Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 May 1874 — The Massachusetts Flood. [ARTICLE]

The Massachusetts Flood.

THE TORRENT DESCRIBED BY AN EYE WlT- ——, _ NESS. Eably on Saturday morning I went out from the house of a friend I had been staying with to meet another near the dam. About half-way up to it I met a man running rapidly toward the village and shouting and waving his hands like a lunatic. I thought he was one and ran toward him, when he called to me to keep to the hills, as the dam was giving way. I asked which way to go, and he said there might be time to alarm the people dawn at Spellman’s bo that they could get away before the flood should come. Then I started in that direction, but keeping out of the track of the river. I knew what an enormous body of water there was in the reservoir, and that if really the wall were giving away and should presently burst nothing could save the people below, but I still half doubted the man’s sanity. Still, lives might be saved, even if what he said was true, for I thought the wall strong enough to withstand for a little while the pressure of the water behind it. I was so excited that I hardly knew what I thought, but surely I kept out of the direct road of the torrent. Just as I was running up a hillside to get a better view of affairs I heard a heavy rumbling roar behind, such as I can liken to nothing, for I never heard anything at all resembling it—a booming zizz, long continued, or something of the sort—a sound of awful power, intending destruction to everything, and then I looked up toward the dam and saw a great, black mass of water moving on, a solid wall, and the spray all above it like hair bristling. I was so terrified that I almost fell, and had to catch at a tree to save myself. But I was near the village, and could see Spellman’s factory and the men standing about the door. The water swept down below and past me with a rush, not whirling, as one might think it would, but going as straight in its course as an arrow. The noise was deafening. You would see—l saw it all in a second—a tree or a house standing, and then the half sight of its bending or toppling over, and then it would disappear, whirling in and out of the flood. Spellman’s factory seemed, though, to be lifted right off its foundations, and sailed down on the top of the swollen river that now looked like a long, black, slippery serpent wriggling down the valley with frightful velocity. 1 followed along as swiftly as possible, and It seemed as though the whole village ran away from me. But it was engulfed and swept away. I saw a tall chimney standing alone and a man hanging head downward from a big hole in it, and I saw other bodies that had been pushed flat against things too strong to give way and remained there crushed all of a heap, and dead, of course. It may seem improbable, but I could swear I heard the shouts and screams of men and women above the roar of the torrent, but it made all sorts of noises and sounds and there was a wind with it—l thought created by it—for before a tree would be struck its branches would move away from the waters as if with a wind or from a presentiment of what was coming. Afterward I heard some people say that there had seemed something the matter with the morning before the dreadful disaster, as if it had been foreshadowed in their feelings or in the air itself. But it is impossible to tell accurately of what I heard and saw, for what I saw was as if in a flash of lightning, where everything was a picture. L. P. Larkins. A MARVELOUS ESCAPE. The marvelous escape of young Dunning at Leeds has already been alluded to, but his story is so interesting that it is worth giving in detail. When the alarm was given he was at his work in the spool room of the Nonotuck silk works, and, rushing out of the mill, his first thought, of course, was for his family. He found that his father, wife and three had all left the house. He shouted to them to run for their lives, at the same time pointing to them what direction to take. His wife and children obeyed him and were saved; but his father, an old man of seventy-eight, thinking that something might be got eut of the house before the flood reached it, went back. In dashed the son after him, begging him to leave the doomed building. While raising one of the windows the floor gave way beneath their feet, and. his father disappeared from his sight. The young man had just time to clamber out of the window and as the house tipped over crawled up its side to the roof just as the building broke up, leaving him but a fragment to cling to for his life, and on he went sailing down that awful flood id full sight of wife and children, who, as they.looked on in terror and agony, expected momentarilly to see him sink beneath the surging mas. In a few seconds his frail raft was crushed like ah eggshell, but his presence of mind never deserted him. He jumped for another, and when that was gone for yet another. He was hastening down with the current at terrific speed, and, intent on the fearful task he had in hand, never once thought of the dams toward which he was hastening. The first one is reached in the awful crash and jam. He is hurled seemingly twenty feet in the air, to come down and be . submerged for the first time far beneath the waves. As he came to the surface again and clasped another piece of driftwood he realized .with an intensity unimaginable by those whose lives have never been imperiled that another and higher dam was but a short distance below, and that he had absolutely no hope for life unless he escaped from the flood before that point was reached; but fortunately the swollen mass of water and debris at that moment surged toward shore, and seizing an opportunity which seemed to be providentially presented he clambored across some broken roots, which served him as a bridge, and with a leap again had a foothold on the earth. The feelings of a man who, like him, had scarcely a hope of life, on finding himself escaped from the jaws of death cannot be depicted. Only a cool and intrepid man could have passed through that experience, and possibly. Mr. Dunning could not but for his experiences before as a raftsman in Canadian waters. He had been swept half a mile down the river and was utterly exhausted by the intense strain on mina and body, nerve and muscle, yet as he lay on the bank for a moment to get his breath he could not suppress a smile at the appearance of a man who escaped from the flood near the same place by seizing bold of the limbs of a large tree on the bank. Fleshy though he was, this man went up that tree like a squirrel, and did not stop until he was at least thirty feet above the water.

Mr. Dunning describes as the most appalling incident of the memorable ride the heartrending screams and groans of women and children in houses that were swept down with him and seemed to be beneath him. He says they will ring in his ears till the latest day Of his life.— Cor. N. Y. Herald. OTHER INCIDENTS. Among the many thrilling incidents given in the newspaper accounts of this fearful occasion are the following: All along the course of the flood there were narrow escapes and thrilling incidents. Mr. H. H. Tilton, of Williamsburg, was carrying his aged mother, Widow Sarah H. Snow, to a place of safety, when the unrelenting waters seized them; she was carried away, while he Sd a tree, about fifteen feet high, ig on a bank, and wag saved, though the waters reached and swayed him. Messrs. Hannum and Rhodes, living in the same house, got across the street into another dwelling, the lower story of which was flooded, but some apple trees broke the force of the wave and the house stood. Jeremiah Ward thought to save his sister-in-law, Mrs. Knight, and died with her. A daughter of Spencer Bartlett started to flee with her parents to the hill, but the incoming waters tossed them away, and she was compelled to remain in the house, and so escaped. A young French child was found safe asleep in a bed in a wrecked house, in attempting to escape from which the remainder of the family perished. Miss Carrie Bonney and Mrs. Sarah J. Ryan and child, who were among those swept away and lost, had ample time to save themselves, but were completely stupefied with terror, and, with a fixed stare, stobd motionless. Three men—J. M. Stephenson and two new hands whose names are not known—fearing the boarding house in which they were with a number of others would give way, despite the entreaties of their associates, left it and climbed an apple tree near by. The latter fell under them and they were drowned, while those at the boarding-house remained unharmed. One man ventured upon the roof of the board-ing-house, and, though it crumbled under him, he clung to it and saved his life. John Atkins, foreman of the weaving room, died in saving the lives of his wife and two children. A cow floated down from Williamsburg to Florence, and escaped with only a broken horn. A sad and affecting case was that of. three French children, none of them over nine years old, who sat among the living and dead in Mr. Warner’s house at Leeds, and told questioners that they had lost three sisters, a brother and their mother, but their father was safe and attending to gome of the dead people. But many who listened to them knew that the father, as well as the brother and sisters, was among the dead, yet none had the heart to break the terrible news to the children. One lucky little boy got a safe ride down the stream in a small house. The dwelling was picked up by the flood I somewhere between Leeds and Florence, and went over the dam right side up, landing some distance below on the flats. There somebody spied this novel conveyance, and took the boy out, safe and sound.