of Deputy United States Marshals under Marshal Grant is guarding the entrance to Galveston, at Texas City, and keeping away all persons who can show no good cause for coming here. Crowds are daily leaving the city, a majority being women and children. The city is still under martial law, and will remain so indefinitely. Idlers and sightseers who elude the guards on the mainland are upon their arrival here pressed into the street service.
SOME ACCOUNT OF CLARA BARTON.
Galveston, Tex., Septe nber 18 .- Clara Barton, President of the Red Cross Society, who came here to distribute relief supplies, was stricken down at her work to-day while ministering to the vic- tims of the Galveston storm. She succumbed, like a soldier, at her post. To-night she lies seriously ill at the Tremont Hotel.
She was stricken at a conference in her rooms at the Tremont, with her staff of nine gathered about her. She had just finished an outline of her work, assigning each member of her staff to the particular part of the work that one was to do. Suddenly she ceased speaking. Turning to Mrs. Ellen Spencer Mussey, Vice- President of the Red Cross, who sat at her side, she whispered :
" Begin talking. I am going to faint. Don't let them see."
Miss Barton leaned back in her chair and Mrs. Mussey arose, and, standing before her, began speaking. Without a sign to the others Mrs. Mussey finished what she had to say and then dis- missed the conference.
Galveston people arose with heavy hearts this morning. Thou-
335
HAVOC MADE BY THE ANGRY STORM.
At that time no one had gone from the outside to Galveston, not even newspaper men. Galveston was practically cut off from the outside world. The scores of people hurrying to Houston with the desire of getting to Galveston by the railroad and boats plying between there and that city could not make the trip.
The representative endeavored to charter a tug to send a 'photographer and some newspaper men through, but the captain refused to go.
CAPTAIN WOULD NOT RISK THE TRIP.
" I will sell you my boat," he said, "but neither myself nor my men will risk the trip."
By putting several thousand men at work all day Monday and Monday night one railroad line was put in condition for a train to go from Houston to Texas City, six miles from Galveston, the island being across the bay.
This, the first train out of Houston, was to leave early Tues- day morning. The news of its intended departure spread to all parts of the country. Hundreds of grief-stricken, bewildered peo- ple, nearly crazed with anxiety for relatives in the storm-swept country, stayed up all night, with the hope of getting into Galves- to1. The railroad men let all that they could possibly stow away in the coaches get on board, telling them in advance, however, that no one would be able to get from Texas City to Galveston.
Arriving there with the train was the special photographer of the newspaper with his camera. When this crowd of men and women reached Texas City they found no means of riding further.
The only possible way to make the perilous trip was to walk to Virginia Point, two miles away, and this was across the marsh filled with debris and bodies from the Galveston wreck. The pho- tographer and the ten other men attempted the task. They were nearly exhausted when the two miles were finished. They had taken off their shoes and walked up to their waists in water. Their feet were bruised. The photographer carefully kept his camera from coming in contact with the water, however, and got several graphic views when he reached the place.
338
HAVOC MADE BY THE ANGRY STORM.
here. Mayor Jones, for instance, said to-day : " Chicago people are the best kind of friends to have when one is in trouble. We can- not express our thanks to them. We will show by our future what their help has meant to us. Like Chicago we will rise above all disaster and rebuild our city better than it lias ever been before."
Eleven hundred tents were received to-day by the Board of Health. All except 300, which were retained for the marine hos- pital on the beach, have been distributed to the homeless in the different wards.
Miss Clara Barton is giving her time and attention to assist- ing in the work of relief and ascertaining what supplies are nieces- sary to meet the exigencies of the situation.
NUMEROUS CASES OF INSANITY.
The city takes on more of the appearance of a business place each day. To-day horse cars are running downtown, while there is both water and electric service in limited portions of the city. Telephone communication lias been opened with Houston, and both of the telegraph companies have greatly improved their service. All the railroad companies announce they will have trains into the city inside of three days, although at first only trains with con- struction material may risk the trip across the repaired bridge. The Santa Fé Road expects its first train on Thursday.
A systematic effort was begun this morning to obtain the names of the dead, so that the information can be used for legal purposes and for life insurance settlements. Sworn statements from witnesses of death are being recorded, and communication with people with information who have left the city is being opened.
There are numerous cases of insanity in Galveston as a result of the terrible bereavements sustained by the survivors. Judge John J. Reagan, a prominent lawyer, is at the Masonic relief sta- tion in a pitable condition. Judge Reagan lost every relative he had in Galveston. He sits hour by hour in pathetic silence. Then he bursts out laughing, and his laughter is followed by tears.
There are now about 200 soldiers in Galveston doing police
CHAPTER XVII.
Governor Sayres Revises His Estimate of Those Lost and Makes it 12,000 -- A Multitude of the Destitute- Abundant Supplies and Vast Work of Distribution.
G OVERNOR SAYRES issued a statement September 19th, in which he said in part : "The loss of life occasioned by the storni in Galveston and elsewhere on the southern coast cannot be less than 12,000 lives, while the loss of property will probably aggregate $20,000,000. Notwithstanding this severe affliction, I have every confidence that the stricken districts will rapidly revive, and that Galveston will, from her present desola- tion and sorrow, arise with renewed strength and vigor."
Speaking further of the situation at Galveston, the Governor said : "I look for the rebuilding of Galveston to be well under way by the latter part of this week. The work of cleaning the city of unhealthful refuse and burying the dead will have been completed by that time, and all the available labor in the city can be applied to the rebuilding.
"If the laboring people of Galveston will only get to work in earnest, prosperity will soon again smile on the city. Arrange- ments have been made to pay all the laborers working under the direction of the military authorities $1.50 and rations for every day they have worked or will work. An account has been kept of all work done, and no laborer will lose one day's pay.
"The money and food contributions coming from a generous people have been a great help to the people of Galveston, as it has relieved them of the necessity of spending their money to support the needy, and it can now be applied to the improvement of their own property and putting again on foot their business enterprises.
"Five dollars a day is being offered to the mechanics who will come to Galveston, and with the assurance from reputable
340
345
GOVERNOR REPORTS TWELVE TIYOUSAND DEAD.
"I'm not afraid of another storul," said a clerk in one of the prin- cipal stores. "But I'm sick and tired of the whole business."
The Southwestern Telephone and Telegraph Company, which is a branch of the Erie system, will rebuild its telephone system here. "This will take us three months, and in the meantime we will give 110 service save long-distance," said D. McReynolds, 'superintendent of construction. "We will install a central emner- gency system the same as that in Chicago and put all wires under ground. We will employ five hundred men if necessary to do the work in ninety days. The company's losses in Texas are $300,000 -$200,000 liere, $60,000 at Houston and the rest at otlier points."
Residents here are greatly pleased at this announcement, as it shows the confidence of a foreign company in the future of Galveston.
ONLY ONE WHO ESCAPED.
Cooped up in a house that collapsed after being carried along by a deluge of water, John Elford, brother of A. B. Elford, Chi- cago, his wife and little grandson, met deatlı in the flood during the Galveston storm. Milton, son of John Elford, was in the building with the family at the time, and is the only one of the many occupants, including fifteen women, that is known to have escaped.
A. B. Elford was dumbfounded when he received the first infor- mation of the disaster, for he had no idea of his brother being in Texas. John Elford was a retired farmer and merchant of Lang .. don, N. D. He recently had taken his family on a trip to old and New Mexico. Mr. Elford yesterday received the following letter from Langdon, N. D. :
"We have just received a letter from Milton. Father, mother, Dwight and Milton went to Galveston from Mineral Springs, Texas, where they had previously been stopping. They were so delighted with Galveston on reaching there that they ,old their return tickets and decided to remain about two months. They were at first in a house near the beach, but moved farther away and to a larger and stronger house when the water began to rise. "All at once the water came down the street, bringing houses
352
GOVERNOR REPORTS TWELVE THOUSAND DEAD.
city must be rebuilt. It is the only outlet worthy the name on the Gulf west of New Orleans. The government spent $6,000,000 to make a thirty-foot harbor there, and the shipping is so exten- sive that rebuilding the wrecked portions of the city is impera- tive."
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.