Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 March 1894 — BAD STORM IN TEXAS [ARTICLE]

BAD STORM IN TEXAS

AT LEAST A DOZEN PERSONS ARE KILLED OUTRIGHT. Cyclone Sweep. Over Loagrtew, Emery and Other Places, Demolishing Houses and Vpvootlng Tree.—Hall*tones Weigh Fourteen Ounces—Peculiar Shaped Cloud. Death Ln It. Wake. A destructive storm passed over Longview, Texas, at 1 o'clock Sunday morning. At ' least six persons were killed outright, three were fatally and many seriously injured. Great lumps of ice fell, breaking 300 panes of glass. Many pieces of ice weighed fourteen to eighteen ounces, while others, which must have been very much larger, were found in the morning after a heavy warm rain with the mercury at 70. Some of the stones were as large as goose eggs. They sank from two to five inches in the ground near the town. Chickens and turkeys roostiug in trees were killed, while duets, geese and hogs were pelted to death. At Lansing switch, six miles east, a dispatch says, the cyclone struck the graveyard, tearing up large forest trees by the roots and taking them northwestward. It struck the stanch old house of John Cains, occupied by a family of negroes named Lester. The house stood in a grove of ancient oaks, every one of which was uprooted. The house was built on stone pillars, pinned and cemented together and ceiled throughout, the rooms fastened together by walls of logs, but it is now entirely demolished. There are six persons dead, three mortally wounded, and five seriously and painfully hurt. Half a mile south of the ill-fated Lester house, the house of John Buffit, a white man, was taken away from the floor and dashed to splinters, leaving the family unhurt, except from bruises by hail stones. The storm swept on toward Marshall. Fruit trees and fences were demolished for many miles around. A Texas and Pacific passenger train was passing at the time and barely escaped the funnel-shaped cloud. Six Killed at Emery. The cyclone passed over Emery, the county teat- of Bains County, thirty miles south of Greenville, totally demolishing' the western portion of the town. Six persons were killed outright. In addition to these at least fifty are wounded, and some of them will die. The cloud came from the southwest, and, as described by an eyewitness, it resembled an hour glass, approaching like two funnels together, point to point. The bottom of it was forked, and it was one continual blaze of electricity. It had the rotary cyclone motion and seemed about thirty or forty feet wide. It struck the ground north of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas depot and its track extends about four or five miles north and is ab >ut 100 yards wide, according to dispatches from various points. Everything in the track of the storm is a complete wreck.