USA > Vermont > Windham County > Rockingham > History of the town of Rockingham, Vermont, including the villages of Bellows Falls, Saxtons River, Rockingham, Cambridgeport and Bartonsville, 1907-1957 with family genealogies > Part 34
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While the new cement bridge on Bridge St. withstood the water, the western bank began to go out, endangering the Fall Mountain Electric Light Co. office and the old I. P. storehouse on the bank. Fed by a steam shovel from the gravel bank behind Fifield's garage on Rockingham St., a fleet of trucks went
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to work filling the chasm. About noon, word came that dams to the north had broken and frightened residents waited in terror for the 8 ft. wall of water to descend upon them. But the water began to drop instead and by midnight everyone drew a long breath and settled down to take stock of what had actually happened while the Red Cross put on a huge drive for members, raising $6,532.87 in a few hours.
And plenty had happened. The entire Rutland Railroad yard at the depot was four feet deep in water at the height of, the flood, the roundhouse flooded and undermined and miles of track washed out. Deep washouts at the end of the steel railroad bridge from North Walpole to the depot constantly threatened the demise of the structure. The tracks of the B&M bridge near the toll bridge sagged into space. Of all the bridges over the Connecticut at Bellows Falls, only the toll bridge still stood, high and dry above the raging water. The main high- way from Bellows Falls to North Walpole was feet deep in the flood and the entrance to the Saxtons River for the first time in its history, rose until it flooded the boilerhouse of the Liberty Paper Co. and basement of the Blake & Higgins Mill. It set back into the Basin Farm which became a lake again as geologists say it was in the beginning.
There was almost no way to get in or out of town unless you took to the hills. The meadows north of Bellows Falls were a huge lake with barns floating like rafts, washed down from up-river and only the tops of telegraph poles showing where the road was. But few residents on this side of the river were affected as the worst aspect of the flood was on the New Hamp- shire side where on Friday, North Walpole began to collapse along the river as the banks disappeared into the water. The east bank near the I.P. Co. log yard was under water, streets were flooded and the end of the Arch Bridge was swept away, leaving a wide gully between bridge and land. Then the houses: began to go in a strange, terrible majestic parade. The Flavins lived nearest the bank and during that terrible Friday, the house creaked and shook and no one dared to go to bed, the men pac- ing the floor and waiting. They watched the earth slipping into the river, nearer and nearer to the house. At 5 a. m. a terrific cracking sounded all around them and everyone rushed out with the sound of crashing furniture and dishes filling their ears. Helplessly they watched while their home slid slowly into. the torrent. Then came the O'Briens. Mrs. O'Brien was an old lady who refused to believe that her home was in jeopardy and it took a lot of persuasion to get her out and there was no time to get anything else out although ropes were tied around the house. The Roland's went last but they had time to get out their things. One house lost "everything except the piano" -- which had been removed previously.
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Crowds lined both banks as livestock, broken houses and, trees, household goods and oil barrels, piled up against the: bridges. A barn full of blazing hay sailed majestically down the. river from the Charlestown meadows after dark, its owner, having fired it to destroy it before it hit the bridge, following in, a boat. It smashed up as it hit. A pile of telephone poles, left on the east bank of the canal near the Canal St. Bridge, threatened to join the debris in the water and a steam derrick was rushed into place to save them but the water put out the fire in the boiler although most of the poles were saved. There were nine cottages along the river near the Herrick meadows but by Friday night there were only six. The others marched down the river in a stately procession and went over the dam, led by Jack Hennessey's, followed by Phil Grignon's with the rear brought up by the McWeeney cottage.
The week-end was a forlorn sight. A wash-out behind the Express Company office left most of their trucks abandoned when the employees were called from the rising danger on Friday. Freight cars had rolled over on the undermined tracks. There was no mail service for several days until a truck service was started, going to Brattleboro, White River Jct. and East Wallingford to Rutland. A terminal was set up in the depot freight office to take the place of the railroad mail. Miles of tracks, dozens of bridges all over New England had been ruined. Trains just didn't run any more. A letter destined for Rut- land had to go by way of Boston, New York, Albany and White- hall. What little mail there was, however, was delivered as usual. First papers arrived in town by truck from Brattleboro after four days, carried in by boys and met by frantic crowds who were, willing to pay fabulous prices for them. One financier rented his out, ten cents for five minutes, and passed it from reader to reader. People had to wait for the papers to see what had happened to them.
Low-lying farms on the meadows north of the village were the main property sufferers outside of the mills. Jim Allbee again was in the midst of it with water this time up to his second story windows. He said he had been through many floods but this one topped them all. In April, 1862, water stood five feet on the lower floor; in the 1869 flood it was only two feet and in 1913, three feet and in 1927, eleven feet, 23 inches. At 8 o'clock on Friday, Jim and Mrs. Mary Buckley, together with her sister, were taken out in boats. This was one of the few cases during the flood where comedy as well as tragedy ensued for Mrs. Buckley and Mr. Allbee were not on speaking terms, each suing the other for ownership of the property. Jim, however, had little choice unless he wanted to swim and was literally washed upstairs to his enemy's door. His reaction was doubt- less the same as in 1913 as he was an eccentric with a ready tongue and sometimes a quirk of Yankee humor as when a speeding
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car smashed down his mail box and he padlocked the car to a tree while the driver went for help and had to pay for the mail: box before Jim would un-padlock the car!
Near the Allbee farm, the Michniewicz family, a widow and several children, watched their cow drown when they couldn't get to her, their ducks and chickens washed down the river, struggling and cackling, their pigs drowned. As they huddled fearfully in their farmhouse, watching the water creep up through the floor, a door burst open and their furniture began to follow their livestock. Their barn was washed loose and deposited across the highway so that travelers had to negotiate the edge of the flood waters after the worst was over, until it could be moved. Another barn from up-river landed across the rail- road tracks opposite their farm. But, like everyone else, they took up life again with grim determination and fortitude. On the same meadows the Brooks family were carried out on the backs of their men folk and carried up to Fred Crosby's on higher land, the only house which escaped there. All day they watched as the waters slowly rose toward the house, driving the sheep nearer and nearer the door, and their washing on the line dis- appear. When the tension became unbearable, the water stopped.
At the Herrick farm on the river, the men waited until the last minute to get the cattle to safety then mounted horses and tried to drive the crazed animals through the water to the hill behind the house. Bewildered, the cattle ran round and round the house, refusing to swim. It took hours to get them to the safety of the cold hillside. And then the farmer was faced with the fear of spontaneous combustion in his barn of wet hay with no one able to reach him to help. A Buick car drove down Weeden's hill on Friday, headed north. It struck the water with a terrific splash and went into it for 75 feet before it stopped, the lights still burning eerily under the water. There was quite a furor as police cut open the top of the car to find the driver- who had swum to safety. Francis "Bunk" Bolles, now post- master, and Charles Capron, attending the University of Ver- mont, arrived home by devious ways and with stories of the damage up north where they had been working with rescue squads. Rockingham was sure that this must be the worst of such experiences it would ever see.
But in 1937 a rainstorm reached almost $25,000 damage with roads from Saxtons River in such condition that travel was practically nil. The storm seemed to center on Saxtons River, Cambridgeport, Rockingham and Westminster West with many hill roads reduced to rock ravines from 4 to 10 feet deep. Crop damage to farmers ran into big figures as overflowing rivers spread rocks, debris and mud over fertile fields. A cloudburst in July, 1937, again washed out much of the same section, ruin- ing the Weaver farm in Cambridgeport. Again in May, 1940,
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high water covered the low spot on the Westminster Road and around Walpole station, making the bridge more ornamental than useful for some hours. Residents of Westminster, at the foot of Courthouse Hill, rowed around in boats and outboard motors were heard.
The next destructive flood descended upon the town on March 17, 1936 and almost made the '27 flood seem like an infant. Rain had poured down for almost two weeks and a cotton-wool fog shrouded the valley. As the snow on the hills melted rapidly, filling brooks and rivers, the Connecticut broke up with explosions like cannon fire. Folks began to be uneasy on Tuesday and Wednesday. Then the water started rising until the canal was 9 feet deep at the tunnel entrance and Canal Street was 8 feet deep. The railroad station was under water again with several feet in the waiting rooms and 2 feet going over the tracks. Herbert Niles, B.F.H.S. sophomore, waded through 4 feet of water to rescue a cat on the depot roof. Every foot of track was undermined and hung in the air like giant cob- webs with 4 to 7 feet of dirt washed out below. A 10-foot washout at the Vermont end of the railroad bridge carried tons of water around the roundhouse, undermining and collapsing it. Two switching engines tipped over on their sides as the tracks sagged beneath them but were jacked up and back to work on Friday. Tracks to the creamery were only a memory.
At noon, the first day, school buses collected their charges early and made a run for it through the rising water into the country. The power went off, ice piled into the roads and Bellows Falls was once more isolated from the world. The new Vilas Bridge, replacing the old Tucker Toll Bridge, lost both approaches. It did not fare as well as its predecessor in '27. Water raced through the small arches at the height of the flood. Skunks, rats and ducks went sailing past on cakes of ice. This time the meadows north of town had been bought and flooded by the Power Company but the mills "under the hill" received their usual damage. At the junction of the Saxtons River and Connecticut, the water rushed through the Blake & Higgins mill, 3 feet higher than in '27, the gauge for all floods, and damaging it to the extent of $3,000. Again the Arch Bridge lost its approach to the New Hampshire shore but no homes tipped over this time although 28 families, remembering what happened ten years ago, vacated their houses, to return to them, damp and wet, on Sunday. Water rushed into the Green Mountain Power plant, making $6,000 repairs necessary to the new dam. Engineers waited all night for the worst to happen. Under Maurice Stack, the employees, dubbed the Green Mountain Boys, stood on 24-hour service, keeping power lines open to out-lying districts. The Rockingham line went out of order on Wednesday night, was working again at . 3 p. m. Friday, went out at 5 and was repaired on Saturday at
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10 a. m. Bellows Falls did not lose its service and a truck- load of men and supplies arrived from Burlington to help the local crew. The Hydro-Electric had a transformer ruined by an explosion at 3 a. m. on Thursday when the peak of the water was reached. Pictures taken on Canal Street and Rockingham Road near where Jim Allbee had been through so many floods, might have been taken in '27. Before the new dam was built by the Hydro-Electric in 1929, these low-lying farm buildings had been removed.
Most farms in Rockingham are on high land and were mainly inconvenienced by their inability to get to town with their milk or for food. Fred Spencer lost all the wood he had been cutting all winter by the Williams River; it took off like a ghost of the old log drives. The first car to get through since Wednes- day, arrived at 5 a. m. on Sunday, a Granite State bus, driven by Robert Woods and accompanied by Joseph Lokovich of Bellows Falls. They brought Boston papers and hair-raising accounts of their trip over bridges ready to go out, through washouts and water. At one point, where food trucks were lined helplessly up along the road, they wrapped their rain- coats around the motor and plowed through water sloshing on the floor of their bus.
Westminster received the full force of this last catastrophe as the ice-jammed river spread out over the valley meadows, ruining fertile land, truck gardens and tobacco fields. River farms were flooded and cattle drowned in their stalls. And no word of their plight reached the world until Sunday when a reporter on the TIMES rode a handcar down what was left of the track to what was left of Westminster Station where ruin amounted to more than $100,000 and law suits raged for years afterwards. Dr. Bowen rode the same contrivance down to call on his patients. Between 60 and 70 head of cattle, the property of nine owners, drowned. W. S. Powers led his cows to high land, one by one, from a boat where they were taken to the Will Pierce farm in the Basin. Then he moved his furniture upstairs. Most farmers untied their cattle and left them to find their own safety, among them Mr. Potter. When people rowed back to their ruined homes on Friday, they were astonished to see seven bovine heads peering dolefully from the upstairs windows of Potter's house-and from his own room, the face of the big bull! Ralph Edson's home on the flats was isolated for a week with water 3 feet, 6 inches higher than in '27 when he escaped the flood. Edson, in trying to save his animals with a boat and ropes, towed 15 cows to safety behind the house but the horses rebelled and towed the boat round and round the house; once pushing their heads through a window. Finally, tangling themselves in the ropes around the colonial pillars, the men gave up and shot them.
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Greenhouses in Westminster were ruined and garages went down the river. Swift's cabins floated to strange spots and tobacco sheds were crushed by huge ice cakes. The National Guard Units from Brattleboro were on the clean-up job after Capt. Brough of Bellows Falls phoned the Adjutant General in Montpelier. Trucks and freight cars of dead cattle went to fertili- zer plants. In Bellows Falls, Mrs. R. L. Brooks and her step- son, Earl, walked over from their home on the Rockingham Road to watch the river. They returned hurriedly with water up to their waists and began moving things upstairs. They had been through this before. Charlie Doe, amateur radio operator, got a low power transmitter together to get word to the outside world and stood by, contacting relatives and friends and helping the New England Tel. & Tel. Co. until service was restored.
The R.F.D. carrier had no mail but he started out. Serv- ice was routed again to Boston and New York and a Railroad Mail Service center was set up at Bellows Falls Post Office under E. J. Howard. Trucks with newspapers were mired on back roads and wood fires and kerosene lamps became popular once more as children fished happily in the water for prizes which floated to shore. But Bellows Falls was fortunate for in Windsor 126 families were housed in the Armory and Zeno's bread trucks from Bellows Falls were the first to get through with food for these people. The movies in Bellows Falls closed only one day for lack of film and when Mae West was stranded at Marlboro, a private car carried her to the top of Cold River hill where she was gallantly rowed across the Cold River by Dennis Griffin and Harold Lorange. On Thursday a film was flown by plane to White River from Boston, taken by car to South Charlestown and rowed down the river to another car.
HURRICANE OF 1938
Vermont was getting used to floods but hurricanes were something else. In recent years we have become more and more aware of the autumn storm menace sweeping up from the dol- drums in the south Atlantic. Perhaps it is because they seem to increase in violence and some experts predict more and more of them due to a change in polar air currents. In 1950 a Thanks- giving storm devastated northern Vermont but no one was ready for the terror which, on September 21, 1938, swept up the coast to Canada, laying waste New England on its way; or the one on September 15, 1944, a storm which skimmed the same coast and swept off toward Newfoundland. But the last few years saw a whole bouquet of storms some of which, like Carol and Edna in 1954, devastated whole areas in New England. So many of them sneak up on us lately that they are listed, not
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too affectionately-and probably by a man-after the female of the specie! Vermont escaped the fury of Carol and Edna which wrecked its havoc in the southern part of New England and the steeple on the Old North Church went down in Boston. But the hurricane which people in Rockingham remember was the twister on September 21, 1938 when the fury of the elements struck this corner of the world.
People muttered about the "line storm" which was still coming down in torrents on that fateful day as rivers churned angrily at their banks in yellow-brown floods. Early that morning the world took on an unnatural appearance which made some folks uneasy but they went about their work. Several drove to the Eastern States Exposition at Springfield, Mass., but they never got home until the next day and then they made it by climbing hill roads over fallen trees, driving with water in the floor of their cars and detouring washed-out roads. The storm struck in the middle of the afternoon and mighty trees which had withstood the gales of a hundred years, snapped off like toothpicks carrying wires and roofs with them. Streets were impassable and rivers over their banks as winds of terrific force added their terror to that of the water.
Thursday morning, after a night of horror, the sun came out on a strange, unrecognizable world. All through the vil- lage, great elms and maples had smashed into houses, slicing through them like butter. The lawn of Mrs. Minnie Riley on Westminster Street, now the Moose Home, was piled with trees blocking Henry Street. A tree removed the front porch of E. W. Dodge on Canal Street and the home of Dana Whitcomb on Atkinson Street was badly damaged as a huge elm went through the roof. On Williams Terrace the rest of the old trees for which Pine Hill was named, went down, making a rubble of gardens and lawns. There was no way out of town to the south except by the road past Kurn Hattin Home in Westminster. Silos were heaps of broken boards, delivery trucks were stalled and food ran low. The Drislane farm, just south of Bellows Falls, had its middle neatly scooped out and hundreds of barns in New England were lifted bodily and deposited in sections over the landscape. Bridges again washed away and in the town of Grafton alone, eleven had to be rebuilt. In New England, 500 lives were lost, miles of railroad track went out after the destruction of only two years before.
Surrounding towns were found to be in similar condition. The TIMES got out a special Hurricane Edition on Satuday. Electricity was gone and people flocked to restaurants which had some method of preparing food-and heat. Of the 1,300 telephones in town, 600 were out of use but the new cable was credited with holding down the damage. The repeater station on Henry Street operated on an emergency Delco System. Cables were down on 20 streets and 150 poles were snapped off
1
BELLOWS FALLS HIGH SCHOOL
ST. CHARLES SCHOOL
SAXTONS RIVER SCHOOL AND ADDITION
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THE BELLOWS FALLS COUNTRY CLUB
MASONIC TEMPLE
BARTONSVILLE COVERED BRIDGE
THE WORRELL BRIDGE
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by falling trees or high winds. Fire alarm boxes were out of use and schools closed on Thursday and Friday. Again people resorted to pioneer methods of life. In Westminster, the Swift cabins once more took to sailing the flood waters and no trains ran until late Thursday afternoon when two trains began to run daily from Northampton, Mass. to White River Junction .. The railroad station once more suffered heavy damage and tracks were gone between Keene and Boston. The Robertson Paper Co. suffered about $5,000 damage as the roof from the old Island House blew onto the plant, driving boards through its roof. The force of the wind, plus debris, pulled huge bolts from the smoke stack which toppled over. Windows blew in and the sprinkler system went haywire, ruining much stock.
Milk collections from the creamery were performed under almost impossible conditions for three days as truck drivers chopped trees from the road and by-passed bridges no longer there and plowed through roads still under water. Milk from Bellows Falls was the first to reach Boston from New England, The big chimney on the creamery was "gone with the wind" when the roof from the old Vermont Farm building hit it. Gas stations went out of business until Yankee ingenuity devised. home-made pumps but no one could drive anywhere, anyway. Woodlands were a shambles as valuable timber was destroyed and "hurricane timber" is still down in inaccessable places. Back roads were blocked until, the next day, work crews from CCC Camp No. P-54 in Westminster were made available for emergency work in removing fallen trees as well as the worst fire hazard material and making fire lanes. These boys also assisted local road commissioners in neighboring areas. The next year they cleared 985 acres of blown-down hazards, opened 80 miles of road and in the winters of '39 and '40, cleaned up and burned about 10,000 piles of brush.
All towns in Rockingham suffered. In Saxtons River, almost every resident accumulated a nice, if unexpected wood pile in his yard, by dint of a lame back and arms. The dam at the Frey mill was partially destroyed and Ellsworth Richardson had 100,000 feet of timber down in his woods. Ralph Forristall lost his new silo and John Alexander his barn roof. Ben Wil- liams lost the roof from the back of his house and Harry Simonds' small barn was blown over. Elisha Camp drove into Dr. Osgood's yard just in time to have a huge tree crash down on his car. On James Moore's farm, 20 trees went down near his house and his apple orchard was ruined. His big barn lost its roof and his small barn was bottom-side-up. The Mason family lost two sides and the door from their garage-but the car was not scratched.
Water helped wind and the Saxtons River was higher at one time than ever before. It rose to the floor joists of the cov- ered bridge making it unsafe for traffic. The Cambridgeport
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Road above the village, caved in and the new bridge near the Wright place wasn't finished yet and the temporary one wasn't safe. Near the woolen mill the river went on a rampage and gouged out a hole larger than the mill. The Hadley house was an island and lost its front steps. Mail was still getting through to Bellows Falls from Saxtons River and Cambridgeport but the Townshend carrier was held up for several days. The carrier on the Westminster Road went as far as Wright's Bridge and relayed to another carrier on the other side. There was little incoming mail from anywhere for a few days although R.F.D. men made their regular trips. Out-going mail was routed through Greenfield where trucks carried it to Boston. New York mail was trucked to Rutland and entrained for White- hall to make connections. Friday saw the first Boston mail into Bellows Falls when three trucks loaded with pouches arrived, several of them salvaged from the train wreck in Win- chendon on Tuesday and were still wet. It took much ingenuity to decipher the addresses as clerks spread them to dry on post. office radiators. Tile flew from the post office roof as the men tried to take down the flag which was in ribbons from the wind, tied into a neat knot. Postmaster Fitzgerald kept the flag this way as a souvenir of Vermont's worst hurricane.
FIRES
Like every village, Bellows Falls has had its share of fires over the years. Propably the worst year for fires in the last half century was in 1914 when the department answered 49 alarms, including the Congregation Church in November, a bad fire on Tuttle Street, The Wilson block in the Square in February, the Rockingham Paper Co. in December and even a bad woods fire around the Pond in October. Following are some of the larger fires in Bellows Falls during this period.
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