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

by Geoff Williams

  But Charles Adams, Jr., would probably tell anyone today that it doesn’t matter how you stay connected with your community as long as you are connected, because for a guy who thought a lot about the past, the 99-year-old flood survivor embraced the future. When Charles Adams was admitted into the hospital for his final visit, he asked the nurses for a computer.

  Notes and Research and Acknowledgments

  I knew I was getting somewhere with my research when I found myself dreaming about nearly drowning.

  In what goes down as the most unpleasant nightmare I’ve so far had, one night—or maybe it was early morning—I found myself behind the wheel of my car, skidding off a rain-splattered road and careering into a roaring creek. That’s when I looked behind me and saw my youngest daughter, her seat belt still on and waist-deep in river water and screaming for my help. I woke up instantly, shaking and terrified and trying to figure out if I would have been able to rescue her or not.

  It didn’t occur to me until much later that it might be a good sign that I was making considerable progress in researching and writing my book.

  At the end of other nonfiction narratives, I always read other “notes and research” sections with envy. I learn how authors and historians traveled to the ends of the earth, retracing every step and path that real-life characters in their books once traversed.

  I’m not so fortunate. Even though I always am working, writing for news wire services like Reuters and random publications like the Huffington Post and CNNMoney.com, the cash flow of a freelance writer is often a bit unpredictable. Instead of sharing details of how I spared no expense in traveling to the ends of the earth to collect data for my book, I’m telling you about some weird dream I had.

  Still, because so much of the Great Flood of 1913 occurred so close to where I live, and in Middletown, Ohio, the town I grew up in, I was able to visit quite a few communities in the area that were affected by the flood and stand in areas I knew had once been underwater, getting a sense of the power and reach of a flooded river. That idea really came across as I neared the end of writing this book, on one summer day in 2012, when I traveled out to Mentor, Kentucky with my parents and daughters to see a house that had been on the edge of the Ohio River’s flooding during 1913. My great-grandmother, Lillian Williams, who passed away before I was born, took the photo of the house, or at least it found its way into her scrapbook. We were able to find the house, which is still standing, and then drive as far as we could toward the river, which appears to have been about a three-mile distance.

  But mostly during my research, I combed through newspapers, many of them online at NewspaperArchive.com, and many of them not, still on microfilm, and so I spent many evenings and weekends at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, which has been a trusted research refuge for me during the writing of this book and earlier ones. I also trekked up to Columbus, Ohio, to its impressive Columbus Metropolitan Library, and found a treasure trove of information about the city’s role in the flood. I, of course, on a number of occasions, went to the Dayton Metro Library in Dayton, Ohio, about an hour’s drive from my house, and burrowed into their local history room and pored over microfilm of their city papers.

  And, you know, before I forget, I should say thanks to Nancy Horlacher, a local history specialist at the Dayton Metro Library. She steered many of the photos in this book to me, and she was invaluable in helping me make the most of my research time at the Dayton library. She was terrific.

  I also found some great material at the Clark County Public Library in Springfield, Ohio, and at my hometown at the MidPointe Library in Middletown, Ohio. I used to go to the MidPointe Library when it was just known as the Middletown Public Library, and I have many fond memories from studying there in middle and high school.

  As for the newspapers I utilized for the book, and I’m sure I’ve left some out of the list you’re about to read, but I focused on the dates of March 23–27, of course, although I frequently was looking ahead into April and May 1913 and beyond, and immersed myself in the Dayton Daily News, the Dayton Journal, the Dayton Evening Herald, the Middletown Journal, the Middletown News-Signal, the Springfield News-Sun, Xenia Daily Gazette, the Fort Wayne News, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette and the Fort Wayne Sentinel, the Indianapolis Star, the Indianapolis News, the Columbus Dispatch, the Columbus Citizen-Journal, the Ohio State Journal, the Galveston Daily News, the New Castle News (New Castle, Pennsylvania), the Gazette and Bulletin (Williamsport, Pennsylvania), Lebanon Daily News (Lebanon, Pennsylvania), Chester Times (Chester, Pennsylvania), the Evening Record (Greenville, Pennsylvania), the Pittsburgh Gazette Times, the Neosho Daily Democrat (Neosho, Missouri), Moberly Weekly Monitor (Moberly, Missouri), the Daily Democrat-Tribune (Jefferson City, Missouri), St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, Illinois), the Daily Free Press (Carbondale, Illinois), Monmouth College Newspaper Oracle (Monmouth, Illinois), the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I went through as many newspapers as possible, repeatedly, because so often during the 1913 flood, when communication was difficult and confusion reigned, an account would be wrong or wouldn’t quite tell the whole story, but when two, three, or ten papers started reporting an incident from varying angles, and you compare it with other facts you pick up at sites like Ancestry.com, you start to get a clearer picture.

  I used other sources, however, beyond newspaper articles, magazine articles, Web sites, and books. I need to thank Gregory McDonald, a forensic pathologist at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, who has performed many autopsies on drowning victims over the years and gave me as close to first-hand information as possible on what happens when you drown and what it’s like. Donna Randall and Sara Houk, relatives of Theresa Hammond, the Fort Wayne teacher who saved two orphans, were able to fill me in on what her aunt was like and filled me in about Teresa Hammond Dinnen’s life, post-flood. Ms. Houk was especially helpful, as were Helen Steele Lehman and especially Elinor Kline, who both provided information about the Saettel family. (George Saettel, as you may recall, was the shopkeeper who was caught up in an explosion but managed to survive in the flood for a little while.)

  Felicia Korengel, Lyn Keating, and especially Elaine Korengel Durham were all able to provide a little more information about Ralph Korengel, the ten-year-old kid in Cincinnati who almost became a flood statistic when he was sucked through a sewer tunnel. Ralph lived a good long life, married, but never had kids. I was pretty horrified to learn that in 1980, when he was ill with cancer, he ended his life in his garage, turning on his car. That was bad enough, but he didn’t realize the carbon monoxide would go anywhere beyond his deathtrap. It did, the poisonous gas drifting up to the room above the garage, and killed his wife, Ruth.

  Other people I should mention who helped out with a little advice, or pointed me in the right direction, include Edward Roach, a historian at the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park; Megan Griffiths, conservation technician at the Gerald R. Ford Conservation Center at the Nebraska State Historical Society; Eric Mankin; Leslie Mark Kendall, the curator of the Petersen Automotive Museum; and Patricia R. Shannon, the director of education at the Thurber House.

  One of the most invaluable was a recounting that I found at the Dayton library written by Charles Adams, the father of the twin babies who almost drowned in the flood. He wrote about a ten-page manuscript, detailing the day it flooded in Dayton and of how he and his wife and their babies almost died. His son, Charles Adams, Jr., also wrote extensively about his role in the flood, and I think their stories really added a lot to our understanding of the flood; but of course, there are probably so many stories written by people and waiting to be discovered in libraries and probably in numerous aging trunks and shoeboxes heaved to the side in attics and basements.

  Trudy E. Bell is a science journalist who wrote The Great Dayton Flood of 1913 (Arcadia Publishing, 2008). I didn’t utilize her fine book all that much�
�anyone familiar with Arcadia knows that their books are filled with more photos than prose—there are 200 in Bell’s 128-page book—but Bell has written extensively about the 1913 flood on the Internet. Somewhere in the last few months of writing this book, I came across her Web site, in which she says, “My ultimate goal is to write the definitive book on the Great Easter national calamity of 1913.”

  I felt a twinge of guilt when I read that, since I hope my book is the definitive book on the Great Flood of 1913, but I hope she still writes her own all-comprehensive account. In my opinion, and I’m sure Ms. Bell’s, there could and should be bookshelves full of tomes about the 1913 flood. What happened to America during the spring of 1913 is, I think, just as tragic, compelling, and relevant as other prominent historical disasters, like the Titanic and the 1906 San Francisco and 1871 Chicago fires, are today. Not to make it a contest or anything, but the flood victims and heroes of the 1913 flood deserve to be remembered as much as anyone else.

  So, anyway, Bell’s research about the storm and weather that hit the Midwest, Northeast, and South was very helpful to my understanding of the tornadoes and flood that pounded the country, and I’m grateful for all the work she has done in helping to unearth information about the flood.

  I also have to sing the praises of John R. Repass, who wrote a lengthy document for the West Indianapolis Historical Society about his mother’s family’s ordeal during the flood and a tale of his grandfather, Philander Gray. That account, which the society put online, added a lot to the Indianapolis portions of the book.

  In general, historical societies and counties in the region have stories about the flood on their Web sites, including the Shelby County Historical Society, which has a nice recounting of the flood from 89-year-old resident Gene Rees. The Emmitsburg Area Historical Society, of Emmitsburg, Maryland, also stands out; it had a little snippet on their Web site about John Hoke, possibly Maryland’s only flood casualty, which sent me searching the newspaper archives to learn more.

  In 2002, local historian Jim Blount published a 68-page book entitled Butler County’s Greatest Weather Disaster: Flood, 1913.I found some invaluable material, especially on Hamilton!, Ohio, in his book. ‘Sigh. I should mention here that Hamilton—wonderful, scenic community with good people—renamed its city in 1986, Hamilton!, Ohio. That’s right. To the chagrin of many Hamiltonians even, there’s an exclamation point after the city, although almost nobody, including mapmakers, uses it. I didn’t in the book, in large part because it was set in 1913, long before the exclamation point was added.’

  And, of course, there are others I would like to thank for their help with writing Washed Away, front and center my affable agent Laurie Abkemeier, who I mentioned at the start of this book and can’t say enough nice things about, frankly. When I was trying to come up with an idea for another book, she pushed me to write about something local until I suddenly remembered all of the scattered stories I had heard about some flood a long, long time ago, and I definitely need to thank Jessica Case, my editor, who was able to tighten the prose and offer a lot of useful input. She is also unfailingly cheerful, never making me feel bad when I turned in my drafts slightly past our deadlines. Any author would be lucky to work with her.

  I also would like to thank some of the people who have been ever-present in my life: my parents, of course, Jim and Rita Williams, who are about as perfect a pair of parents as you’d ever want; my younger brother and confidant, Kevin; my kind and generous grandmother, Mary Wellinghoff (born in Middletown, Ohio, twelve years after the flood); and some close friends of mine, Brian Kieffer, Mike Johnson, Richard Welch, and Stu Rubinstein. I’d also like to thank my ex-wife, Susan Kailholz. Our marriage not unexpectedly came crumbling to an end a few weeks before Pegasus Books gave me the go-ahead to write this book, and while divorce is obviously pretty unpleasant, ours was thankfully amicable, and I feel like we’ve kept our friendship intact.

  Most of all, though, I thank our daughters, Isabelle and Lorelei, eleven and nine, who both inspire me, keep me on my toes, and simply make life interesting, exciting, and fun. One night at dinner, I told them that I wanted to dedicate the book to them, and Isabelle, who isn’t one for mush, rolled her eyes. Lorelei, who loves history maybe as much as I do, cheerfully suggested that I dedicate the book to the flood victims. Isabelle quickly seconded that. And how could I argue? Those who survived the flood and those who didn’t spent several harrowing days, famished and thirsty, often putting their lives at risk in order to save their families, friends, neighbors, and complete strangers. The 1913 flood may be mostly forgotten, but its victims and survivors should long be remembered.

  Index

  A

  Abbott, Albert, 166

  Abbott, Chief, 233–234, 236

  Abel, Mildred, 51

  Abkemeier, Laurie, xii

  Adams, Charles, 67–69, 77–81, 86, 110–111, 115, 151–156, 185, 195–197, 286–287, 336–337

  Adams, Charles, Jr., 152–153, 155–156, 196–197, 336–338, 340–341

  Adams, F. J., 7–8, 15

  Adams, John “Grandpa,” 69, 81, 86, 151–154, 161–162, 196–197, 286–287, 336–337

  Adams, Lois, 151–153, 156, 185, 196–197, 336–337

  Adams, Viola, 67–68, 77, 79–81, 86, 110–111, 151–156, 197, 287, 336–337

  Adams Sentinel, 51

  aftermath of flood, 291–309, 313–341

  Akron Beacon Journal, 93

  Allen, Charles, 9

  Alton Evening Telegraph, 250

  American Architect and Building News, 6

  American Biography: Arthur Ernest Morgan, 326

  Anderson, Albert A., 246

  Anderson, Christian, 124

  Andrews, Henry, 93

  Annual Report, 307

  Aring, Fred, 66–67

  Arnold, Chester, 186–187

  Artz, Dudley, 154–155

  Atchison Daily Globe, 45

  Atlanta Constitution-Journal, 323

  Aughenbaugh, James T., 307

  August, Edwin, 212

  Axline, Addline, 187–189

  Axline, William, 187–189

  B

  Bachelor Bill’s Birthday Present, 212

  Baggot, King, 172

  Baird, Glenn, 228

  Baker, George, 125–126

  Bakersfield Californian, 294

  Baldwin, Irwin, 265

  Ballard, Wilbur, 41

  Balls, Dan, 246

  Bannon, Flora, 125–126

  Barnhorn, Marie Zang, 115

  Barron, Thomas, 209

  Barrymore, Drew, 313

  Barrymore, Ethel, 313

  Barrymore, John, 313

  Barrymore, Lionel, 313

  Barton, Clara, 22

  Bear, Hollow Horn, 60–61

  Becker, C.J., 316–317

  Bell, A.John, 73, 92, 149, 180–181, 206, 264, 334

  Bell, Trudy E., x, 3, 304

  Bennett, Clarence, 84, 232, 261, 286

  Benting, Josiah, 51

  Bernhardt, Sarah, 313

  Bernstein, Mark, 326

  Betts, Adam, 294

  Bicknell, Ernest P., 21–23, 29–30, 62–63, 98, 208, 281, 285, 303, 328–329

  Biddle, Pearl Clifton, 63–64

  Blackner, John, 123

  Blair, Harry Laban, 220

  Blair, Hattie, 220

  Blanck, Max, 43

  blizzards, 5, 24, 236

  Block, Maurice, 324

  Boardman, Mabel, 22, 98, 208, 303

  Boeh, Valenti, 46

  Boggs, Harold, 228

  Bourne, G. W., 216

  Boyer, Fred, 90

  Brand, Henry, 308

  Brandon, Frank, 121

  Branning, Henry E., 45, 223, 224

  Breen, Clarence, 47–48

  Brown, Grover, 114

  Brown, Michael, 339–340

  Bryant, Mrs. F., 12

  Bundy, Samuel, 61–62, 69, 181–182, 195, 230, 258, 265, 337

  Bunz, John, 113
–114

  Bunz, Margaret, 114

  Burkhart, Edna Keller, 296

  Burkhouse, Charles, 127–131

  Burnham, Robert, 255

  Burns, Shelly, 260

  Bush, George W., 339, 340

  Busick, Dorothy, 295

  C

  Caise, Anna, 207

  Cambridge City Tribune, 205

  Camping, Harold, 293

  Carnegie Heroism award, 73, 255

  Casino Royale, 333

  Cassidy, Edwin “Dock,” 121–122

  Cassidy, Mike, 38

  Catrow, H. G., 201–202

  Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, 284

  Cement and Engineering News, 138

  Chalmers, Hugh, 44

  Chalsont, Lucy, 308–309

  Chapin, Charles E., 194

  Chicago American, 193

  Chicago Inter Ocean, 319

  Chicago Journal, 94, 157, 198, 263, 298

  Child of the Century, A, 94

  Christianson, James, 125–126

  Chryst, Bill, 152, 154

  Cincinnati Enquirer, 296

  Cincinnati Times-Star, 193, 194

  circus, 59–60, 70, 229, 314

  Clark, George Rogers, 74

  Clark, John, 70

  Clark Gable: A Biography, 222

  clean-up after floods, 291–309

  Cleary, George, 95–96

  Clements, Clara, 116

  Cleveland, Grover, 43

  Clevenger, Alexander, 48

  Clown’s Revenge, The, 212

  Cohan, George M., 83–84

  Columbus Citizen-Journal, 52, 199, 201, 271

  Columbus Dispatch, 201, 241, 245

  Columbus Evening Dispatch, 162

  Conservancy Act, 329–330

  Conservancy District, 330, 335, 338

  Coots, Charles E., 157

  Coulter, Arthur F., 91–92

  Cox, James M., 76, 98–99, 103, 172, 201, 204–208, 234–236, 250, 257–258, 264, 285, 306–307, 329