News, The Cyclone of 1912, LaSalle Parish, La. Submitted by Jack Willis and Evelyn Windham ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** The Cyclone of 1912 by: Jack Morgan Willis The intense, oppressive heat on this particular day, January 11, 1912, was almost unbearable. This type of weather was highly unusual here in what was supposed to be the dead of winter. In LaSalle (Catahoula) Parish one road traversed the distance between the environs of Jena and Walker's Ferry. About midway between these two points lived Samuel Woodridge "Woodie" Graham, his wife Stella Brooks Gray Graham, his mother, Mary Bairns Graham and daughter, Alice Lorraine. Alice is the mother of Jack M. Willis, writer of this article. Their house was of double- pin construction primarily out of logs. It had a long open hallway or "dog- trot" leading out to a back porch off the kitchen. After the noon meal "Woodie" Graham had gone back to repairing fence around a nearby field. The older women had lain down in an effort to catch a nap, oblivious to the heat. Mary Graham attempted in vain to cool her person with a palmetto fan. The relentless heat of the day gave Alice the motive she needed to pull off her shoes and go barefoot. She had helped her mother and grandmother clear away the dishes used at the noon meal. With the chores done, she had gone outside to play near the dirt road which ran beside their house. She entered her "playhouse" she had outlined on the bare ground, with shards and bits of glass, pottery and china, and sat down on a "playlike" chair. An unexpected burst of wind caused her to turn and look in the direction from whence it had come, the southwest. The sudden natural cooling was a radical change from the stifling heat of only seconds before. Back-lighted by the early afternoon sun, a sullen, ominous cloud bank, swollen with moisture from Catahoula Lake, rode upon the thermal air, pushing northeastward. The fickle breeze which had, without warning, wafted through, only seconds before, died hastily and it again was almost impossible to draw a full breath. Alice Graham, upon seeing the swiftly approaching cloud, scampered back into the house to alert her folks of the impending danger. "Woodie" Graham saw and heard the cyclone formation. He ran to the house and began herding the livestock into his barn. This was a super-human effort because of the stock's flightiness, due to the menacing weather and a dropping barometer. Almost exhausted from this almost impossible task, he began making a circuit around to the front yard to see if anything else needed to be done before the storm hit. Having done this he made his way to the front steps of the house. No sooner had "Woodie" mounted the top step of the front porch, than a severe gust or gale of wind knocked him down, began to roll him end over end, down the center of the hallway, across the back porch and into the yard. The ill- tempered winds rolled him across the yard, up against a "dead man" post, holding a weighted chain that served to close the lot gate when it was pushed open. Momentarily stunned, after his ordeal, he clung to the post literally for his life. He regained his senses in time to see the cyclone lift the roof, ceiling and walls of the house up into the air. Some of the timbers fell back and pinned Mary Graham to the bed. She was unable to move because of their weight. By now the rain was falling in torrents. All she could say over and over was, "Oh Lord, did you bring me all this way to die like this?" Well, He didn't. She lived six more years. By this time, "Woodie" was able to crawl and had laboriously made his way to the interior of what was left of the house where the women supernaturally remained. The tornadic winds had been replaced by falling hail stones as big as hickory nuts. Alice's father managed to wrap her up in a feather bed mattress to keep the hail from literally beating the hair from off her head. Then the torrential rains came and the family was forced to take shelter under the floor of the house after "Woodie" had succeeded at freeing his mother from the burdensome timbers. Alice looked around when the rains began to abate, and what immediately impacted her mind was the fact that the decorative little what-nots were still in their original positions on the ornamental shelves. Mary Bairns Graham's statue of the Virgin Mary, which had seen her through four years of the Irish potato famine and which she had brought to America from Ireland, remained safe in its prayer niche. Back up the Jena-Walker's Ferry road, a part of the Natchez Trace, which passed beside the Graham double-pin house, was located a grist mill/cotton gin on Mason's Branch. The mill-gin belonged to one Richmond Walker, and until this particular day,the gin had been shut down for the winter, since cotton harvest was supposedly over. But a farmer in the area had come up to the gin, just before noon with a wagon load of "hold over" cotton, and wanted it ginned right then. He had picked the cotton in the fall, had weighed it up as he put it in the wagon and parked it under a shed as insurance against hard times. Now, hard times were here and he needed money for spring planting. They had just began to gin the load of cotton, when the gin broke down. "Rich" Walker was already mad and being very profane in his language, and having no respect nor reverence for the Lord or anyone, began to react to the breakdown. He sent Ervin Moses, one of his two sons that was helping him, along with Anthony Douglas, a black man from up on Hemp's Creek, to get some hay wire and tools so the gin could be repaired as soon as possible. Upon exiting from the confines of the gin the son realized that not only was the heat oppressive, the quality of light had changed also. In the stillness before the storm, leaf and limb seemed to be frozen in place. Walker's son and Anthony looked at each other in the errie greenish-yellow light that had enveloped their surroundings. The two procured what they were sent for and hurried back to the gin, where his impatient father was pacing back and forth, swearing, getting madder by the second. The son told his father, "Papa, there's a bad looking cloud coming out of the southwest, and it looks like it's fixing to come a storm!" Rich Walker grabbed the tools and wire and really went to cussin'-bad. He reportedly stated, "I hope it comes a blankity-blank cyclone and blows this whole blankity-blank-blank gin straight to hell!" In about five minutes he got his wish. The resultant storm killed Rich Walker one of his sons, Ervin Moses Walker and Anthony Douglas. Traditional tales about the storm say note that some of the tin from the mill-gin was found near Summerville, some ten miles away. After the storm left the Walker place, it took a northeasterly trek towards the Jeff Hailey place across Hemps Creek. One report stated that as the cyclone crossed over the creek it literally sucked all the water out of a stretch of the creek and exposed the dry bottom of the creekbed. The Netherland family lived nearby, and an anvil attached to a wooden pad in front of the family blacksmith shop came up missing, and was never found. The Netherlands were the grandparents of Mrs. Rozenna Grimm from the South Nebo Community. One family living near the Netherlands suffered their own personal calamity. The husband was outside trying to get a pair of oxen into the barn to safety. His wife was looking out the kitchen window and watched as one frantic ox turned and gored her husband and then trampled him. As the wave of shock and grief over-whelmed her, she reacted by running out of the house towards where the oxen were milling around in the barn lot. A pitchfork was leaning against the lot fence. She grabbed it up, threw open the lot gate and purposefully stabbed the guilty ox in the ribs just behind the foreleg. The tines of the pitchfork slid deftly between the ribs, and one of the tines pierced the ox's heart and it immediately dropped to it's knees, graveyard dead. There was another report that stated the tornadic winds picked up a young heifer, whirled her into the air, and unceremoniously dropped her on her side upon a picket fence, the pickets impaling the animal, killing her instantly. Since 1916, when tornado accounts began to be recorded, tornadoes and cyclones average killing 180 people a year in the U.S. Recently news accounts stated winds have been clocked in excess of 260 MPH and it's no wonder that there were reports in Texas of a funnel sucking up sections of highway pavement into the air. Stranger storms of horrific intensity have denuded chickens, blown pine straws into power poles and stripped horses of their harness. One woman was plucked off her front porch at her home in Kansas and her body was found by a neighbor over a mile away. It had been driven head-first into the ground up to the shoulders. About three miles to the north of the Graham homestead, Thomas Brooks, father of Stella Brooks Gray Graham, had taken his seat on his front porch of the house he had built before the Civil War. He had moved here,because where his father, Silas Brooks lived on the north side of Trout Creek, you couldn't dig a well to fresh water because of a hugh salt dome which underlined the area. As he sat down in a cowhide-bottomed straight chair, he became alarmed at the sight of the storm clouds. He called his wife, Sophronia Poole Brooks, out onto the porch. When she walked out where he was seated he pointed to the south and prophetically stated, "Our folks is in trouble." With much dismay and dread evident on her face, she nodded ascent to his statement. Al Taylor had been down towards Catahoula Lake close to Harvey Bradford's place, when he literally heard the storm's passage to the north of his location. Later estimates would determine the storm's path had been at least a mile wide, and the ravaged area of destruction as five miles long. Mr. Taylor's first thoughts were of his two children, Mattie and Lonie Elizabeth, who were attending the Nebo School located on Devil's Creek. As he began his search for them he came to the edge of the first downed timber that was twisted and broken like match sticks. One has to bear in mind that this was virgin tmber, some of which were up to 200 feet tall. He had to tie his horse and leave it so he could began to crawl over, under and through this maze of agonized destruction. At the end of two hours, he estimated he had progressed only about a quarter-mile. Later, to his relief, he found out the girls were safe and sound. It was told, but not verified, that after the neighbors got together and started checking on the welfare of various families, someone happened to think of Mr. Tom (Helen) Coon. She had infant twin sons named Jack and Monroe. When they got over to her house, it was reported that she was sitting in a rocking chair, singing hymns, one twin nestled in each arm. The logs, utilized in the construction of her house, were tumbled all around her in great disarray, but not a hair on her head was harmed. She later described the twister's effects on the house. She said there was a great scream from the wind, then the house, roof and walls whirled around two or three times, and rose slowly through the air. Strangely, it did not hail at the Coon place, like it did at the Graham homestead only a half mile away. Meanwhile as the rains finally began to disapate, neighbors ascertained that "Woodie" Graham had received internal injuries, and was in worse shape than originally thought. A wagon was rounded up along with a team of horses and preparations were begun to get him to Trout to a doctor. The torrential rains had swelled Little Jordan, Cat Squirrel and Mason's Branch out of their banks. These streams lay to the north of the Graham homestead and posed a barrier to the neighbors getting the injured man to Trout. Finally some dry logs were lashed to the upper part of the spoked wheels, so the wagon would float, while the horses swam. The neighbors eventually got "Woodie" to a doctor at the Trout Mill. Eventually he recovered and the only lingering effect was his being bed-ridden at age 55 from rheumatoid arthritis. Some doctors theorized that the crippling disease onset resulted from the vicious pounding he took during the time the twister was punishing his body with the resultant trauma. Everyday life gradually eventually returned to normal in the Nebo Community. No trace of the lumber which composed the roof or walls of the original Graham house were ever found. No effort was made to rebuild and "Woodie" decided to move to the Thomas place across from Tom Coon's blacksmith shop. Even considering the terrible ordeal that Alice Loraine had undergone, she never, in later life, was terrified of what she termed "bad weather" but she respected it's potential for destruction. This has been a compilation of facts, tales, fables, stories and actual first- hand accounts gathered from a cross-section of the populace of the Nebo community. No insult, degradation or offense is intended in any way. All this and more too, is an effort to capture and relate a tale of an awesome display of the fickleness of Mother Nature in, and around the Catahoula...