Jasper Republican, Volume 2, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 October 1875 — Some Incidents of the Texas Floods. [ARTICLE]

Some Incidents of the Texas Floods.

THE DESTRUCTION OF LYNCHBURG. Thursday night was one of terror. The tide, now to its full height, surged with the fury of the gale. Torrents of rain fell, and the wind howled with all the fury of a hurricane. All but a few tooconfident people of Lynchburg and San Jacinto had gone to the hills for safety before night After midnight houses, vessels, everything yielded to the gale. Friday morning nothing but devastation met the eye. Destruction and wrecks all around; rafts, logs, timbers and fragments of houses, bearing struggling humanity, driven here and there by the pitiless gale; fluttering signals of distress from many a tree top; the fierce wind and waves dimmed all cries for succor; piteous motions alone told the leoker-on of the distress of the imperiled.' The steamer Matamoras No. 2, Capt. Alexander Bell, formerly of the Houston Direct Navigation Company, had been driven across the flats on the north side of the Ban Jacinto. The steamer Star and barges were driven near her. The drift commenced accumulating around them, and fortunately her position was a point of concentration for the floating debris to which people had clung. Capt. Bell, with Mr. Leacock, engineer, and four men got out the life-boat and rescued such persons as they could get near, but the gale was so fearful that they could make but little headway.

About ten a. m. a small raft. with two persons on was seen approaching. As it came nearer they were discovered to be Dr. Chamberlain and wife, of Lynchburg. He was sitting on the raft holding his wife’s head in his lap. Her body was partly under "water, ’fee current swept • them near the Matamoras, and as the raft struck among the drift, and just as their rescuers from the Matamoras got a rope around Dr. Chamberlain, Mrs. Chamberlain’s body was tom from his grasp and swept under th« drift. The husband, thoughtless of his own life, was appealing to the rescuers: “ Don’t save me, save my wife,” and after she was gone begged them to let him down with her. He was hauled on board in a benumbed condition. It is the opinion of Capt Bell and Mr. Leacock that she was dead before seen by them. About noon a family named Perkins, three men, a woman and a child, came floating from down the river on top of a house. It caught among the trees, into which they all got, from where they were all taken in safety by the yawl-boat of the Matamoras. The current and wmd were so strorfg that four men could not manage the boat. After various efforts to set to them Capt. Bell paid out line and oated the boat to them, and took them Off. During the day Campbell, Mr. Leacock and the crew of four men picked up and saved twenty-one persons. The Perkins family say that everything was swept off from Adams.’ Island, which is about five miles below Lynchburg. A number of persons are known to have been drowned in the vicinity of Lynchburg and San Jacinto. The report is that all the bouses along the shore from Lynchburg to the bay are swept off. ' . • .The scene from Harrisburg to Lynchburg is deplorable. The water is up to the top of the cars on the San Antonio. Railroad track at Harrisburg. At. Norseworthy’s it was up to the front-yard gate. At Massie’s the drift marked the height of the tide far up the bank at his landing. Dr. Massie stated to the passehgers on the Fowler that the tide-water fpm the gulf was thirty-four inches above the highest rain-flood within his knowledge on the bayou. ‘ Between Lynchburg and Morgan’s Point not a house is standing on the immediate shore of San Jacinto Bay or on the islands except the warehouse of the Ship Channel Company on the point. Of the residents Mrs. Pierce and four children, little Clara Grafton, Mrs. McKee and Mrs. A u gust are known to have been lost. Mr. and Mrs. Alexander and Mr. McKee are said to have been saved by young Mr. Miltrun. UNHAPPY EXPERIENCE OF TWO FAMILIES.

Mr. and Mrs. West (formerly Mrs. Grafton) occupied a new house at Baytown. Mrs. McKee and little Clara Grafton, Mrs. West’s child, were with them. When the water rose over Hog Island Mr. McKee, Charles Post, the lightkeeper, and Mrs. Pierce, with four children, abandoned that place and came in a skiff to West’s, Thursday morning before daylight. During Thursday the water rose gradually in the house, and by afternoon reached the ceiling. They hung on by the windows until about four p. m., when, finding that the water was gaining, they got into a skiff, with the hope of reaching the high land. In half an hour the skiff was swamped, and in getting hold of the windows again two children were lost, the oldest and youngest girl. Mr. West then made a hole in the roof, and all were got on it. Small hand-holes were made to cling to. In a short time the root was swept away from the building, the tide cariying them up the bay several miles. They drifted about Thursday night and Friday at the mercy of the waves, during which time Mr. McKee and Mr. Post got in a tree, when the norther came out on Friday and drove them back down the bay. Of the occupants of the roof none remained but Mr. and Mrs. West, Mrs. Pierce and one child, and Mr. Post The wind drove them across the bay and the current into the mouth of the canal. Just as the roof entered the canal it turned over and Mrs. Pierce and child were lost. Mr. West rose, clinging to his wife, and seized the roof again, the current swept the roof over on the east side, and when it struck the bank the two were thrown up on the side of the dump. Post was able to reach the bank, West was senseless, and Mrs. West stunned, but moaning. The tug Coates had been driven Jby the gale on the point, and lay on the ojher side of the dump. Mr. Nelsqn, who had brought her up. from «Red-Fish through the gale, and Mr. Rhett, mastermechanic, were on board. Hearing the moans, they went over the dump and carried the rescued pair on board the tug. About seven p. m., within half an hour after Mrs. West was carried on the tug, she was taken ill and gave birth to a boy. These rugged men, fathers themselves, yet unused to such ministrations, aided by Mr. West, faithfully performed the duties belonging to gentler hands. The brave little woman who had undergone all these perils, seeing mother, child, sister and her four nieces swept away before her eyes, gave directions which doubtless saved her life and that of the babe. As soon as mother and babe were in condition to be moved and the gale would permit a couch was made, and the men of the dredgingfleet carried them up to the old Morgan place, occupied by Mr. Tom Edwards, where every possible arrangement was made for their comfort. Yesterday evening, when the Fowler left Morgan’s Point, both were doing well.— Houston Telegraph, Sept. 21.

—The Supreme Court of Massachusetts has just decided that “real estate held by a religious society, not more than sufficient in extent to meet its reasonable requirements in this respect, and devoted by such society in good faith to the erection of a church edifice, upon which the work of erection already commenced is prosecuted without reasonable delay, is entitled to the exemption from taxation given by statute." Judge Wells dissents' from the opinion of his associates, and holds that “ it is not enough that the property is intended to be appropriated for the purposes of religion or of religions worship and held for no other purpose; it must be a house of religious worship.” —Having observed that the discharge from a powerful electrical machine produced remarkable changes in the color of plants, M. Becquerel ascribes this result to the rupturing of the cells containing the coloring matter. This opinion is sustained by the fact that when the cellular envelope is washed the leaf becomes white. Weston is the man who has two soles and but a single thought.