Washed Away: How the Great Flood of 1913, America's Most Widespread Natural Disaster, Terrorized a Nation and Changed It Forever

by Geoff Williams

  Miss Hammond’s trolley deposited her on Bluffton Road. Against a backdrop of lightning and thunder, hopefully underneath an umbrella, she hurried past the Gebharts’ farm and trekked over a foot bridge, the water below rushing to the nearby St. Marys River. She kept going until she reached a grove of barren trees encircling the Allen County Orphans’ Home.

  The orphanage, planted on nineteen acres of land, was a three-story brick building with thirty-five rooms that housed sixty-two children from infants to the age of sixteen, but it was capable of caring for as many as seventy-five kids. Not every youth staying there was actually an orphan. Like many such homes across the nation, this one was often used as a place where parents, often overwhelmed single parents, could leave their children—sometimes for only days or weeks at a time, and sometimes forever—when they didn’t feel that they could care for them on their own.

  The reasons why a parent couldn’t take care of their children were as similar as they would be during any age: poverty, alcoholism, death, or perhaps a divorce had broken up the family, so that both parents, or the surviving parent, had to work and the children would wind up here.

  Miss Hammond enjoyed spending time with the kids, and she could relate to all of them. She had lost her own father early in life.

  Michael Hammond had been a railroad worker, an employee of the Delaware and Hudson Company, first working as a brakeman until he was promoted to freight conductor and extra passenger conductor. On the morning of May 21, 1887, at the station that Hammond was working at, a few cars were in the process of being added, and as the locomotive began to back up, he noticed a woman and a little boy on the track directly in front of the moving train.

  Hammond yelled to them to get off the track; but the more he yelled, the more bewildered they looked. Finally, Hammond jumped from the caboose, sprinted along the track, and pushed them off the tracks, but in doing so he staggered backward and was caught by the wheels, thrown under the cars, and instantly killed.

  Hammond’s death was covered in The New York Times, which stated that “Michael Hammond was a popular, industrious and estimable man, about 30 years of age, and well known to railroad men generally.”

  Theresa was eight months old.

  Almost twenty-six years after her father’s death, Theresa was employed in one of five orphanages in the county. But the orphanage that Theresa Hammond worked for was the only one in Fort Wayne with the St. Marys River in its back yard. As she and the orphanage’s director, Mrs. Ida Overmeyer, would discover, this would become a problem.

  Mulberry, Indiana, 9 A.M.

  Roy and Roscoe Rothenberger and their friend Elva Myers actually started off in a shallow stream but soon felt confident enough to push themselves off into Wildcat Creek, and for a while they shot ducks. Perhaps they also talked about the brothers’ father, David Rothenberger, a carpenter recovering from injuries he sustained falling off a building several weeks ago, or it could be the conversation led to Myers’ two younger siblings or how business was going for Myers’ dad, a blacksmith. Maybe they talked about the storm that had rolled in the day before, although it seems unlikely that they would have had time to pick up a morning paper and read about the destruction in Omaha, which was dominating the front pages and undoubtedly the discussion in many kitchens and on many street corners across the country.

  Whatever they talked about, the Rothenbergers and Myers definitely discussed the river, which was getting deeper and faster by the minute. In fact, the water sped along at about 25 miles an hour, locals later guessed.

  The boat was becoming increasingly difficult to manage.

  Then when the brothers and Myers hit a whirlpool, the current spun the boat around and toward the river bank, lodging their craft against a willow tree; their situation went from difficult to deadly.

  The problem was that the river bank was no longer there, and the tree, which had been rooted in dry earth was now two hundred yards into the waterway. The three men would have done themselves a favor if they had attempted to climb up the tree to wait for help. Instead, they understandably weren’t thinking that way and tried to pry the boat off the tree.

  The boat overturned.

  The men went into the water.

  The water was freezing.

  Roy was the first to go under, because of his heavy hip boots. The water just poured right into those heavy boots and dragged Roy down to the river floor, where he was trapped, or the current took him for a terrible ride underneath the water and never let him go. Roscoe was perhaps a little luckier, depending on your point of view on how you’d want your life to end in a river on a rampage; he grabbed the edge of his boat and hung on for at least five hundred yards until he went around a bend, just in sight of the Wyandotte Bridge.

  But how he died after he went around the bend is anybody’s guess. Elva Myers watched his friend float away while dangling from two armfuls of willow tree branches. Myers was able to keep his head above the water, but little else. He started shouting for help.

  March 24, noon, Fort Wayne, Indiana

  School wasn’t in session at the Allen County Orphans Home. The basement had started flooding in the morning, and the adults had decided to do some commonsense planning, in case the river crept a little too close to the building for comfort. But while the basement and the moving of furniture and stoves to the second floor was reason enough to cancel school, when the power and heat went out the teachers must have really thrown up their hands in surrender. Instead, the sixty-two children played on both the first and second stories of the orphanage, and some of the teachers, like Theresa Hammond, went about their usual business, only keeping the youngsters entertained instead of trying to fill their young minds with knowledge. That was what much of the staff had to do, anyway. During the weekdays, the orphanage was a school for the older children and a baby-sitting service for the younger; it was also a home providing social services around the clock. There were many children who were toddlers and at least one baby.

  But as the afternoon made its introductions, one can’t help wonder if Miss Hammond or any of the children looked outside at St. Marys’ muddy waters rushing by and started to second-guess the decision to remain. After all, while everyone expected a fast-flowing river during a heavy rain to be littered with the occasional debris and tree branches, there was something different and creepy about some of the cargo floating in St. Marys this time. There weren’t just one or two of these particular items floating down the river, but many, too many for the children to count. At first, nobody knew what they were looking at, but then it became sickeningly clear.

  Dead cats.

  Mid-morning, somewhere in Ohio or Indiana

  Ernest Bicknell’s trip was not going as planned. Because the engineer didn’t want to find his train rushing into an impromptu river, he kept the speed low and often stopped for interminable lengths of time at stations, mapping out a route. So many bridges were being washed out that crossing Ohio and Indiana was becoming a serious challenge.

  As reported in the book Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh: A History of the Flood of March 1913, author Charles Wilbur Garrett wrote: “Trains which were en route on the night of March 24-25 over most of the system were marooned wherever they happened to be when they came to an impassable piece of road—some at stations, some in the open country; some high and dry, some where they were surrounded with water.”

  Bicknell and the other passengers were continually being told that they would have to be rerouted and would, on occasion, have to wait for other trains to clear the tracks. Bicknell started to recognize that there might be a greater disaster occurring than the Omaha tornado. But for the moment, all he could do was stare out his rain-splattered window.

  Mid-morning, Frankfort, Indiana

  Elva Myers wasn’t the only one engaged in battle with Wildcat Creek. Wallace Garrison, further down the creek, was, about this time, coming to his home in Frankfort from the village of Burlington, seventeen miles away. Unfortunately for Ga
rrison, he didn’t realize the bridge ahead was washed out. With his horse and buggy, he kept on the road until it was painfully obvious that there was nothing there.

  Around the same time, about eighty miles southeast, John Hagner of New Castle, Indiana, didn’t have much of a chance either. The 42-year-old was on a trestle spanning the Blue River, trying to protect the structure that the company he worked for, the Fisher Welch Construction Company, had built.

  Trestles, for those who don’t have extensive bridge terminology, were bridges constructed for the railroad. They were sturdy, to be sure, since trains passed over them, and usually constructed of timber and iron, but they were built hastily and never meant to be permanent thoroughfares. They were constructed cheaply and fast, as a stop-gap until the railroad could get around to spending money on stone or iron structures.

  When his own private tidal wave came rushing toward him, Hagner, married and a father of four, must have recognized the futility of trying to protect the trestle. The wave of water was shockingly high, although not higher than the trestle. As the water thundered into the makeshift bridge, if Hagner hadn’t lost his balance, he might have had a shot at getting off it. Instead, he fell and was swallowed up by the river.

  During this time, Elva Myers continued to hang on to his willow tree branches, shivering. Among the dirt and debris, the river carried ice chunks in it, and for hours now, Myers had been rained on. His spirits, however, were buoyed by the sight of some farmers who appeared on the river bank shortly after his and his friends’ boat overturned. But his euphoria was short-lived; the farmers had no way to reach him.

  The men yelled for Myers to hang on, and one of the farmers ran off to fetch a rope. When he eventually arrived with a lengthy coiled one in hand, he threw it out to Myers, but it never quite reached the 21-year-old. Myers was in a bad situation, in any case. His hands and arms were locked in a death grip, and every time the rope landed in the water, it was yanked away by the current. To let go of even one branch and then attempt to simultaneously grab the rope before it was pulled away, especially after being in the water for some time and having little strength, would have taken some dexterity that most humans don’t have. He just couldn’t do it. Arguably, nobody could.

  As the crowd by the riverbank started growing, and people shouted words of encouragement to Myers to just hang on a little longer, the farmers sent someone to get a boat.

  Eventually, a 31-year-old man named Dana Hoch, a retail coal merchant, emerged with some sort of boat or raft. Myers somehow was still clutching the willow tree branches. Hoch tied a rope around his waist, giving the other end of the line to some of the spectators, to use in case he capsized and needed to be pulled in. Then he paddled his boat into the raging current. He was able to help Myers into the boat and get the shivering, exhausted youth back to shore.

  It was three o’clock, approximately six hours after Myers and his friends had fallen into the river.

  Immediately, as Myers was taken home to recuperate, a search party was organized for Roy and Roscoe. Little hope was held out for Roscoe once everyone learned that Myers had seen him go under, but since Roscoe had hung on until he disappeared around the bend in the river, there was still a little hope for his safe return. The search party took whatever optimism they could muster, but they didn’t have much. They took with them grappling hooks.

  Contrary to whatever anyone might think, there should be no doubt: Roy and Roscoe Rothenberger’s deaths were painful and terrifying.

  Sure, that sounds like the most obvious statement in the world and worthy of a resounding “duh,” but for centuries, drowning has been romanticized in literature as a peaceful and almost pleasant way to check out of life. In Greek mythology, Sirens sang so beautifully, sailors were willing to leap off ships and swim to them, only to then be turned on and drowned. In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Ophelia’s drowning scene has her surrounded by garlands of flowers, imagery that would be admired by artists, authors, and poets for centuries to come. Edgar Allan Poe starts off his romantic poem “For Annie” with the words: “And the beauty of Annie, drowned in a bath, of the tresses of Annie.”

  And just as you’re adjusting to the idea that Annie looks beautiful as a drowning victim, Poe continues with: “She tenderly kissed me, she fondly caressed, and then I fell gently to sleep on her breast, deeply to sleep from the heaven of her breast.”

  In Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Retty Priddle attempts to drown herself; and death by water figures significantly in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. True, authors have only so many ways to kill off characters or provide them with a near-death experience, so you could chalk up some of these examples as coincidence; but there is little doubt that some authors found drowning enigmatic and a romantic way to check out.

  Charles Dickens did no favors to any suicidal readers. In his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, a character known as the dismal man says to Mr. Pickwick: “Did it ever strike you, on such a morning as this, that drowning would be happiness and peace?”

  Mr. Pickwick, to his credit, is horrified at the suggestion, but then the dismal man explains his rationale, and darned if he doesn’t make drowning sound like a day at the beach: “I have thought so, often. The calm, cool water seems to me to murmur an invitation to repose and rest. A bound, a splash, a brief struggle; there is an eddy for an instant, it gradually subsides into a gentle ripple; the waters have closed above your head, and the world has closed upon your miseries and misfortunes forever.”

  And drowning hasn’t been limited to writers’ imaginations. The twentieth-century poet Hart Crane—who was a fan of Eliot’s The Waste Land, incidentally—committed suicide by jumping overboard in the Gulf of Mexico. He should have known better than to drown himself: Crane grew up in Garrettsville, Ohio, which had its share of flood in 1913 when he was a fourteen-year-old lad. But the most famous writer to drown on purpose was British author Virginia Woolf, who, on March 28, 1941, wrote a last good-bye to her husband, filled her overcoat’s pockets with stones, and walked into the River Ouse.

  It’s easy to see why drowning might be considered a relatively peaceful way to go. There is no gun, no knife, no being clocked on the head by a tire iron. No gore or gratuitous bloodshed, and often drowning occurs underneath a spectacular vista, as the sunset shimmers over the water or near a grove of trees or a burbling brook or even in a swimming pool where often the sound of children’s laughter can be heard.

  But, in reality, drowning isn’t pleasant at all. It must be one of the most miserable, agonizing, and unpleasant ways to die. You really don’t want to know what it’s like.

  If you were to know, you would discover that your first inclination, even if you were attempting to drown on purpose, would be to automatically hold your breath and buy yourself some time. If you are in danger of drowning, and you are lucky, you aren’t panicking, which means you could buy some time that might help your situation. For instance, where are the bubbles you’re releasing going? If you’re confused and don’t know which way is up and which way is down, follow the bubbles.

  Unfortunately, if you are drowning, especially in a fast-moving river, you probably are panicking—you’re moving fast, maybe 25 miles an hour or faster, and you can’t see because mud, sand, and silt are blocking your view, all while the current is tossing you every which way, further hindering your ability to figure out which way is up, so it would be virtually impossible not to panic. If you are in strong physical condition and drowning in a river, you may last a full minute or two holding your breath. If you are unhealthy or elderly, or your lungs aren’t very strong, you may only be able to hold your breath for a handful of seconds, which is probably a blessing. Either way, while you’re not inhaling and doing what you can not to drown, carbon dioxide is building up in your muscles and organs and being carried through your bloodstream to your lungs.

  Your lungs do not like carbon dioxide. Which means, like it or not (and you won’t like it), your oxygen-starved brain w
ill send a signal to your mouth, which will then, to your utter horror, open.

  You will then swallow water, and, desperately wanting air, you will gasp, and you will panic as water, not air, fills your lungs. As your throat spasms, trying to block the path of the water, your stomach will begin filling up. So will your bloodstream. Not that you’ll care to know the definition at this point, but hyperkalemia is setting in, which means there’s a concentration of the electrolyte potassium in your blood, and it’s elevated. The water is breaking down your red blood cells, and potassium is being released throughout your body. This is bad because on top of drowning, you’re also dying of potassium poisoning, which means that your muscles and nerves are about to malfunction. The potassium and the lack of oxygen will cause your already wildly beating heart to beat irregularly.

  Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, the lack of oxygen will then begin to shut down your brain; and from there, yes, the poets and authors are right: drowning can be described as rather peaceful. You’re still alive, and your heart and lungs are still trying to work, but at this point you don’t know that.

  But during the time when you are conscious, and you know exactly what is happening, drowning is a grisly way to go, and drowning in a river flood, instead of a still pool of water, has even more challenges. Hagner, Garrison, and the Rothenberger brothers were in a stew of destruction. Roy may have found himself stuck in underbrush while he was drowning; Roscoe might have been struck by branches, stones, bricks, electrical wiring, and whatever else was caught in the torrent. Garrison and Hagner may well have died not from drowning but from slamming into a bed of rock or a pile of debris.

  Ray and Roscoe Rothenberger, Wallace Garrison, and John Hagner were among the first, and possibly the first, drowning victims of the Great Flood of 1913. There wasn’t anything peaceful or romantic about it.