Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1895 — HAVOC ALONG THE MERRIMAC. [ARTICLE]

HAVOC ALONG THE MERRIMAC.

New England Rivers Overflow and. Spread Destruction. The most terrible flood since that of 1869 has inundated the valleys of Connecticut and the reports that have begun to come in show that it has been particularly disastrous. More than fifty families in Concord alone are practically homeless. The waters that have overflowed the banks of the Merrimac are eddying through their homes and they have been abandoned. A score of buildings have been washed nway and carried down the river on the flood. More than 300 persons were taken from upper floor windows in boats and carried to the uplands. Along the line of the Concord and Montreal Railroad enormous damage has been done by the washing away of tracks and rolling stock. Twenty-five houses in the village of Huntonville have been washed away and the Merrimac at that point is six miles wide and sixty feet deep. Much stock has been drowned. The Granite Railroad Company has lost all its tracks and rolling stock. The twin bridges at Boscawen are gone and at Seawall’s Falls the water is thirty feet deep. Haverhill, Mass., which is on the banks of the Merrimac, has suffered severely ’from the flood, the at least twenty of the largest business blocks having been washed out and the whole business section of the city being inundated. Many of the shoe factories are closed and fully lO.OOO'operators are out of work. At Nashua, N. H., the water is twelve feet deep over the dam and all business is suspended. The railroads are ail tied up and telegraph and telephone service is suspended; the river, running through the center of the city, is twentyfive feet above high water mark. Every bridge over the river at Manchester is under water and several have gone out. Millions of feet of logs are piled up against those still in place. Not a spindle or loom is working along the whole length of the Merrimac river from its source in northern New Hampshire to Newburyport, Mass.