Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1895 — PATH OF THE STORM [ARTICLE]

PATH OF THE STORM

Fi.ty Persons Killed and One Hundred Badly Hur.. FARMS LAID WASTE. Property Worth Half a M illicn Destroyed. Survivors of the Horror Deprived of Their Homes Fair Villages and Fertile Fields Devastated Schoolhouses in the Path of the Storm, and Teachers and Pupils Annihilated—A Carpet of Mud Strewn Over Growing Crops in lowa Work of Wind, Rain and Hail. Northwestern lowa’s cyclone in Sioux, Lynn, Osceola and O'Brien Counties cost at least fifty human lives. A hundred others are injured, and the destruction of half a million dollars’ worth of farming property is a low estimate. The whirlwind, but half an hour iij duration, while at its fiercest, swept over 1,200 square miles of cultivated farm land, and left in its wake a ruin rarely equaled in so short a period of time. The number of dead, although not so large as at first reported, is great enough to have plunged the whole of Northwestern lowa into mourning. A revised list, as accurate as could be, obtained at the time this is written, reports the following: At Sioux Center and Vicinity. John Marsden, Miss Anna Marsden, Mrs. John Koster, Alice Koster, aged 8; Miss Tillie Haggie, Babe of Mrs. L. Wynia, Mrs. Annie Postma, Jacob Jansen, Tewnes Verhof, aged 4; Maurice McCoombs, aged 4; Babe of W. Vlesma, Mrs. K. Waner and babe, A. Barblin, Mrs. L. E. Ost, Mrs. J. Post, A. M. Perry, Mrs. F. 8. Fieldcamp, Mrs. Charles Waldron, Henry Smith, B. L. Smith, Mrs. L. Maretie and babe, L. D. Everetts, John Frize, H. Deboor. At Sibley. Mrs. John Waterman, Mrs. M. Blackburn, Mrs. Herman Belknap. At Laurens. Peter Stimmer. At Sutherland. Rudolph Schwordtfeger. At Creston. Everett Arnold. Many Fatally Injured. The fatally injured are: H. Koster, aged 3; Minta McCoombs, Luella McCoombs, Mrs, L. Wynia, J. Deboor, Hattie Koster, Willie, Jennie and Grace Ccrumman, Maggie, Gertie, Jennie and Jimmie Welbard, Jennie and Eddie Brown, Ben Pry, John Herman, Henry E»:ggie, Mrs. James Warie. • The greatest loss of life is in Sioux County, between Ireton, on the Hawarden branch of the Chicago and Northwestern, and Sioux Center, oh the Sioux City and Northern. It was a veritable slaughter of the innocents. The children of tender years outnumbered all others in the mortality list, and that of those fatally injured. Upon the edge of a plowed road two little ones lay, their hands clasped together, their bodies torn and mangled. Beyond them in the roadway the leaves of an arithmetic fluttered in the breeze. Still further on and close to the McCoombs homestead was a battered dinner bucket and nearby a reader turned back to the page where the old lines ran, “This is a cat; is this a cat?” In the wrecked school houses little feet protruded from plaster and broken boards. Sun bonnets lay in the pastures yellow with butter cups. In one child’s hand was clasped the broken slate and in another’s a reward of merit card given but half an hour before by the teacher, dead, also face downward, in the furrow of a distant field. From Sioux Center to Perkins and from Perkins to Hull and George and Ashton there was the wail in the close of the spring afternoon of children, not dead, but dying, children with limbs torn apart, children who had been carried over fortyacre fields and hurled into ditches, children who called out for mothers already dead or beyond the aid of human help. Anticipated No Danger. Friday in Northwestern lowa was blistering; the barometer vibrated with alarmug changes, falling at one time to 29.50. in the Niobrara Valley, to the west, the thermometer indicated at different points 80, 82, 84 and 86 degrees. Such a temperature in May had never been known before, but the people were not apprehensive. They were preparing for the rain which had been denied them for two years past. Early in the morning in thejnidst of heat unknown in the past at this time of year, a tornado sprang up in the Niobrara Valley, fringed the towns on the west side of the Missouri and entered lowa at the gait of fifty miles an hour. The sky was clear above Sioux County, but the gale bent the young grain to the ground and demolished a few granaries. Hail had fallen a day’ before in a few spots along the Little Sioux and rain was looked for. For six feet in depth the soil of Sioux, O’Brien, Clay and Pocahontas was baked and the winds of April had piled the dust along the tracks of tlje Chicago and Northwestern from Eagle Grove west from a foot to two feet in depth. Farmers refused to plant their grain under such conditions. The tornado swept over Sioux and O’Brien Counties. The first victim of its wrath was claimed at Sutherland. Rudolph Shwerdtfoger was plowing in a field a quarter of a mile from Sutherland. Four horses were ahead of him. The sky was clear, but thunder sounded in the distance and frightened his animals. He sprang to their heads, and an instant later from the blue sky above him shot a thunderbolt. Three of the horses fell dead and underneath was Shwerdtfoger, struck by the same bolt. He was the first of the fifty who gave up their lives in Northwestern lowa Friday. The fury 'of the gale ceased about noon and was followed by a dead suffocating heat. Death Visits Schoolhouses. ’ About 3 o’clock in the afternoon black clouds, with green fringes, appeared west of Grange City and five miles northeast of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway. From the bla.ck mass, nine miles west of Orange City, as near as eould be estimated, tentacles dropped, and at last a high, round ball, which appeared to strike the ground, rebounded and then touched again, just as football wages between goal and goal. Conductor Halaii, on train No. 10 of the Chicago and Northwestern east-bound, saw the bounding' mass of wind aiiil electricity, as did also his brakemnn, W. F. Dobson. This and its valuable contents just escaped destruction. Annie Marsden, a young girl from Boscobel, Wis., had dismissed her twenty pupils when she saw the approach of the storm. It was already 3:30 in the afternoon. She was conducting her second term of school and two miles beyond her »a the same section' line her brother was

conducting a county school. She boarded at the farmhouse of L. McCoombs, the wealthiest farmer in the district. His home was a quarter of a mile distant from the school. Four of his children were taught by her. When she sent the other children home the four were frightened and refused to leave. Annie Marsden stood in the center of the little white school house and drew the four children, whose ages ranged from 5 to 14, about her and waited. An instant later the cyclone was upon the school house, and the five hapless beings within. In less time than it takes for a watch to tick the seconds of a minute the teacher and one child were dead and two others fatally injured. The school house and its rock foundation •was swept out of existence. At the Haggle school house, where George Marsden, brother of Annie, was teaching, not a vestige of the school house remained and Mr. Marsden was found some distance away in a field, dead, together with two pupils. On the McCoombs homestead every building was destroyed but the house. There was not a seeded crop in his fields worth a picayune, and the honest accumulations of a lifetime swept away by a half hour’s storm. His hundreds of acres of wheat, oats and barley were buried in dust and debris out of sight forever. His fanning machinery was scattered for miles about his home. His cattle were dead or dying. At the little school house where his children had lisped their A B C's there was a hole to mark the spot, and in his house a little one dead and three others praying for relief from pain. Beyond McCoombs’ the storm raged. Curious things were found in the field by the relief partie’s sent out. In one field, on the crest of a furrow, lay an open prayer book. A clod of earth pointed to the lines, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to Thy great mercy.” On the fly leaf of the book was found the name of Eva Butler. Mrs. Butler’s home was three-quarters of a mile distant from where the book was found. Leaving the Butler’s, the storm attacked Herman Ripma, one-half mile north of the destroyed school house. Ripma had his arm badly crushed, his house destroyed and his crops ruined. But shortly before this he lost his wife and two children through trichinae.

Presented a Pitiful Sight. At the farm of L. Wylanga was one of the most pitiful sights of the storm. Wylanga was some distance from his house when the cyclone struck his fields. He was picked up in the teeth of the gale and carried bodily over forty acres of land. He fell in a plowed field, practically uninjured, but frantic as to the safety of his own wife and children. The wind had lifted him over two wire fences, but on his return he had to cut these down in order to pass. He found his house, barns, sheds and granaries gone. His hogs and chickens were lying in their yards. Still searching for his wife, he walked to the southwest of his house. In a field tilled for an early crop of corn, he found her, face downward, unconscious. She had been carried before the wind until her strength left her. In her head was a terrible gash and from her hips downward she was a mass of bruises. Close to her bosom was clasped her baby, dead. Thus husband and wife met, with the rain beating down upon them and the ruins of their home. The description of the McCoombs and Wylanga property and school could be .repeated on nearly every section in the wake of the storm. Numerous victims were found lodged in the trees, where they had been hurled by the storm, and so seriously injured that death is expected momentarily. Two grown boys who had come from the field near Alton at the approach of the storm were injured in the barnyard, one seriously and the other fatally. Wires were completely stripped from the posts, and in some places posts were all taken from the ground. Horses, cattle and vehicles were hurled through the air like chaff, and the country for three-quarters of a mile wide and many miles in extent is entirely wrecked.

Where had stood fine residences could be found nothing but a cellar hole and in some cases a few twisted timbers, while strewn on the ground were portions of the buildings and furniture, bearing not the least semblance of their original form and useless except for kindling. Fields that were beautiful as green carpets With the sprouting grain are now as bare as in the bleak months of winter. Trees are uprooted and all is desolation along the trail of the destroyer. In Osceola Comity Mrs. John Waterman, five miles west of Sibley, was instantly killed. A joist fell on her neck. She held her baby in her arms and the baby escaped injury. The Melcher and Whitney school houses were both wrecked. Miss Marie Good, teacher of the M hitney, closed the school twenty minutes before the storm struck. John Coughlin, wife and ten children were all saved by taking refuge in a cyclone cave. They lost their house, household goods, barn and had a horse killed.

DESTRUCTION IS WIDESPREAD. Other Points Contribute to the Death List by the Cyclone. Aside from the cyclone proper, which was confined to the three Northwestern lowa counties, other sections of the country suffered from severe wind and electrical storms. On Saturday afternoon a terrific wind at St. Charles, 111., blew down the brick walls that were left after the destruction by fire of the Lungreen & Wilson block. Next to the east wall was a small building owned by George Osgood, formerly used as a post office. It was occupied by Mrs. Hattie E. Church, milliner; John F. Elliott, justice of the peace, and the Anderson Sisters, dressmakers. The heavy wall crushed the small building, killing four persons and injuring two others, as follows: Charles Anderson, Miss Gustie Anderson, Mrs. Hattie E. Church, Joseph Thompson. The injured were as follows: Luke Cranston, will die; Andrew Johnson, Elgin. Fred Cronkhite and his team were killed at Henderson, 111., by lightning. The storm was severe at Abington, unroofing the new wagon factory, causing a damage of $10,00). Reports from the country indicate great damage. Everett Arnold was instantly killed by the storm at Creston, lowa. J. I’. Smith’s house near Lake Geneva, Wis., was struck by lightning and totally destroyed. Loss about $40,000; well insured. Several freight cars were also burned. George Rhodes and James Ashford, who had taken refuge in a barn, were killed by lightning at Lancaster, Mo. Both men were farmers living near Downing, and each leaves a family. Th«ee barns belonging to D. Ayres, about six miles west of Burlington, Wis., were struck by lightning and burned to the ground, with a loss of about $3,000. In Racine the residence of James Murphy on Jackson street was struck by lightning and his little eon was knocked senseless. Considerable damage was done to the house. At Superior, Wis., waler came down in sheets, and a destructive hailstorm followed. Lightning destroyed several small buildings in the country. A cyclone near Huron. S. D., took onehalf the roof off Martin Baum’s house and carried it half a mile. Lumber was scattered over the prairie. The graneries were also wrecked and scattered over the country.