And at half past 12 o’clock that morning, the Springfield Daily News reported, enough things around the city began to fall to fill the pages of the next day’s edition.
“Two dark, heavy clouds were discovered coming up one from the southwest, and the other from the northwest,” the paper reported. When they joined, “a combined tornado, hurricane and a series of whirlwinds commenced operations” — operations that would rock the city of 7,000.
“In an instant of time,” the paper reported, the storm destroyed Mr. Gwyn’s home on the north side of Buck Creek not far from the Wittenberg College, helping in the process to spread the word.
“A little girl was blown through one of the windows about 50 feet,” the Daily News reported, “and finding she had a good start, she went up to the college and gave the boys the alarm.”
Apparently less active after her trauma was “a little child in bed (who was) blown bed and all, quite a distance from the house.
“Along the line of Buck Creek,” the paper added, “trees were twisted off, others were uprooted, and a general scene of confusion and disaster ensued.”
The storm
The paper reported the storm:
• “Despoiled of one corner and portion of the roof” of the creek-side home of dry goods merchant J.H. Lyday, when a tree split in two and fell on it.
• Blew a barn belonging to his neighbor and business partner J.F. Chorpening “20 or 30 feet and turned bottom side up, the ridge of the roof sticking into the ground.”
• “Twisted to pieces ... a long shed adjacent to Buck Creek bridge, on Limestone Street,” sparing “a portion of it in which a span of horses was sheltered.”
• Damaged many of the old native trees on the land of Lyday, professor of mathematics H.R. Geiger and Wittenberg College President Samuel Sprecher — along with valuable fruit trees on the Chorpening place.
The Daily News managed to capture some of the personal drama of the storm.
On the Urbana Road north of town, J.C. Gillet “had his shins barked” when the storm blew off a corner of his log house.
At Mr. K. Maclennan’s home on the west side of Limestone Street north of North Street, “a lady was in the second story putting down the windows when the storm struck ... and was frightened by the miscellaneous falling of the plastering, but was not injured.”
Strangest of all was the story of George W. Tiffany.
Having the new frame house in which he was living blown about 20 feet along Columbia Street, “Mr. Tiffany believes that he got out and ran toward the city in his shirt tail,” the paper said, “but he is not quite certain.”
Whether this led Tiffany to draw a gun on Thomas Henry days later in John Shulte’s grocery was for a judge and jury to sort out.
In the meantime, a doctor tended to the bullet wound Tiffany had put in his own hand.
The stirring of the storm did not disturb the sense of humor of Editor Clifton M. Nichols and his staff.
After noting that “a portion of the roof of the County Jail was blown off,” the paper reported that “a barn belonging to Dr. Buckingham was blown into the middle of next week. When that time comes, he hopes to find it.”
Although not intended to serve as the 1860 census, the news report touched on several city institutions through which the storm tracked:
• The African School, from which a rafter was blown.
• The Mason & Blakeney footbridge, which was destroyed.
• The Catholic Church (at the site of the current St. Raphael Church), where the steeple “swayed at least 10 feet,” according to a person who walked by it during the storm.
• Bricks from the Union Hall on the current Fountain Avenue just south of Main were blown into the next door building occupied by the Methodist Protestant Church and in which the post office was located.
• “The roof of Mr. Funk’s large, three-story building on the corner of Main and Centre (as it was spelled) streets was rolled and deposited on Centre Street.”
• “The old warehouse occupied by the Springfield, Mount Vernon and Pittsburgh Railroad Co. was mostly unroofed and otherwise injured.”
The paper said the storm’s width varied “from a dozen rods (a rod is 5½ yards) to a half mile.”
It estimated overall damage to the city at $20,000, “but we think it will not overreach that amount.” In country areas, it added, uncut grain was “prostrated,” already gathered bundles of wheat were scattered, fences were “extensively thrown down” and mills, dwelling-houses and barns “unroofed and otherwise damaged.”
With all that damage, the paper marveled that no one had been seriously hurt in “one of the heaviest storms ever known in this region of the country.”
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