Historic North Country Disasters

By Cheri L. Farnsworth

There is a tragic history in New York's North Country of human folly, natural disasters, deadly explosions, terrible train wrecks and other calamities. The famous Barnum & Bailey Circus suffered deeply after its train crashed between Norwood and Potsdam in 1889 and many animals died. Beloved Thousand Island Park was almost entirely destroyed by a devastating fire in 1912, leveling hotels and businesses, and the once-thriving park never fully recovered. The great Massena earthquake measured 5.9 on the Richter scale in 1944 and caused tremendous structural damage, including destroying nearly all chimneys in the area. Author Cheri L. Farnsworth compiles both the man-made and natural disasters that shocked the North Country in the hundred years between 1850 and 1950.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Feb 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781439669020

Cheri L. Farnsworth

Cheri Farnsworth has written the following regional titles (some under the name of Cheri Revai): Haunted Northern New York (vols. 1-4, 2002-10), Haunted Massachusetts (2005), Haunted New York (2005), Haunted Connecticut (2006), Haunted New York City (2008), The Big Book of New York Ghost Stories (2009), Haunted Hudson Valley (2010), Adirondack Enigma: The Depraved Intellect and Mysterious Life of North Country Wife Killer Henry Debosnys (2010), Murder & Mayhem in Jefferson County (2010), Murder & Mayhem in St. Lawrence County (2010), Alphabet Killer: The True Story of Rochester's "Double Initial" Murders (2010) and Wicked Northern New York (2011). She enjoys researching regional history, especially about crime and disaster, and finds the connection between history and the paranormal intriguing as well. Farnsworth is retired and lives in Massena, New York, with her husband, three peculiar cats and one crazy, cuddly Labradoodle.

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Benny?

INTRODUCTION

There were many times, while penning this book of doom and destruction, that I spoke of fate and destiny or of Lady Luck looking favorably—or unfavorably—on someone. His fate was then sealed.…Lady Luck cast her fair hand.…It was a situation destined to repeat itself… As it turns out, I was on to something there without even realizing it until just now as I scribble down my intro (last, as always). An obsolete definition of disaster is an unfavorable aspect of a planet or star. Indeed, the old Italian word disastro comes from the Latin dis, meaning a negative effect, and astro, star. If that definition of disaster is taken at its word—then disasters (and the role we play in them) are already predetermined. In other words, unless it’s not our appointed time to die, we will die at a specific and inescapable time (whether by accident, illness, old age, disaster or countless other scenarios).

Whether you subscribe to such pseudoscience or not, the fact is that when we have a date with disaster, we may find ourselves among those being saved by heroes, or we may play the role of hero; we may be among those who stand by helplessly, forced to bear witness; or we may be among those who never stood a chance of surviving. We may feel somehow prompted to step outside for a smoke just seconds before the old tinderbox we call home goes up in flames, or we may be the poor soul who hesitates for too long at the third-floor window with its curtains in flames. We may happen to be on leave the day the freighter that employs us explodes, or we may happen to be on our very first day of work on that same doomed freighter when it tragically goes down in flames. When disaster strikes, we may live, or we may die; we may bear witness; we may save the day; or we may simply hear about it and shake our heads sympathetically. But eventually, our time, too, will come—whether gently in our sleep or not so gently as we play or work. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow famously said, Thy fate is the common fate of all; into each life, some rain must fall. You will see those words in action repeatedly throughout this book. Ultimately, we all share a common fate (death). All that differs is how, where and when we will face it.

The following stories of disaster depict a wide range of tragic events that befell our ancestors. Most of them will not be personally recalled by those younger than seventy-five or eighty years of age—since they took place between 1845 and 1947—but the children and grandchildren of those involved may remember hearing the tragic stories retold in hushed tones at family gatherings. I found the sheer volume of calamities our forefathers faced to be astounding, and I touched on only a handful of them. As in my previous works, I lean toward resurrecting stories that have long been forgotten by many so that new and future generations of North Country residents will learn of our past tragedies and triumphs and know of the tough stock we northern New Yorkers come from. Our predecessors had a great sense of community, faith and determination that carried them through the unthinkable dangers so prevalent during their lifetimes. Their legacy has been left in all that we see around us today. We’ve inherited their estates, their farms, their factories, their camps and their towns and cities. And I believe we also inherited their strength and determination and that it will hold us in good stead, should we ever experience the unimaginable as they did.

Thankfully, many of yesteryears’ common disasters are rarely heard of today (industrial and hotel fires, train wrecks, shipwrecks and mine or factory explosions). You never see entire towns wiped out by fire anymore— at least not around here—and you certainly don’t see children working in dangerous factories or engaged in target practice around explosives. Tremendous strides in hazard prevention and safety precautions have been made in the past hundred years on local, state and federal levels. Whereas man-made disasters once seemed to outnumber natural disasters, today it’s the other way around. Natural disasters (ice storms, earthquakes, flooding, forest fires, blizzards, high winds and so on) will always exist, but we don’t have the control over them that we now have in preventing the careless, man-made disasters so prevalent in our past. Natural disasters cannot be regulated and are difficult, if not impossible, to contain. We can, however, arm ourselves with knowledge, familiarize ourselves with contingency plans, maintain adequate survival supplies and learn from past mistakes. Learn from our ancestors so that their struggles and terrible losses were not in vain. General George S. Patton said, Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable. We should remain ever-vigilant and be prepared—on both a personal and a public level—to handle potential disaster scenarios that could arise. Simply put, we should keep calm…but prep on.

1

EF5 TORNADO

PHILADELPHIA AND NORTHERN NEW YORK, 1845–1995

Northern New York is no stranger to devastating incidents involving wind. Strong winds have been the driving force behind our blizzards and nor’easters, our lake effect snows and our Great Lakes gales and squalls. And let’s not forget wind’s reckless complicity in the most destructive fires our region has experienced. But this story is primarily about tornadoes, wind shears and microbursts—atmospheric events in which wind, and wind alone, causes massive destruction and sometimes death.

On July 15, 1995, an unforgettable microburst killed five people, injured eleven and damaged almost 1 million acres of land, leveling over 100,000 acres of timber in the Adirondack Park alone. The derecho, as it was officially termed, reached wind speeds of up to 100 miles per hour on its deadly trek through Upstate New York. Prior to that was the Big Blowdown of 1950 with wind speeds that climbed to 100 miles per hour—certainly powerful enough to destroy or damage over 800,000 acres in the Adirondacks and leave thousands without power for two weeks. Only a handful of Jefferson County octogenarians and nonagenarians will personally recall the more isolated Philadelphia tornado of 1935 that leveled the Earl Drake farm and home, tragically killing his wife and daughter and injuring two others. Continuing back on the timeline, there was a mighty tornado in July 1856 that swept through Franklin County, claiming the life of one unfortunate soul. In the towns of Constable, Burke and Chateaugay, hundreds of buildings were moved from their foundations, unroofed or utterly destroyed. The New York Times of July 9, 1856, said the fearful tornado did an incalculable amount of damage, sweeping down forests, scattering fences, destroying all manner of buildings and other property, and leaving nothing but desolation in its track.

Rural tornado damage. Author’s collection.

There was one wind event, however, that set the bar for all others that would follow. They called it the Great Windfall. On September 20, 1845, an ominous tornado formed over Lake Ontario and tore through parts of Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Franklin and Essex Counties before finally crossing Lake Champlain and entering Vermont in a much-weakened state. Clifton town historian Mark Friden told me that meteorologists of today would likely have considered it a rare EF5—the most powerful tornado known to man on the widely used Enhanced Fujita scale—with wind speeds over two hundred miles per hour and the capability of producing incredible damage. The fact that the local population was sparse in the mid-1800s was a blessing for sure. There would have been a much greater loss of life had the tornado happened when the area became more populated years later. Yet it is also because of the paucity of population that firsthand accounts of the event were scarce, as were the number of local news sources operating in the area at that time. The Essex County Republican of September 27, 1845, said:

So far as we have learned, the ravages of the storm commenced at Union Falls, making a complete wreck of many of the buildings in that place, and for a distance…trees, fences, barns and houses were leveled with the ground.…The brick school house near the Travis forge in Peru was utterly demolished, and the brick dwelling of H.N. Peabody nearby was partially destroyed. We hear of two houses that were blown down over the heads of the inmates, and it is most extraordinary that no lives were lost.…

Mr. Rogers of Forksville was crossing the Little Ausable north of Peru village when the blow reached him, giving himself, horse and carriage a complete somersault into the river, scattering the plank of the bridge in every direction. By a remarkable providence no injury was done to Mr. Rogers or his team, beyond the unpleasant circumstances of a dunking in the mud of the creek.

In St. Lawrence County, ten thousand acres were left in ruin in the towns of Fowler and Edwards alone. The Watertown Jeffersonian of September 20, 1845, reported, In all this distance there is not a building, nor a tree of any description left standing—all were prostrated by its mighty force—leaving widespread ruin and desolation as evidence of its fearful power. Strangely enough, even though sixteen structures were swept away in the destruction, nobody was killed or even seriously injured in those towns. From Antwerp in Jefferson County, the tornado appeared to have traveled at about fifty miles per hour through St. Lawrence County. The Jeffersonian offered the following harrowing experiences endured that day:

Crossing the Oswegatchie, the next settlement in the line of the tempest was on the Pitcairn road, embracing ten buildings.…Mr. Brown had recently erected a 40 by 30 barn which he had filled with the products of his farm. This, with his house, was blown down and the contents scattered far and wide. Mr. Brown was taken up and carried 15 to 20 rods [around one hundred yards], unconscious of the moving power, and was severely bruised upon his head, shoulders and other parts of his body. When he struck the ground, he seized hold of a stump and by that means saved himself from further personal injury.

Child at a Writing Desk by Alexandre Antigna, circa 1887. Wikimedia Commons.

Freak northeast gale topples trees.

NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) Collection.

Incredibly, a wood-frame schoolhouse next to Brown’s property was moved entirely off its foundation, yet the teacher and students within remained unscathed.

The next house south of Mr. Brown was that of Mr. Leonard in which there were two women and five children. Hearing the noise of the tornado and seeing its approach, these also took refuge in the cellar. One of the women last descending was struck by the timbers of the house as it moved and rendered senseless, in which condition she remained nearly a day.

Next to Mr. Leonard’s stood another house—the name of the occupant not given—in which was a sick woman and a young child about three weeks old and a young woman named Kinney who was attending upon her. Frightened by the noise and the looks of the tempest as it approached, Miss Kinney threw herself upon another bed in the same room when the house was blown down, and one of the logs of which it was composed fell across the bed and Miss Kinney and held her fast. The sick woman immediately rose from her bed and by almost superhuman strength removed the log and thus saved the life of the young woman.

Near this latter house, in the street, was a man driving a yoke of oxen attached to a wagon laden with coal.…Two large trees were brought by the wind and laid across the wagon, crushing it without injury to the team or to the man, except the tearing of his clothes and slight scratches on his person. The team was so bound in by the trees and rubbish that it required several hours to extricate them, which was not effective until the Monday following.

The village of Malone in Franklin County also had its stories to tell. Many of the homes and barns there lost their roofs or were destroyed. In one fallen house, three small children were buried under debris, yet they miraculously survived unscathed. The windfall continued its path of destruction, reaching a new village and extensive iron works near Keeseville, Essex County, which it entirely destroyed. When the tornado finally died out, as they eventually do, a storm of tremendous hail followed, maiming cattle, pets and other critters exposed to the elements. The sheer size, strength, speed and scale of this tornado had never been seen before, nor since, in Northern New York. For this reason, historian Friden called it the granddaddy of them all.

2

WATERTOWN IN RUINS

WATERTOWN, 1849

As weary travelers and long-term tenants slumbered obliviously at the American Hotel on Court Street early one spring morning in 1849, a monster with a ravenous appetite had sprung into action below, intent on devouring everything in its path, save stone or mortar. In a frenzied state of insatiable hunger and impossible speed, it taunted its would-be dousers—the early Watertown volunteer firefighters summoned to defeat it—as if to say catch me, if you can. One can imagine the plight of the people, as they awakened one by one to the growing chorus of screams. Fire! Fire! The fire chief would have been evaluating the situation on horse and shouting orders through a speaking trumpet, but he could barely have been heard over the roar of the fire and panic in the streets. Many fled their homes, hotels and tenements in their nightclothes—the men and boys in nightshirts and caps, à la Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, the women and girls in modest, high-collared, white cotton nightgowns and sleep bonnets or kerchiefs. If time permitted, others would surely have attempted to change into their daytime clothing before joining those already in the streets. Regardless of what they were wearing, all undoubtedly shared the same horror as they watched the scene unfolding before them.

According to Watertown Daily Times reporter Chris Brock in his 2017 article about the fire department’s 200th anniversary, the Watertown Fire Department was created in 1817, at a time when every house in town was mandated to have two large buckets available at all times for each floor of the structure, in case fire erupted anywhere within the vicinity. When needed, these buckets would be passed out of every home and filled with water for those fighting the fires, which included all males over fourteen years of age. Men and boys, young and old, were required to head directly to all structure fires on horse or foot, or they could face ten days in jail, not to mention the shame of cowardice.

Early view of Watertown, late 1800s. Author’s collection.

In 1849, when the American Hotel fire began, a village water system was still a few years in the offing, so the primary source of water for firefighting was limited to natural spring water from the village’s public square. The tenacity and grit of the bucket brigade, while admirable and efficient under normal circumstances (such as a single-structure fire), was no match for the largest fire in Watertown’s early history. According to the Jeffersonian, Extra of May 13, 1849, the 3:00 a.m. fire was believed to have started in either a rear building of the hotel or at the back of L. Paddock’s adjoining store. The article, titled Great Conflagration, said:

At first the supposition prevailed that the fire was the work of an incendiary [device]; but we are happy to state, for the credit of our village and human nature, that it probably arose from the spontaneous combustion of some kind of chemicals stored by Mr. Druggist Camp, in Paddock’s back store.

Unidentified view of Boston fire aftermath, 1872, by Holton and Robinson. Wikimedia Commons.

A further explanation was added as a postscript at the end of that article:

It is thought the fire originated in the Woodhouse of the American, from several leaches which had the day before been set up. Old barrels with Stone Lime at the bottom and ashes rammed in on top. This might ignite, and probably