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

on to say that a house had been carried off, and a Mrs. Julia Nowlin and her four children had been drowned.
    During the early days of the Civil War, in November 1861, a Union captain from Pennsylvania, and some members of a New York regiment, discovered five bodies floating down the Potomac after some heavy flooding. Two were a husband and wife and a third a private from Massachusetts, named either Bumford or Burford, of Company K, Fifteenth Massachusetts Volunteers, judging from the soggy identification papers. Those weren’t the only items Bumford—or Burford—had in his possession. Newspaper editors and reporters, either feeling it was important information or believing readers curious and gossipy, always seemed to go out of their way to report what contents were in the pockets of flood victims. Bumford—or Burford—had in his possession a medallion and $25 in gold.
    Mark Twain, who died three years before the Great Flood of 1913, wrote about the flood of 1882 in his book Life on the Mississippi, saying about it: “It put all the unprotected low lands under water from Cairo to the mouth; it broke down the levees in a great many places, on both sides of the river; and in some regions south, when the flood was at its highest, the Mississippi was seventy miles wide! A number of lives were lost, and the destruction of property was fearful.”
    The Johnstown flood of 1889 also highlights how common flooding was, in that at least a couple of its survivors went on to experience the Great Flood of 1913. The New Castle News of New Castle, Pennsylvania, reported that a Mildred Abel, who lived in Johnstown at the time of the flood, also was stuck in her surrounded, flooding home in Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania, for two weeks in 1908, and then once again was trapped in her house in New Castle, Pennsylvania, duringthe 1913 flood. And according to the Columbus Citizen-Journal, a Mr. and Mrs. C. M. Sipes * were living in Johnstown, Pennsylvania in 1889 when they lost everything. In Columbus, Ohio in 1913, they would lose everything yet again, becoming some of the more unlucky people in history. On the other hand, considering that they lived to tell the tale of surviving major floods twice, they might also be considered some of the luckiest.
    The Flood of 1898 was memorable as well. Richmond, Indiana lost a bridge. Middletown, Ohio saw its nearby Great Miami River, normally about four hundred feet wide, stretch out a mile wide. In nearby Hamilton, Ohio, where every boat in the city was pegged as a rescue boat, seven people died, including a mother and three young daughters. In Columbus, the flood took out the water pumping system, denying people fresh water and flooding homes, some businesses, and the local asylum.
    And in Creekside, Pennsylvania, on March 23, 1898, Martin Fisher tried to set an example of what it means to be a good citizen—or, if you’d rather, people who hate the idea of serving on jury duty can point to him as an example that there may be something to their complaints. Fisher, a postmaster and merchant, not to mention a father and husband and provider to his aging mother, was determined to do his duty and get to the courthouse in Indiana, Pennsylvania, despite rain and severe flooding.
    There was some water in front of the bridge, but not much, and Fisher, in his horse and buggy, believed—surely like other drivers had before him and many more would later in their cars—that he could traverse a little water without any problems. It must be a quirk of human nature. We as a people become so wrapped up in our day-to-day issues, like trying to get to jury duty or reach a friend’s house, that we minimize the danger in front of us. Fisher, like so many people before him and after, surveyed the swollen river and decided he was perfectly capable of crossing it.
    Unfortunately, he didn’t know that underneath the water there was a ditch waiting for him. His horse and buggy