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

by Geoff Williams

  And if anything, life for African-Americans was getting worse. When President Woodrow Wilson came into power, along with the Democratic party in Congress, Southern politicians began introducing bills to segregate the federal civil service, the military, and public transportation in Washington, D.C. That didn’t happen, but Wilson gave in, allowing several of his Cabinet members to segregate several executive departments. Not long after, the dining facilities and restrooms throughout the federal government were racially segregated. It was a quiet permission slip to the rest of the country that if you want to segregate, go right ahead.

  As noted, the floodwaters of 1913 were more than happy to take anyone, regardless of their color, but historically blacks usually had the worst of it, something that has had implications even today. The least expensive, least well-built homes, often not much more than shacks, were often near the river, where land was cheap because of flooding and devastation after a hard rain. If a flood came in, blacks living in impoverished homes along the river usually didn’t have a telephone to call for help, or a car that they could quickly crank up and speed away in. Making matters even worse for any black resident in a flood, many African-Americans in 1913 didn’t have the means to pay for swimming lessons; and even those who could were often refused entry into public pools and public swimming beaches. So when a flood came, simply due to their social status many blacks were at a disadvantage compared to their white counterparts.

  But the flood of 1913—at least looking through a lens from a century away—seems to have brought out the best in humanity. Maybe it’s because much of the flood was in the Northern states where the melting pot, a phrase that became popular after the 1908 play The Melting Pot, was a bit warmer, so to speak; but whatever the reason, there are a number of accounts that survive of whites saving blacks, of blacks saving whites, and of whites and blacks teaming up to save housebound flood victims, welcome stories when there were absolutely other tales of ugliness, racial and otherwise, around the country.

  Little is known about Bill Sloan, a baseball player in the Negro League, as they called it back then, but he is said to have saved 317 people in Dayton. Precious few, tantalizing stories make the imagination reel. He was said to have rescued the Caleb family of five persons from a raft which they had been clinging to for forty-eight hours. He worked at least some of the time with two other men, presumably white since the papers didn’t identify them as colored, Frank Thoro and George Crandall. Sloan is said to have worked for sixty-eight hours before surrendering to exhaustion and sleep. The boat Sloan and his comrades used was a steel-bottom boat. Sloan is said to have stolen it at gunpoint, but, so the story goes, from a selfish factory owner who wasn’t using it and had refused to allow it to be used by the rescuers.

  According to some accounts, another Dayton resident, a Robert Burnham, was rowing a skiff when it struck a tree and his passengers, a black woman and her two babies, fell into the current. One has to appreciate his effort, but it was a sad ending. Both infants drowned; and while Burnham pulled the mother to shore alive, she died en route to a hospital.

  Mayor David M. Green, of Urbana, Ohio, rushed into flood waters and managed to pull Charles Dickinson, a black man, out of the water.

  Arthur L. McGuire, a forty-year-old police officer, won a bronze medal and $1,000 from the Carnegie Hero Fund for saving a black family from drowning in the River des Peres in St. Louis on March 25, 1913.

  Robert Kenney, a 45-year-old African-American from Troy, Ohio, died on March 25, 1913, trying to save four white men from drowning in the floodwaters. The Carnegie Hero Fund gave his father a silver medal and five hundred dollars in cash as a reward for his son’s bravery.

  In Columbus, at the penitentiary on Spring Street, four trusted prisoners and the warden were on the front porch, watching the river go by when they saw a flat-bottomed boat capsize. An African-American woman was on it and pitched into the water.

  “Go on and get her, boys,” the warden shouted. Granted, he didn’t jump in himself, but the four prisoners rushed in and were able to grab hold of her and pull her out. They took her into the prison, gave her dry clothes, and led her through to the rear entrance, which led to dry streets, and sent her on her way.

  Another Columbus resident who was black, James Washington, who worked for the city’s cleaning department, was credited with saving the lives of eighteen white men, although since most of them were “Italians,” according to the local press and given some of the scorn Italian-Americans received in those days, maybe it wasn’t quite as important and impressive as if he had saved mostly Anglo-Saxons.

  In Rushville, Indiana, Carrie Meadows, her granddaughter, and a man of the last name Williams, all African-American, were in a home that had no attic or second-story window. When they found themselves trapped, and the water rushed in, they placed the kitchen table on the stove, and for a while Meadows and her granddaughter were able to safely sit on that while Williams stood on the oven. Eventually, the water reached Williams’s waist, while he held the stove steady.

  By the time the (white) rescuers broke through the roof, cutting a hole for grandmother, granddaughter, and man to climb out of, the river water was just sixteen inches away from the ceiling.

  March 27, Dayton, midnight

  The rescue work was finally stopped at midnight with rescuers reasoning that it was too dangerous to continue in the dark. Bonfires had been lit up along the water’s edge, which had given rescuers some light to work with; but many people trapped in homes and buildings saw them and simply thought that even more of the city was on fire.

  There were many fires, far too many to count. On one part of Third Street, far from the fires that threatened the Beckel House and downtown, there was even a fire near the old bicycle shop where the Wright Brothers worked for many years. The Wright Brothers had a bicycle shop in a few locations, but their last one, at 1127 West Third Street, they had worked at from 1897 until 1908, a time when they were, of course, working on building and experimenting with their airplane, which took off for the first time in 1903. In the shop were blueprints and plenty of papers having to do with the construction of airplanes and early flight navigation. Fortunately for history’s sake, the fire narrowly missed the shop.

  The bonfires along the river were necessary, to be sure, but they had another negative as well. The extra light in the darkness also reminded would-be rescuers and the public how helpless they were to save their fellow residents. People could be seen clinging to buildings, far off in the distance, clearly freezing, hungry, and frightened. Occasionally, a person, unable to continue, would slip from their perch and fall into the still-rushing murky yellow water.

  March 27, throughout Ohio, after midnight

  Almost everywhere on Governor Cox’s map of Ohio continued to have its share of crises. Cleveland, at the top of the state, was seeing lumberyards and trains destroyed by the Cuyahoga River. Two days earlier, in fact, in the village of Brighton, near Cleveland, a train had crashed through a bridge battered and weakened from flooding, going into the Fitchville River. The engineer, fireman, and brakeman all died. In Akron, another city up north, they were dynamiting locks on the Ohio and Erie Canal so that the floodwater could drain into the Cuyahoga instead of homes and factories. The flood ended canal travel for good, which was already an endangered species in Ohio.

  The reservoir in Lewiston, a town in northwestern Ohio, looked poised to burst, and Governor Cox spent a good deal of the night making calls and doing whatever he could to make sure enough resources were being put in place to keep the dam from bursting. When he couldn’t find the head of public works, a fellow by the name of John I. Miller, and then learned the guy had the nerve to be asleep in his hotel room, Cox went apoplectic. The next morning, he sacked Miller and replaced him with James R. Marker, the state highway commissioner.

  “That poor fellow fell down lamentably,” Cox said that day of Miller, who in fairness, may have been working hard since things started falling apart two days
earlier and had decided he needed to sleep sometime. Cox may have come to that conclusion himself. By June, he had reappointed Miller to his post.*

  At the bottom of the state, Marietta was cut off from civilization, and Cox had no idea how anyone there was faring. In Portsmouth, another city at the bottom of the state along the Ohio River, Cox was hearing that the good news was that the five-year-old flood wall had been constructed so that if the river rose to sixty-two feet, the city would be protected. What he didn’t realize was that within the next twenty-four hours, the Ohio River would climb to sixty-eight feet.

  The middle of the night, New Castle, Pennsylvania

  It was quiet, and cold, and dark. And many people were still trapped on their roofs.

  March 27, 1 A.M., Peru, Indiana

  Sam Bundy had been at it for forty-eight hours. He was exhausted, but there was always another desperate family or individual to save, and at night the screams seemed louder. Bundy had his routine down pat, each time he picked someone up. He would tell the people to keep still and not get excited, to sit down right away and not to worry.

  Then he would steer the boat into the current, through alleys, over small buildings—yes, over small buildings; the water was that deep—and he would pass under the tops of trees, all the while gradually working his way closer and closer to the shore, where the current wasn’t putting up as much of a fight and he could get his passengers to dry land.

  Occasionally, the wealthier families of Peru insisted Bundy receive some payment for his work. The Miami Indian never asked anyone for money, but he found himself unable to say no when a man named Warren Stites gave him a check for $50, when a Delbert Daniels handed him a $75 check, when a J. D. Emehiser gave him $50, and when a Cyrus Crider handed him a check for $75. Bundy wasn’t a rich man. When he was eighteen and still living with his parents, he was a farm laborer. In the 1910 census records, the pathetic handwriting indicates that he was working at either an automobile dealer or a garage. By 1915, he appears to have been a farm laborer, and in 1920 he was a lineman for a railroad. Bundy had a past of having little money, and his future was going to be much of the same. There was no way he was going to refuse when it was offered as thanks.

  But he had honor, too. There was also no way he was ever going to ask any flood refugee for payment. He was in his boat to help people. There’s no other explanation why anyone would risk their life repeatedly for forty-eight hours.

  2 A.M., Fort Wayne

  Captain Wallace and his boat, and five crewmen, arrived in Fort Wayne straight from Chicago. They had some orphans to save.

  2:30 A.M., Fort Wayne

  The newly falling snow, which would stop three inches later, and the rivers, continued to rise throughout the night, and did nothing for morale.

  Henry Michaels, a resident of Fort Wayne, was sitting in a chair, holding a newspaper and staring out the window, a position he started in the evening and continued all night. He would tell a reporter the next day, “I wanted to stay for the novelty of it, but I got all the novelty I wanted last night. There wasn’t a sound all night except the swish of the water. It was just like sleeping in a grave. It got pretty cold, too, this morning. While I didn’t want to be taken out yesterday, I was mighty eager to be taken out this morning.”

  3 A.M., Fort Wayne, Indiana

  Captain Wallace and his boat, and five crewmen, arrived at the orphanage to find everyone, even the youngest children, wide awake. There were fifty-eight children and about a dozen adults, mostly the orphanage staff, like teachers and the cook, in two rooms on the second floor. Everything was going well, though, and the building still appeared safe enough. Because it was so dangerous to be on a boat in the dark, Wallace decided the rescue could wait until morning. Upon learning that, some of the youngest girls took a nap. Seven-year-old Opal Jacobs, one of the girls who almost drowned, slept in Mrs. Overmeyer’s lap.

  3 A.M., Dayton

  Louis Gintsy, a mail carrier, was stuck in a flooded house on Wayne Street, and he and his family were frantically eyeing a fire, which was burning up houses and approaching their own. He laid out the facts to his wife. They could face down the fire or the flood, but one way or another, they were going to battle one of the elements, and their odds of survival weren’t good.

  “It’s an even break,” Louis said.

  “I’d rather die in the flood than in the fire,” said his wife. Besides, going with the water at least gave them a fighting chance.

  Louis agreed. Their minds made up, the mail carrier stepped into the swiftly moving water. It was as high as his hips. He went back and picked up one of their four children. The plan was to carry each child to safe ground and then come back for his wife if all went according to plan. It was a plan fraught with danger—they could all be swept away to their deaths, but they couldn’t wait any longer, not even until daylight.

  Louis carried his first child into the water. He and his family soon found themselves very pleased with their decision. They all had a colorful story to tell about escaping the flood, and two hours later, very much alive and on safe ground, they watched their house dissolve into flames.

  Nearby, a man named Shelly Burns had been stuck in a stable for the last two days and now was confronted with the same question the Gintsy family had to wrestle with. There was a fire at the rear of the building he was in, and he had to ask himself: Did he prefer burning to death, or possibly drowning?

  “I’ll take a chance on the flood,” said Burns, and then he jumped out of the window, plunging into the water.

  Only things didn’t go as planned, and he didn’t have any of the luck the Gintsy family possessed. On his way down into the water, Burns got his arm stuck on some wooden debris. Getting stuck may have saved his life, for he didn’t drown and was rescued when the sun came up and oarsmen were out braving the waters again.

  But Burns likely wondered more than once if he would have been better off remaining where he was, especially since the stable did not end up burning. He remained stuck for several hours, hanging from the stable by one arm, his arm in complete agony and half his body submerged in icy water, and left wondering if the fire would catch up to him anyway, or if the water would rise first and drown him.

  3:15 A.M., Fort Wayne

  A fire broke out at a wealthy home, starting with the greenhouse and then moving to the actual house. A brilliant blaze could be seen everywhere. Everyone assumed the worst. The Allen County Orphans’ Home must have caught fire.

  Throughout the night, Dayton, Ohio

  Judge Jones stood on the windowsill, not because he particularly wanted to look outside, but because his fellow refugees decided that he and another fellow had the best shouting voices. Jones and the other man took turns shouting across the waterway to the Phillips Hotel, where there were the men with megaphones who were keeping the Beckel House guests apprised of how the fire was doing. At another window, the one person who was close to death, whether the fire came or not, Clarence Bennett, owner of the Beckel House, was well enough that he stood up for a long time most of the night, staring out the window and listening to the voices coming from the Phillips Hotel.

  “Oh, Callahan people,” they would shout, “the fire has worked one door nearer. What do you say?”

  Jones would then shout a question in response, and then hear something like:

  “No, the bank is not burning yet.”

  While there was a bank inside the Callahan building, there was another one a block away, across the street from the Beckel House. The guests from the Beckel House calculated that if the Fourth National Bank went up in flames, then it would probably jump across the street and strike the Beckel House. That meant the entire block would go up in flames, including the Callahan building. But the Fourth National Bank was said to be fireproof, and so everyone kept hoping for the best.

  If it did burn, and the flames came, everyone had decided that they would divide into parties of three—two men to each woman. The consensus was that if anyone
could and should be saved, it would be the mother in the group, and her child. The problem that nobody dared say out loud was that nobody could figure out how anyone, no matter how committed and serious, would possibly be able to do a thing to keep the mother and her son from burning up or drowning with everyone else. But having the plan made everyone feel better.

  Nobody could see anyone. Even Jones, at the window, didn’t have any moonlight; it was snowing and raining. Everyone was shivering, although, as Jones put it, “Little was thought of cold, hunger or thirst. We were waiting, waiting, waiting, to know whether it was to be life or death.”

  The men with the megaphones kept up their news bulletins well after midnight. “The Beckel does not seem to have caught yet,” they continued to shout. And then: “Oh, Callahan. Another store has caught but the bank is safe yet.”

  And then: “The wind seems to be rising and blowing this way.”

  Helpful to know, but the last thing they wanted to hear.

  But at one in the morning, Jones suddenly heard: “Oh, Callahan; fire seems to be going down. Think the bank will stand. We believe your danger is almost over.”

  Everyone in the two rooms—and arguably anyone on other floors throughout the Callahan building who heard the message—breathed a collective sigh of relief. Many people murmured, “Thank God.”

  Jones felt a wave of hope wash over him. The last twelve hours in particular had been a nightmare. He wondered, is it possible the worst is over?

  Not quite. As if in answer to his question, an explosion rocked the building. There was light now—blood-red and green fire lit up the night air. Burning embers and sparks tumbled from the sky, and smoke drifted past everyone. The air was hot now. Jones wrote later, “I could only think of the Day of the Last Judgment.”

  The fire had jumped across Third Street, harrowingly close to the Fourth National Bank but attacking the Lowe Brothers Paint Store Company instead. Paint was highly combustible, and the building exploded into oblivion.