Madison County, Illinois - Chapter 29: Casualties in the County, 1912

The Tornado of June, i860 - Tornado and Cyclone of the Seventies - Destructive Wind Storm of 1896 - Great River Floods - Earthquake Shocks - Explosion of Pow¬ der Magazine.

The first destructive hurricane of which there is any mention in history is that which occurred June 5, 1803. The storm moved from the southwest to the northeast across what is now Madison county. It swept over the American Bottom, cutting a swath about three quarters of a mile in width, demolishing houses, tearing up trees, destroying stock and everything movable in its tempestuous path¬ way. It swept the water out of the lakes, scattering the fish therein far out on the prairies. It carried in its wrathful embrace tops of pine trees from fifty miles out in Mis¬ souri. There were but few inhabitants then in the county and no one was killed, but sev¬ eral were severely wounded by flying rails and timbers.

On May 17, 1838, a violent hurricane crossed the county, which prostrated fences, trees and insecure buildings. It was accom¬ panied by a heavy fall of rain.

A heavy hail storm visited townships 3 and 4, range 7 west, on July 24, 1854. Some hail¬ stones were picked up after the storm which, it was declared, weighed a pound. Roofs were greatly injured, window panes shattered and the fruit and foliage stripped from trees. Many turkeys, chickens and geese were killed by the hailstones.

The most destructive tornado which ever devastated the county was that which struck Alton on Saturday evening, June 2, i860. The Alton Courier of June 4th, says, in re¬ counting it : "In twenty minutes it destroyed property to the value of many thousand dol¬ lars. No lives, however, were lost and but few persons injured. The German Catholic church, at the corner of Henry and Third streets and built last year at a cost of $9,000, is almost a complete wreck, the basement and part of the upper front wall alone standing. The steeple was blown off the Episcopal church. It is said the church is almost a total loss, the walls being much sprung and cracked. The church cost about $12,000. The organ is ruined. The steeple was blown from the Methodist church. The roof was also consid¬ erably injured by the fall. Loss $3,000. The house of D. Simms, just south oi the church, was completely crushed by the falling steeple. It was worth $1,800. No loss in the city is commented on with more and warmer ex¬ pressions of sympathy than that of the Demo¬ crat office. The building, presses, engine, stock and all are a complete wreck. The en¬ tire loss must be at least $8,000. Over one

Another fearful tornado was that of March 8, 1871, which crossed the river at St. Louis coming from the southwest, and swept through this county with destructive effect. At East St. Louis it did an immense amount of damage and was so resistless that it lifted a locomotive from the track and landed it in the ditch. At Nameoki, in this county, it struck a string of box cars and hurled them a considerable distance, besides doing great damage to houses, barns and out-buildings. Fragments of steamboats, destroyed at the St. Louis levee, were carried clear across Madi¬ son county and landed in the timber and fields along the northern border. A church at New Douglas, in which service was being held, was stood up on end and the congregation precipi¬ tated to the lower level.

Still another terrific tornado, or rather cy¬ clone, was that of May, 1873. At Alton the famed funnel shaped cloud swept across the river from the south, passed between the Top¬ ping store and Farber's mill (now the Stanard mill) - the lot between being vacant and, by creating a vacuum, caused the east wall of the mill to fall outward from the basement to the roof of a three story building. The wall was of brick and three feet thick. The front wall of Basse's mill on Front street was also blown in. The fourth story of the Armory Hall building, corner of Third and Piasa streets, was torn off. The cyclone then swept south¬ east and took the flagstaff and chimneys off the City Hall, then passed diagonally across the street and crushed a two-story brick, northeast corner of Market and Second streets, leaving not one brick upon another; then rising higher took off the chimneys of the three story brick adjoining, occupied by Dr. Haskell's office; next, moving northeast and still rising clipped the chimneys off the Ursuline Academy and disappeared in the higher altitude. The freaks of these cyclones are curious; for instance, the fourth story of the Armory Hall was blown off for the sec¬ ond time in this disaster, the first being de¬ stroyed in the great tornado of i860.

One of the most destructive tornadoes which ever visited this locality was that of May 27, 1896, which swept over St. Louis, crossed the river into East St. Louis and thence passed into Madison county. In St. Louis it did in¬ calculable damage to property and exacted a toll of 500 lives. It blew down the approach to the Eads bridge in East St. Louis, a mo¬ ment after the passage of a passenger train, wrecked the Relay depot and did a vast amount of damage throughout the city, espe¬ cially to railroad property. The cyclone passed on through this county, with destruc¬ tive effects to the rural districts.

In June, 1844, a terrible and destructive flood from the Mississippi and Missouri rivers swept over the American Bottom causing im¬ mense property loss though not as much as if the country had been more thickly settled. The river rose higher than ever recorded be¬ fore or since. The American Bottom was flooded over its entire area from Alton to Kaskaskia, and steamboats were able to sail over it from St. Louis to the bluffs six miles from the river channel. In Alton the flood did great damage. All the stores on West Second street were flooded. Merchants went to their business in skiffs and sold goods to customers from ladders or while standing on their counters. A steamboat captain was anxious to sail his craft through Second to State street, but the merchants objected. They had trouble enough and feared further damage. Samuel Pitts, then as now a resident of

Alton, says the flood extended up the Piasa valley as far as Ninth street. That was, of course, before the building of the railroad and culvert, when the surface of the valley was much lower, as was also true on Second street. Steamboats could have navigated up the Piasa valley as far as Ninth but for the obstruc¬ tion of a bridge at Second street and one at Fourth. Other floods occurred in 1851 and 1858 but were of less extent.

The most destructive flood of later years was that of 1903 which was only a foot or so lower than that of 1844. It did far more damage, however, as the country was vastly more thickdy settled. East St. Louis was in¬ undated and all railroad communication there¬ with cut off, except, perhaps, by one line. All railroads from the east and north, terminating in that city, were obliged to route their trains to and from Alton where the passengers, mails and express freight were transferred to steamers. Missouri Point was completely in¬ undated from St. Charles down, the flood ex¬ tending from bluff to bluff of the rivers. All the railroads on the Point were cut off and their embankments swept away. The water rose to the platform of the Union station and in the waiting rooms of the Chicago, Pitts¬ burgh & St. Louis depot the water was two feet deep. The river again flowed through Second street from State to Piasa, but did little damage beyond flooding cellars and first floors. All the mails for St. Louis from the east, and those from the west and south com¬ ing over the west side Burlington and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas were transferred through the Alton postofifice. This included many hundreds of registered packages. All these were entered on the register of the Al¬ ton office and dispatched therefrom and not a package was lost. The ordinary mail sacks handled through the Alton office numbered several hundred per day during the prevalence of the flood. This flood of 1903 marked 31.45 feet above the low water mark of 1866, which

The following year the river again rose to flood height but the inundation was not as serious as that of the previous year. Late in the summer of 1907 another disastrous flood occurred which inundated Missouri Point and destroyed all the growing crops and did as much damage on the American Bottom. The remarkable thing about this flood was its late occurrence. River floods are usually expected in June, but this occurred in August when the corn was in tassel, and all crops on the river bottoms were lost.

These destructive floods are liable to occur whenever the high waters in the Mississippi and the Missouri come down simultaneously. The immense losses they involve are now, however, being greatly reduced by systems of dikes and embankments from Alton to East St. Louis and by raising the tracks of the rail¬ roads beyond flood height. The same system of protection is being prosecuted on Missouri Point opposite Alton, and extending along the Missouri river as far as St. Charles.

In this connection the following historic reference to early floods in the Mississippi is taken from an address before the State Agri¬ cultural Society by Governor John Reynolds in 1856: "At long intervals the floods of the Mississippi inundate the lowlands. In 1725 a great inundation of the American Bottom oc¬ curred. In 1770 another of less depth visited the bottom, and two years later, in 1772, a great rise in the river overflowed the entire Bottom. This flood tore away part of Fort Chartres (situated on the Mississippi twenty miles above Kaskaskia), whereupon the Eng¬ lish garrison moved to the latter village. The next extraordinary flood occurred in the year 1 785* and was next to the highest ever known on the Mississippi. I have often seen the marks of the high water of 1785 on the houses in the French villages, for many years after we settled in Illinois in 1800. The next great inundation was in 1844, and was some higher than that of 1785. The height of the flood in 1844 is marked on a stone monument erected on Water street, in the city of St. Louis, and exhibits a terrific flood extending over the whole Bottom from bluff to bluff. These deep and sweeping inundations did much damage to the agricultural interests of the country."

Slight shocks of earthquakes have been ex¬ perienced in this county during its history but none of a destructive character since the great earthquakes of 1811 which centered their vio¬ lence about New Madrid, Missouri. The shocks then occurring in this county were more violent than any since experienced, but did little damage. The county was thinly pop¬ ulated and the houses being built mainly of logs, resisted the seismic disturbances success¬ fully, but the shocks caused great alarm among the residents.

The most serious stirring-up the people of Madison county have experienced was oc¬ casioned not by an earthquake shock but by the explosion of the powder magazine at Al¬ ton, on the 20th of June, 1840. The explosion was described in the Alton Telegraph, by Judge Bailhache, as "incomparably louder and far more destructive than the discharge of a hundred pieces of the heaviest artillery." The powder magazine was situated on the bluffs, a few rods west of the penitentiary, and con¬ tained at the time six tons of powder. Judge Bailhache writes: "To describe with some de¬ gree of minuteness the damage done by this explosion would require columns of our jour¬ nal ; suffice it therefore to remark that scarcely one single building within the thickly settled part of our city remains uninjured, and that some of those nearest the site of the magazine have been literally reduced to heaps of ruins; chimneys demolished, roofs started and nearly blown off, windows and frames shivered to atoms are among the results of the explosion. But although fragments of stone of which the magazine was built were hurled with resist¬ less force in every direction, some of them to the distance of nearly a mile, perforating houses and overthrowing everything in their way, no life has been lost so far as our in¬ formation extends, nor any serious injury done to the person of anyone." The writer proceeds to narrate a series of hair-breadth escapes that were so remarkable as to be al¬ most unbelievable.

The belief was universal that the explosion was the work of some villain, but for what ob¬ ject could not be conjectured. The offender, or offenders, were never discovered although the common council offered $500 reward for their apprehension. The damage done to buildings was estimated at over $25,000.