OVERFLOWS OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER
It is frequently stated that the
Mississippi River annually overflows its banks, but statistics do not confirm
this statement.
Judge Joseph McGuire, one of Bolivar
County's earliest pioneers, personally examined the Spanish records at Vidalia,
Louisiana, just opposite Natchez, Mississippi, and states in a record that he
gave, a short time before his death, to the mother of J. V. Lobdell, of
Rosedale, that there have been many years in which the river remained within
its banks.
The Spanish records show high water
for 1770, 1784, 1790, 1798, 1804, 1809, 1811, 1823, and 1828. Apparently there
was no high water during the other years of the period from 1770 to 1828.
The history of the river for the year
1844 is exceptionally interesting. On the 10th of April of that year, the river
was out of its banks; on the 27th of the same month, it had fallen 12
feet, but it began rising again on the 1st of May and rose rapidly until it
reached the high water stage and never began to fall until the 14th of August.
In 1859, 1862, and 1865 the water was
very high, but there was no very high water for the many years from 1844 to
1858; and in 1829 and 1839 the river never even covered the bars.
Records of the early floods of the
Mississippi River are to be found in the "Report of the Mississippi
River" by Generals Humphreys and Abbott of the United States engineers.
The facts were collected from every available source and present surprising
information to those who suppose there were no extraordinary overflows from the
river in the period before levees and extensive wood cutting were known. Even
when there were few levees, and almost the entire country was open so that the
floods could flow over it without obstruction, the fact remains that the levees
of that early period were periodically swept away and the plantations
devastated. The fact remains, also, that from the earliest times, at irregular
intervals, the Mississippi Valley has been subject to excessive visitations of
water, and the same sort of thing goes on and will go on forever. There are
drought years and flood years, no science can foretell their coming, so they
must be endured to the best of human fortitude and met with all the courage and
skill possible. The floods are destructive in proportion to the population
affected. Some of the levees break, but others hold and protect great
interests. Although much is lost when a crevasse occurs, much is saved by the
levees which do not break.
In 1867 and 1874 the water was very
high, and the levees broke, flooding the county. From above, it is clear that
the river rises very high some years and remains within its banks or very
little over them, in others. Though the 1874 high water followed a very cold
winter, in 1882 the highest water ever known, up to that
time, followed a mild winter.
Of course,
these very high waters caused breaks in the small levees that were sufficient
to keep out the ordinary flood waters of the river during normal conditions,
but every few years terrific floods have come down the river, with most
disastrous consequences.
In 1882, the
entire line of levee in Bolivar County, about 85 miles, seemed to snap in a
hundred places in one night, during a terrible storm on the night of February
28th, and the whole county was under water.
There were
too many gaps in the levees to repair them all at once, and when a second big
rise in the river came during the summer, a second overflow resulted, and the
entire levee district south of Concordia was inundated for the second time in
one year, and this time growing crops were -ruined. In 1884, there was another
high water. The levee broke on what is known as the Hughes place, and although
closed by Major Helm, chief engineer of the levee board, and his able
assistant, Robert Somerville, it was too late to be of any great advantage to
the farmers. The river was high in 1885, 1886, and 1887, but no breaks occurred
in the levees. In 1890, another high water caused a break in the levee at
Catfish Point, resulting in the abandoning of all the territory known under
that name.
In 1897,
another overflow occurred as disastrous as that of 1882. The levee at the old
Miles McGehee Sunnywild plantation broke on the night of the 31st of March. The
river was in its banks on the 1st of March, but the rise each day thereafter
was appalling, being at the rate of a foot in 24 hours towards the latter part
of the month. An excerpt from the New Orleans Picayune of April 1, 1897,
says: "The flood in the Mississippi River surpasses everything of the sort
known since the government has made any systematic records and is the result of
an extraordinary succession of rainfall and storms. There had been no extremely
high water since 1893, but these extreme visitations are to be expected
sometimes: The notion that the floods have been aggravated by the confining of
the river by the levees is not supported by facts. Long before there were any
considerable sections of leveed lands in the Mississippi Valley, and when there
had been but little clearing off of the vast forest that once covered Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Pennsylvania and West Virginia,
the region which is responsible for the great floods in the Mississippi River,
there were seasons when the mighty waters covered the greater part of the
Mississippi Valley."
This
unparalleled flood came; and every effort known to the people was used to save
the levees - organized forces of every able-bodied man available worked on the levees
day and night. Walter Sillers was in charge of the levees from Waxhaw to Lake
Vermillion. Signals were used to notify the people where the dangerous places
developed, and the danger points seemed to be everywhere.
The Walter Sillers home
Excitement
was intense. Merchants scaffolded their goods above the height of the water
they expected to come in at any time, and in every home all household
furnishings were placed on these scaffolds. Many families left the country,
temporarily, for higher places, the men remaining to help on the levees. The
men of Rosedale patrolled the levee below and above the town, from Waxhaw, 4
miles above, to Riverton, 4 miles to the south, riding by day, when any danger
could be seen from horseback, and walking at night, carrying lanterns to watch
every foot of the way. Many alarms were given before the end came. The signals
of danger were: "If the Methodist Church bell rings, the danger is south,
and help is needed there; if the Episcopal Church bell rings, all must go
north. If both bells ring together, the levee is broken somewhere, so save
yourselves."
Both bells
rang at about 9 o'clock, P. M., on the 31st of March. The scene in Rosedale was
indescribable and was the same everywhere in the path of the water. The stir
and tumult of the frightened people trying to save their lives and property
from the rush of water; the shouts of men, neighing of horses, lowing of
cattle, barking of dogs, cackling and crowing of chickens in alarm, the nailing
and hammering of axe and hammer, -all suddenly came upon the stillness of the
night and proved to be an experience seldom equalled in ordinary life.
The terror
and excitement of the danger to life and property, the "unknown
quantity" in this danger, as well as the terrible certainty of it, the
helplessness of the people who were not prepared, and the desperate effort to
save what they could can never be understood by those who did not see and hear
it; it can only be likened to the panic caused by the approach of the invading
enemy in times of war. This break in the levee was 8 miles above the town of
Rosedale. The water reached the town, from every direction, it seemed, about 7
A. M. the next day. Many people went out to see it come in - that wall of cold,
muddy water rushing down over the land, covering everything as it came,
carrying away all fences and small buildings. Before they could finish putting
their possessions safely out of the reach of the water, these same people were
wading knee-deep in it in their homes.
Only three
homes in Rosedale escaped the flood. Every other house had from three inches to
five feet of water. In the two-story homes the families lived in the second
story, fastening their boats in the lower hall. The writer's home was one of the
three into which the water did not come, and we had many guests who were not so
fortunate, a total of 36 in our household. It was six weeks before the water
even began to fall, and June before it was out of the town.
The people
of the Delta are courageous and high-spirited, and they began to enjoy the
novelty of our new Venice. They procured
every kind of boat or water craft that could be found,
and the young people rowed and serenaded in the moonlight, danced, had swimming
parties, and went to church in the courthouse on Sunday. Merchants sold goods
from their scaffolds to customers in skiffs inside the store buildings. The
whole town turned out to meet the Kate Adams, to see new faces and buy
supplies-anything from whiskey to bananas.
To cleanse the buildings of the mud
and silt as the water receded was a strenuous job, requiring skill, patience,
and work. Much sickness attended the flood and followed it, with loss of
property of all kinds, from fences to live stock. Fortunately, an ideal cotton
season followed the 1897 overflow, and a fine crop of cotton was made.
The floods of 1912 and 1913 were even
more exciting and destructive than those of 1897. The levees were higher,
larger, and stronger, but the flood tide was also many feet higher. The water
was 18 inches higher than the levee all along the Rosedale front, and was kept
back by a double line of earth-filled sacks laid on the top of the levee. A man
in a skiff in the river, at its highest, was on a level with the second story
of the courthouse; this means that there was a solid wall of water against the
levees more than 20 feet high. A break anywhere on this front would have swept
the town away in less than an hour. Constant and heroic work saved this levee,
and miles and miles of similar work was done everywhere on the levee line.
' Yet on April 17, at 9 P. M., the Vermillion Lake levee gave
way and nine persons were drowned in the direct path of the rushing torrent of
water. The force of the current through a break in the levees of the present
day is terrific. Where this break of 1912 occurred, there is now a body of
water from 50 to 100 feet deep over an area of 83 acres. These currents carry
and deposit quantities of sand over the lands adjacent to the break, and these
lands become a veritable Desert of Sahara.
The rescue of the people marooned on
the tops of the houses and in the trees, some in the very face of the current,
was a dangerous and risky undertaking. Hundreds of Negroes were brought to the
levee for safety, the levee being the only land anywhere in sight, and tents
were provided for them. These carefree people were soon content in their new
condition, with no work to do and being fed by owners of the plantations on
which they lived. They were provided with clothing and other necessities by the
white people and were as happy as children.
Great loss of stock of all kinds was general; all fences
were gone and also all the houses directly in the path of the water. The
antebellum home of General Charles Clark was within a mile of this break, and
the current swept away the foundation, so it had to be torn down; not a vestige
of it remains. There was no water in the town of Rosedale from this break
12 miles below, although it was in sight of the town. A fairly good season followed this overflow, with medium crops. The weather was very bad and wet in the fall,
while work was being done on the line of new levee made necessary
by
the break on Lake Vermillion. Progress on it was very slow. A rise in the river
in January found a gap of a few hundred yards still incomplete; the water came
through this gap, which widened as the water rose, and soon the country was
overflowed again.
In 1916 the
water was higher than in 1912, but no breaks occurred. In 1922, we had the
highest floodtide in Bolivar County ever known, to that time, and only military
discipline and limitless man-power and money averted an overwhelming disaster
in the lower part of the county, at the old Stop Landing1 and for
three miles above. A break in the levees at that time would have driven the labor
that had been left to us from the negro exodus and practically depopulated the
greater part of the district.
The fight
won against the great water of 1922 demonstrates that all that is required to
give immunity from overflow to this Delta is men and money and the executive
ability to use them intelligently.
The supreme
effort of the people of the Delta should be made to secure an appropriation
sufficient to build these levees to a grade and standard that will resist any
flood that comes down the river and end forever the dangers from overflow and
its consequent destruction of life and property.
1As
early as 1879 this landing was known as Stop Landing. It took its name from the
fact that it was not a regular landing, the boats had to be flagged. Mound
Landing was the regular landing for that vicinity.
The following reminiscences of fights
against "Ole Man River" are the result of a morning's conversation with
Mr. Charles B. Allen, Sr., Mr. W. J. Shackleford, and Mr. Dutch Naderhoff.
These three gentlemen probably know first hand as much about high water fights,
levee construction, and the ways of the river as any triumvirate in the Mississippi
Valley. Mr. Allen, who came to the
county in 1892, was employed by U. S. Engineers until 1933
and
either aided or was in charge of every fight during those years; Mr.
Shackleford came in 1893 and likewise worked with the engineering department,
being chief engineer of the Mississippi Levee Board (1913). Mr. Naderhoff came
in 1903 and was a timber man, whose intimate knowledge of the river's ways made
him invaluable in high water fights. There is no sequence or order to these
stories, for men do not reminisce in an orderly fashion; but the eternal
struggle for the land, the heroic quality in those fighters, and the ever
present humor ate apparent to all who read.
The levees are divided up into one
thousand feet stations, with two inch pipes driven into the ground, serving as
markers. The numbers of the stations are marked on the pipes, and numbering
begins at the Coahoma County line and goes south.2 During a high
water fight, men were assigned a certain number of stations with walking guards
every mile. These guards carried a lantern, gun, and shovel. Each guard walked
back and forth, and met other guards to report conditions on their stretch.
These man-to-man verbal reports were the only means of communication. To show
the speed with which such words traveled, one night a slough developed at
Riverton and Mr. Allen heard at his headquarters at Bolivar, a distance. of
about twenty-five miles, that the levee had broken. He and his assistant, Mr.
Eugene Williams, quickly saddled their horses and rode toward Riverton. A few
miles up the levee, by the light of the moon, they saw a very large
negro woman crossing a barrow pit at the base of the levee. The pit was about
three feet deep and filled with water from recent rains. The old woman weighed
about two hundred pounds, had a large bundle balanced on her head, and her
skirt billowed around her like a huge umbrella. "Where's the break,
Auntie?", jocularly called Mr. Williams. "Ah don't rightly know, Mr.
Gene, but dis water am a risin' fast."
Rosedale was last under water in 1897.
There were three breaks in the levees within thirty-six hours, below Gunnison,
Stop Landing, mid at the foot of Lake Bolivar. The levees were only about ten
feet high, but water was deep enough for a small steamboat to travel over the
levee of picket fences. This boat was owned by Mr. Jet Dent who made regular
trips on Bogue Phalia.
About forty men (bachelors and
temporary widowers), lived upstairs in the courthouse. Frank Wingfield was
elected mess' steward of the group. Due to the shortage of fresh food, a strong
right arm with a heavy punch, was necessary to insure satisfaction with his
meals. Boats were moored to a wharf built out from the, front door. One night, Hubert Wilson returning from a night visit, mistook
the court house shadow for the wharf, and stepped out in water over his head.
2The
Mississippi Levee District begins at Coahoma County on the north and ends above
Vicksburg at the south.
Mr. Will Stone
had a fox terrier named Tramp. Once as he and Tramp were rowing into the wharf,
Tramp jumped a little too soon, missed the boards and came up under the wharf.
Mr. Stone standing up and pointing to the bubbles coming from under the planks,
shouted, "Yes, by God, there he goes, there he goes." Tramp finally
emerged from under the wharf and lived to a ripe old age.
A long
string of boats tied one to the other, was a sign that the regular evening
poker game had commenced and all interested were silently invited to hitch on
and come in.
The city
park (then an open cow pasture) was the town swimming pool. Two ladies, Mrs.
Fred Clark and her stepdaughter Fannie, decided they would learn in their front
yard before venturing into the town hole, so arrayed in home-made swimming
suits, they went forth into the water (about four feet deep). Soon down the
street came a skiff, paddled by two young townsmen, Will Stone and Charlie
Allen. They decided to watch the ladies emerge from the water so they tied up
to the fence top and proceeded to wait. The ladies, much too bashful to come
out, were forced to stay submerged until darkness could protect them.
Dr. Harris would not learn to row a boat, so anyone needing
his services was forced to go for him and carry him back home.
Anita Martin lost
her diamond ring in swimming. She stuck a pole up to mark the spot and after
the water receded found her ring.
There was always the
threat that people from Arkansas would steal across the river at night and cut
the Mississippi levees in order to save their own land. Many were the rumors of
encounters with such scoundrels. John Kirk, a youngster with an eye to a good
joke, once took chicken blood and scattered it over the levee in front of his
house, then told the guard there must have been a desperate fight with someone
trying to cut the levee. The blood was sent to Rosedale for analysis, but Dr.
Harris said there was no way to distinguish human blood-so many believed the
lad's wild tale.
The early
cemeteries were on Indian mounds, in order that the graves would be safe from
river currents. When little Anna Sillers died, she was carried to Glenwood
Mound, seven miles below Rosedale. The water had forced the early blossoming of
many flowers, so the funeral procession was a long line of rowboats, many of
them filled with flowers. The swish of the oars in the water was the only sound
as that long row of boats accompanied the child to her final resting place.
It was the custom during every high
water to drive iron spikes into some large tree close to the levee, just level
with the surface of the
water.
The dates were marked on them. Often these old spikes are seen in trees and
they are very destructive to a saw when encountered in felled timber. Once Mr.
Allen and his negro rodsman Ben Williams, were driving these spikes, going from
tree to tree in an open skiff. Ben was mortally afraid of snakes and just as
they stopped under a tree a Moccasin fell from the lower branch into the middle
of the boat. Ben, oar in hand, began to back towards the end of the boat.
Somehow he caught his foot and toppled over backwards into fifteen feet of
water. Luckily, the snake crawled out and Ben crawled in as fast as possible.
The break
below Beulah in 1912 began with a boil on the backside of a barrow pit, one
hundred and fifty feet from the toe of the levee. The boil was hooped, but the
pressure was too great, and the water broke out between the boil and the levee.
This was likewise hooped, but unsuccessfully, and a boil finally broke at the
very toe, the banquette fell in, and the levee broke, on April seventeenth.
A boil is a
stream of water that comes out of the ground like a spring. The secret of
controlling it is to lay first brush from trees, then sacks of dirt on the
brush, to form a wall around it, and allow the water to fill the space. When
the pressure is equalized the flow stops, but the water must be drained off the
levee and not allowed to saturate the ground. Ditches are cut down the side of
the levee to drain the water. This is the reason that levee guards carry
shovels. Often a soggy levee, when ditches are cut will become completely dry
in the spaces between the drains.
A clear boil
is harmless and often workers drink from it for it has been filtered. When a
boil is throwing up sand or mud it is dangerous, for it shows wash and must be
hooped. It is so essential that the men in charge know how to do these things.
Some of the men who were excellent help during such times were: Charlie Gibson,
H. C. Lenoir, Pat Specter, Lee Payne, J. E. Walters, Walter Sillers, Sr., Henry
McGowen, Lyn Arnold, B. J. Young, James West and many others.
It was
always necessary to have extra labor, and this was brought in from nearby
places, the east side of the county, and sometimes as far east as Sunflower
County. On Easter Sunday 1912, there were seventeen hundred men working on the
levees from Beulah to Prentiss Crossing, a distance of six miles.
One group of
men from the east side of the county received in every mail a shoebox,
carefully wrapped. The foreman, who gave out the mail, became curious, and so
one day he did not deliver the box, but opened it instead. It contained a quart
of Four Roses Whiskey, at that time the most expensive of brands. The foreman
carefully substituted a bottle of Sunny Brook, and thereafter the "higher
ones" enjoyed good liquor and no doubt the main liners raged at the
treachery of folks back home.
Sacks are an
important article in high water fights. A hundred pound sugar sack is the ideal
size, for it can be filled with dirt and easily handled. It is small enough to
fit closely in the formation of a wall. Gunny sacks are sometimes used, though
they are unsuitable. Sacks were very scarce in early days. Mr. Sillers was
issued only eighty-two for his stretch of levee in 1882. In later fights, as in
1927, thousands of sacks were assigned each foreman. Sacks were used both to
hoop boils and to top low levees. In 1912, the levees had an average of
eighteen inches of sacks along their whole length. In 1927, eight feet of water
was kept back at Neblett's by sacks. Sometimes two rows of planks were put up
about two feet apart, and loose dirt dumped in between. The dirt would be
hauled up the side of the levee by the wheelbarrow or scraper, pulled by a
mule, or it would be dumped from barges on the river side. On occasions when
every moment was precious, dirt was scraped off the crown of the levee. Where
this was done evenly, and no deep holes were made, no damage resulted. At
exposed points where the waves washed the levees, walls of planks were built,
extending from just below the water level, to two or three feet above the
water.
While
Rosedale was not inundated in 1912, many families left town. The A. T. Halls
lived on the steamer Kate Adams and twice a week came back to greet friends,
see about their chickens, and attend to other such duties. Many donations were
sent in through the Red Cross for the flood sufferers. One bighearted church
society in Florida sent a wooden barrel full of men's detachable collars, all
nicely cleaned and starched.
When the
contractors began to build the new levee across the 1912 Beulah crevasse, fate
seemed determined to prevent them. Rain fell almost continuously from November
until March. When the January rise came, there were five hundred feet of
uncompleted levee, one hundred feet of which had no material at all. The
engineers built a series of three walls of sacks across this hundred feet, the
river line sixteen feet high, the next line twelve feet high and the third line
eight feet high. Nine steamboats were employed to haul barges of dirt to fill
these sacks. The spaces between the lines of sacks were pumped full of water.
All this was
to no avail for when the river rose that January, it washed out the sacks and
eight hundred feet of the partly completed levee. Water was coming again
through the same crevasse and over the same land. The engineers decided to fill
the gap with rocks, so tracks were run down the banquette and on piling driven
in the crevasse. Thousands of cars of "foreign" rock (there is no
native rock in the Delta) were dumped in the opening. The spring rise in March
found the rock levee completed, and water only trickled through the crevices.
Today that rock is in the body of the levee, for later it was just covered with
sod. Some carloads overturned and the Vardaman house in Rosedale is built from
that spilled stone.
The 1927 break was at Mound's Landing, near Scott, April 21, at
seven A.M. and was above the banquette. Always before a break had meant the
fall of the river at points just north of the break, but so vast was the amount
of water in Ole Man River this year, that it continued to rise in spite of the
fact that millions of cubic feet of water were pouring through the break. On
that same afternoon the levees broke on the Arkansas River at Medford and
Pendleton, places almost opposite the break. Had it not been for these two
breaks, the levee at Waxhaw would undoubtedly have gone out and Mississippi
would have had thousands of additional acres inundated.
Ole Man
River is a giant that slumbers-and man never knows when he will awake. Now,
with the line of unbroken levees, twenty five to thirty feet high, three
hundred feet at the base and twenty-five feet at the crown, people think he is
safely harnessed. The Ohio, Missouri, Tennessee, St. Francis, Red, White, and
Arkansas Rivers have never been at flood stage at the same time. If they should
be, no man knows the outcome. Men can do only as men have done in the past-pit
their wits and their strength against the river, and put their faith in God.
My first experience
with floods was in 1922. The water that year came down the river late, and the
spring flood made after a tentative slight retreat, a beautiful connection with
the "June Rise." For weeks and weeks that year the levees were soaked
and seeping water. The seed were in the ground, and the cotton was coming up.
We were anxious; on this delta plantation the seed were of a new variety, fine,
and not to be replaced. After it became apparent that there was a river fight
on our hands, the peaceful agricultural side was, overnight, transformed by the
regimentation necessary to the occupation of an army. For weeks and weeks the
great trucks of the Engineer Corps thundered by. The militia guarded not only
the levees but the roads leading there so that there might be gangway for the
men and provisions going up to the front in a steady stream.
I made up my mind that I would stay as
long as the levee did and that when it went, I would go, too. I packed my
trunk, disposed of my valuables, stacked my books on high shelves, and for six
weeks that spring listened to the telephones. After a few weeks of listening I
could tell by the sound of the ring what the news was. I listened to the boats
on the river. Although they were at least three miles away, they were riding above
the level of land and their deep guttural calls sounded disquietly close and so
ominous. It behooves one to listen to the boats when the levee is threatened,
for by pre-arranged signal, if the levee goes, the
"quarterboat" will sound the alarm. Well, we "sweated it
out" in 1922, call that term vulgar or literal, as you will. It was quite
thrilling when it was all over; and we were buoy�ant and proud. The
government, realizing what a close squeak we had, began building up the levees;
and when we saw all the scrapers and the monstrous machines at work, we thanked
God that the next time we had a high river we would have a good levee as well.
Then in October, 1926, the river was
out of its banks. But that was nothing. Only it stayed out. When I, with my
little family, arrived at the station the day before Christmas on our way to
Grandmother's for the holidays, we were told that the track had been washed
away by the heavy rains of the previous night in the local watersheds, and that
there would be no trains that day. The next day was no better; and when,
finally, the railroad officials could give us some hope that the tracks would
be ready soon, there was another downpour and more tracks went out.
In the winter of 1927 came torrential
rains, and a little later men began to say to me that we would have a river on
our hands, surely in the spring; and so we did. There was the regular and
familiar routine of posting guards, sacking boils, sending laborers to build up
the top of the levee with sand bags. The water kept coming, and suddenly, new
levees or not, we were in peril again. There was that ominous sound of boats
riding cautiously twenty feet above the land level, feeling their way slowly,
sounding so close. The telephones were all hooked up and ringing day and night.
My whole house shook when the trucks laden with men or provisions went
thundering by. Relations from spots high and dry besought me to flee with the
young and innocent, two small sons whom I had acquired since 1922. One neighbor
did go with her baby, but she explained very carefully that she was just going
on a visit anyway. The rest of us prepared, like the trees, to stand our
ground.
In 1927, although the river had been full a long time and
we were not ignorant of the danger, sudden, tremendous rains in all the close
watersheds wrecked us almost before we knew it. I count such things by
sleepless nights. In 1922 there were weeks of them, and at the end all was
well; in 1927, on the eve of disaster, I did not lose more than a couple of
nights' sleep. After the first restless night, I had my large trunks packed,
and got down the handbags; we kept the car full of gasoline. The next day the
man I had packing things up seemed nervous, and I let him go when the heaviest
work was done. The cook came in, walling the whites of her eyes and saying that
little bayou back other house was "jest risin'." I seemed unable to
get settled intelligently at anything. I thought if I could have a rod high up across the top of my dressing room our clothes would be safe,
and at the same
time,
we could use them conveniently. But I did not have a bit of luck with that
little piece of carpentry. Not a nail would go all the way through the tough
old board; everyone turned over just as I would get to the point of hoping. It
was dispiriting. I gave it up.
There were
clouds and wind; it looked like rain, and it was turning cold. I decided to drive to Greenville and get a raincoat for my
husband who was on the levee. I found all the
raincoats in Greenville sold out except one voluminous slicker designed for
wear on horseback. When I got nearly home, gusts of cold rain began to
blow. I turned off and took the raincoat directly to the levee. That normally deserted
spot was a turmoil of activity; desperate efforts were being made to repair a
sub-levee that had just given way. Tugs and barges were maneuvering about with
workmen, willow-mats, and sacks. I looked in astonishment at a man I knew, in
charge of the sector. I thought he must be drunk; his face was flushed and he
was talking rapidly and looked so distraught that I couldn't think what else
could be the matter with him. It wasn't drink, of course.
My husband
was coming off duty, so I brought him home. I also recognized and picked up an
ancient darkey, "Senior Deacon" Wash Wray. He was too old to work on
the levee, but he had been out to see. He clambered into the car and sat down
heavily. "I've been through every overflow since the Civil War," he
said, "and I am plumb wore out with it." We came on home but felt
restless and started over to Content, where, it was rumored, the situation was
desperate and the levee might go at any time. Water was up to the floor of the
bridge over Lake Bolivar, and washed in spray across as the gusts of wind swept
down the lake. Our car in those days was an open one, and we were wet with the
spray and with the fine cold rain that began to fall. We turned back and came
home. I put the children to bed; the telephone rang incessantly. The railroad
officials were asked to place box cars on the sidings in the morning to take
people out, in case anything happened.
That was a
dreadful night for those working on Content; the rain began to fall in earnest
with the coming of night, and the wind to blow in gusts. There is nothing like
that wind and rain in the darkness to take the heart out of people who have a
levee, already sopping wet, on their minds. Every blow sends the waves over,
while the river rises every hour. On such nights we know that anything may
happen. That night the river was rising so rapidly and the rain and wind
blowing so terribly that the workers building up the top of the levee had to
place their sand-bags on the parapet and kneel on the ones just placed to hold
them until others could be put into position these, in turn, to be held from
washing away until their fellows were in place, and so on interminably all
night long. We went through the motions of bed, but I listened to the
wind and the sheets of rain.
At daylight we were up, and my husband
was off to the levee. The smell of doom was in the air. I started to the office
to put my silver in the vault and to get some money. It was too late. On the
way I had word that the levee had gone - yes, already gone! Not at Content
north of us, but slightly to the south of us. What to do? We had our retreat
mapped out in case the trouble came from Content, north of us, but the break
slightly to the south caught us unprepared. Circumstances had altered, but the
general theory of action was just the same: we turned tail and fled. The silver
was pushed over and the rear of the car accommodated the one-legged
washerwoman, who simply detached the cord to her iron and put on her shoe and
came along, and the black cook came too. Cooks were hard to get in those days,
and, next after my children, I proposed to save my cook. A friend took my two
small sons with her in her sedan, and we were off. The highway was at the
moment abnormally deserted; the roadside ditches were brimming full with the
torrents of rain that had fallen the night before, and more rain threatened to
fall again at any moment. Water was flowing over the road in many places, with
no sign to tell whether or not it had been washed out underneath. We did not
stop, only we went slowly through those places.
For one hundred and fifty miles up the
riverside we fled. When I caught sight of the hills below Memphis, I drew a
long breath. But I drew it too soon. Up in the hills the streams were washing
over the roads and over the bridges up to the running boards of the cars. Eight
inches of rain had fallen there in the night. If water is pouring over a
bridge, one feels even less certain of the bridge than of a road if it is
merely running over there. Guards helped us over the worst places. Our cars
were the last to enter Memphis over that highway that day. Later motorists had
to have their cars loaded on railway flats and taken in.
Being a refugee is not so bad after it
is over. We fell into the arms of my sister in Memphis as if we had actually
been snatched from the brink of a watery grave. We told our story to
spell-bound audiences. A few moments after we arrived, someone in the apartment
house called my sister out, and when she returned, her face was beaming, and
her arms were piled with all sorts of clothes. My brother sent me a thrilling
check. That was the reaction, apparently, of every man, woman, and child in the
whole United States. Even the porter on the train leaving Memphis looked as if
he had just as soon not have the dollar I gave him. It was all very warming.
In the meanwhile, back home, at Scott, it was taking the
water several hours to get, by way of the low places, into the village,
although those who remained could see it across the field, three miles away
flowing over the levee. There was time to get many things done; my husband put his
seed
out of harm, many of the animals were removed from danger, tenants warned. I think
those left behind had almost got to thinking that after all a flood was a
slow-moving, manageable sort of affair, when, all at once, toward the middle of
the afternoon, the low places were filled, the bulk of the levee worn out, and
the torrent was swirling everywhere. A foreman with a drove of mules realized
that he was too late to get them out; the bookkeeper, carrying his last armful
of records, had to cling to the wall to keep from being swept off his feet; the
telephone girl was up to her waist in water. What had not already been done,
could no longer be done. Upstairs, everywhere was filled with people. The man
in charge finally abandoned the weak levee at Content. There was no longer
anybody to kneel on bags of dirt to build up the top, and no use. That night a
huge corn crib, on whose upper floor Negroes had taken refuge, burned to the
water's edge, and again the poor darkies had to take to boats. Weary men, and a
few women, watched the flames from their refuges half a mile away.
The break
was on Thursday. The water continued to rise all of Friday and Saturday, very
slowly, toward the end. The home of Mr. Fox, the general manager of the
plantation, is on the highest ground. It got into his house on Sunday morning,
a dampness here and there on the floor. That night, as he was reading in his
living room about midnight, he saw a little trickle creep under the door. It
sought out the low places, and ran in a little stream under the sofa. He closed
his book, picked up his rubber boots, and, joining the heterogeneous company
already asleep upstairs, wondered what the morning would bring forth. The next
morning there was no more on the floor than that same little trickle. The
utmost watermark had been set.
After
a little the water began to go down quite thrillingly, and it appeared that in
a few weeks we would all be home again. The peach trees, waist deep in water,
ripened their fruit; passers-by in motor boats along the highway smelled the
gardenias in my garden, and, turning aside, followed the delicious odor until
they found them and picked the blossoms from the tops of the bushes. After that
a few high spots of land came out" and there was talk of planting' cotton.
Talk was all, however. Word came down the river of the "June Rise,"
and then the June Rise itself covered everything again. The peach trees died,
the food gave out, and the stove wood was all washed away. Everybody left who
could, whether he had anywhere to go or not. During those weeks until the
middle of July, while the water was slowly rising again, and even more slowly
receding, those of us elsewhere, as well as those present, savored the
"hope deferred that maketh the heart sick."
After having been away nearly three
months, my small sons and I came in on the second train to run. That train only
made it as far as Scott;
it was many weeks before it got all the way to
Greenville, sixteen miles farther. We were happy! As we arrived, the station
was milling with white and black, all glad to see each other. The one-legged
washerwoman was on the same train that we were; the cook was already on hand. A
few battered looking friends, who had been in and out all during the water,
greeted us warmly, but seemed somehow not to feel the tremendous enthusiasm
with which we were brimming. The road to our cottage was gone, but one could
tell where it had been. There were great drifts of sand, and we had to clamber
over what had once been a forest tree, its trunk still strong and sound, but
stripped of branches, and only stumps of its greatest roots left. I looked
across the field toward the break and saw where the trees stopped abruptly on
each side. I shuddered and thought of the two boys whose boat had been capsized
while they were trying to get through the crevasse to help with the rescue
work. They managed to reach another boat, which in its turn was swept into the
torrent. They got into a tree somehow and it served them until rescue came. The
large highway bridge across Deer Creek was not entirely gone. In fact, it was
resting on the water, and just how much was gone would not be determined until
the water went down. It had a terrible sag at one end. A great cable supported
it somewhat, and a board or two had been put where the flooring was entirely
gone. As a foot passage only, it was precarious enough for a nervous woman and
two children.
I cannot think now what we ate those first weeks before
regular train service was established; I remember cabbage all right, and that
the youngsters did not turn a hair at condensed milk, for which amiability I
praised God. There were no vegetables; the peach trees were dead. We had two
ancient pear trees, the remnant of what had been a large mixed orchard, all the
other trees being dead from floods long gone by and all but forgotten. There
are small groups of old pear trees all over this delta country; I look at them:
they are pear trees, and something more, to me. Our two bore a marvelous crop
that August; we must have gathered forty bushels from them, and we ate, and our
neighbors ate, as long as they lasted. We started planting a garden before the
ground was dry. The vegetables came up overnight, and grew by leaps and bounds,
but they could not leap and bound fast enough to get ahead of the innumerable,
voracious insects that swarmed and devoured them overnight. I can see now the
cracks in the tomatoes that came from having to cover them white with poison to
kill the worms. There were strange and astonishing looking bugs as well as all
we had met before. I found one worm on a gardenia bush that had feathers. I
sent a specimen to a government entomologist down in Louisiana, a zealous
gentleman who, several months before, had refused to be
drawn from his work by reports of waters bearing down on him. When kind friends
moved
his paraphernalia all but from under him, he indignantly charged them with
interfering unnecessarily with scientific investigation. Well, even he had
never seen a worm with feathers before. We battled with the pests. One day,
exhausted by apparently fruitless efforts, I came in and sat down. I thought I
would just have to give up, that there was no use trying to raise anything to
eat. The very next morning matters began to improve. The pests seemed to give
up, and things began to grow.
Strange
plants came up - a buckwheat from some colder climate, and wild marsh iris. A
pumpkin vine came up by my back door, quite of its own accord, grew with
astonishing rapidity to cover half of the back yard, and bore the most
extraordinary number of enormous pumpkins. All the hedges and fence rows were
piled with driftwood, and it was pleasant to go out on autumn afternoons and
gather the bleached and polished wood for our inland hearth.
Then there
was the fishing. Some of the boys took motor boats and floated a piece of the
washed-away lake bridge down into the creek and fastened and tied it there. It
was quite wide and, if you do not care what you say, safe enough to fish from,
floating there on the water. With the highways all gone, there was nowhere to
go; there was nothing to speak of to keep house with, or in, and how we did
fish! Young and old wet their lines, and young and old filled their baskets. We
floated, enjoying the cool and delightful breezes, and we were gay and
carefree. We congregated there every afternoon. Although we knew people who,
long after things were more or less back to normal, still cherished a poisonous
bitterness, we who had been on the front line and had contested every inch of
the way with the river, with all the strength we had and some we could not well
spare, felt that we had all done the best we could.
As soon as things were pretty
generally dry we began to drive about to see what changes had taken place and
to look for our pointer pup. We knew he had been seen at the camps on the
levee. Afternoons we drove for miles and stopped and called his name ever so
often. Where the force of the current had been strongest, it was as if we were
driving along the seashore: there were the sandy beach, the little bays and
inlets where the water stood, and in which numberless long-legged white and
blue cranes fished. A drove of pelicans, great white birds, hundreds of them,
seven feet of wing spread, came and stayed a month or so-the fishing was so
good, I guess. One day we saw a little pointer trotting along the top of the
levee, a quarter of a mile away, perhaps. We did not think it could be
"George Paine,' but we called anyway. The little animal was galvanized
into instant attention, turned in our direction, and came bounding across the
fields. I jumped out of the car to welcome him, but he did not notice me. He
just
leaped into the car and began to lick the two little boys
from head to foot - and they licked back.
It was
months after we had returned before the power lines were repaired, and we had electric
lights again. It is not so dark in the country even when the moon is not
shining. Toward evening we would have our supper and sit on the porch watching
the sunset across the quiet and placid water of Lake Bolivar. It had been
filled up by successive floods, and had long since renounced the turbulent days
of its youth; we could hardly believe that it had ever been an arm of the
river. Tall cypress trees bordered it, lush water grass grew, waist high,
everywhere the birds sang as they do in spots remote from civilization.
Sometimes a negro boy went by in the dusk whistling a sweet and minor melody.
The singing of darkies, at work and at leisure, celebrated in legend, has all
but disappeared from Southern plantations; but they sang those months immediately
after the flood as they must have done in the days gone by before they had
automobiles, store-bought clothes, and "standards of living." Of
course, I understand that the "standards" must be maintained, but it
is a pity about the singing.
Before the water
was gone, men in boats surveyed the right of way and decided where the new
levee should go. As soon as possible, great dredges pumped sand and closed the
break. All the old levees were ordered enlarged and built up. Those enormous
mounds of earth do, when the river is meandering along its bed, look absolutely
impregnable. Men say we will never have another major flood in this valley, but
when the little streams of seep water flow swift and clear on the land side of
the levee, and the pump wells become overflowing, and the morning paper is full
of accounts of heavy rains and overflows in the tributary watershed, then the
old anxiety catches one at night, like a half-forgotten neuritis, and he does
not rest well.
When I first
came to Mississippi, September 10, 1900, to visit my uncle, Mr. J. B. Bond of
Beulah, people were still talking of the overflow of 1897; and everywhere, near
bayous and streams, were the high water marks of that deluge on trees and houses.
In 1903 we had a strenuous high water
fight. I had married Mr. Dickerson, and we were living at Malvina, where he
managed several small farms for Mr. Charles Scott. We had heard so many reports
of the high water that we went over to Beulah one Sunday to observe for
ourselves. I was terrified to see the great waves, driven before a high wind,
washing logs over the top of the levee; and the pumps all over the town
spouting streams of water
like fountains, because of the terrific
pressure. But the levee held.
The next scare came in 1912, when the
levee broke near Lake Vermillion. We were living at Scott then, and, though a
great expanse of the country was flooded, the only water we saw was in the low
places and where Deer Creek backed up into Lake Bolivar.
Though I had heard much overflow talk,
I was never in one before the spring of 1927. The fall and winter preceding
were rainy. Downpours were continuous; bayous, swamps, and ditches were flooded
all winter; we began to hear of the alarming rise of the Ohio, and of levees
crumbling all the way dawn the river; while men, bath white and black, were
trying to build up the levee in the law places with sandbags. By April there
was little hope that a flood could be averted. By then the question was not
whether the levee would break or not, but when and where.
On Sunday, while we were attending
services at the church, a man came to the door and announced: "All men and
their Negroes are wanted at Lake Vermillion at once." Instantly all the
men left the church-and such a roaring of engines as the cars started! Each man
collected his Negroes, took them to the levee, and they worked all night in the
rain. The next day the telephones were ringing to report, "Professor Fox
wants all the men he can get at Eutah." Then someone was calling for
"all the men you can send to Stop Landing and to Neblett's." The men
all came in that night wet, bedraggled, and exhausted, with the rain still
falling in torrents.
The next morning at breakfast time the
telephones were ringing again, "Send men - Send men," while we were
trying to plan same way to get them to the levee - not an easy matter, since
the roads were all muck and mire, difficult for mules to cross, and impossible
for cars. None of us had slept, and we were all filled with nervous dread. For
days we had been building boats, and moving hay and corn to high places. It was
almost a relief when the phone rang again, to report that the levee had broken
below Scott.
There was so much to do we did not
know where to begin. While our place, Prairie Plantation, and Mr. Faunt
Biscoe’s place, Compromise, had never been under water, we were afraid to risk
our stock there, as the country was already overflowed with rain water; so Mr.
Dickerson and the Negroes took our mules to the levee. Then they went to Monte
Christo and the Geise place to see that the Negroes there were safe and to
carry the mules from those plantations to the levee, also.
We had expected to have at least twenty-four hours in
which to save our stock and move the Negroes to safety, but by four o’clock in
the afternoon we could see the water spreading out in Deer Creek. When my
husband came in about six, the water was so deep where it had backed
across
the road that it drowned the engine of the car, I
and the Negroes had to push it to the house.
It had not seemed possible for the water to reach us so soon. Now it was all
over the pasture, and before supper it came rushing around the front of the
house. We watched it come higher and higher on the fence. The speed with which
it came was appalling; and our feeling of helplessness was so overwhelming it
was pathetic.
Finally it
came to a stand-four inches below the floor of our house. The boats we had
built with so much pride could not withstand the swift current of the water,
and the Negroes in their isolated houses were frantic. Mr. Biscoe, confident
that his place would not go under water, did not send his mules to the levee;
and when the water did come, they had to swim to the high spots where they
waded around for days, until the Bostick brothers came, built a floor over the
hay in the barn, and got the stock in it. But their troubles were not over; the
water soaked the hay, weakened the foundation, and it settled, causing constant
worry.
As soon as we saw that the water would cover our place, I phoned
my brother-in-law, Mr. Scott Ellis, to buy us a boat at once. He did - a large,
handsome one with a new Ford motor and fifteen gallons of gasoline. It was sent
down the Mississippi to Bolivar, where the pilot phoned us to come for it. We
replied that we had no way to get out of the house. About 4:30 came the
boat. Xan Bostick came out with the
boatman to show him the way and take him back to the point where the railroad
was above the water and the trains were still running.
Xan and our
young brother, Louis, spent two days rescuing the people marooned in the back
country on housetops and in trees. Their rescue work was arduous and dangerous,
but they performed it courageously and effectively. They were joined by many
other boats, until all the marooned were safely sheltered in tents on the
levee. This accomplished, we could use our boat ourselves, and we were anxious
to get to the levee to see about our mules and to take some sick Negroes to the
doctor.
Many distressing situations and
strange incidents were associated with this high water. There were the cows
that trailed around on a high ridge, which did not go under, making the night
hideous with their lowing; and the stormy nights with the doleful sound of the
rain falling on the water. One little negro boy died, and there was no place to
bury him except on a high ditch bank, which began to cave, but the grave was
saved. At Stringtown, where the current was exceptionally swift and powerful,
the large general store owned by Mr. C. D. Terrell, was lifted off its
foundation and turned completely around, with the back door where the front
door had been. The valuable stock of goods in the store was either ruined or
stolen, as there
was no way to lock up anything in the water.
Among the
saddest fatalities was the drowning of the two children of Mr. Ed Hilliard of
Lamont. Because of the deep and dangerous currents at Lamont, which was in the
direct path of the water, Mr. Hilliard sent his family to his sister's home in
Shelby, where they stayed until the situation began to improve. Then they
begged to come home to enjoy the fun of living over the water. While their boat
was attempting to land, in a very swift current, on an elevated railroad track,
it turned over, and all were thrown into the swift current. Mr. Hilliard
managed to save his wife and eldest daughter, but the younger girl and little
boy were carried down stream and drowned.
Not only
were the effects of the overflow devastating here, it covered the Delta from
Benoit to Vicksburg, carrying death and destruction as it went. Though there
was, comparatively, little loss of life, the destruction of farm and personal
property-farm implements and machinery, cattle, mules, and hogs-ran into
millions.
At last the
water began to fall, and we had a little land out. We planted some cotton and
gardens, but alas, the June rise came - another big rise in the river. Many of the
Negroes were taken to Benoit and fed by the Red Cross. They would be seen there
at all times of the day, cooking on little stoves on the railroad track, which
was above the water, having a jubilant time.
Finally the
river fell; and when the water ceased flowing through the break-over night-it
vanished, and we found ourselves on dry land again. But much time and work were
needed to clean things up and start our lives over. It had been a lonely
time-our telephone was our only connection with the outside world during all
the long weeks that the land was submerged. It takes courage to live through
one of Old Man River's rampages.
OUR GRACIOUS LADY-KATE ADAMS
"The
steamers Kate Adams were named for the wife and widow of Major John D.
Adams, who died at his home in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was known all along
the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and their tributaries, and especially at
Memphis and on the Arkansas and White Rivers, having been a merchant and United
States mail contractor there for nearly half a century. Major Adams served with
distinction in the army of the Southern Confederacy. He died at the age of
seventy, and his loss was mourned by his many friends in Arkansas and Tennessee.
He had been president of the Memphis and Arkansas City Packet Company.
"The
first Kate Adams was built in 1882 by James Rees, of Pittsburgh for the Memphis and
Arkansas City Packet Company. Her cost was about $90,000 and her capacity 1,000
tons. This packet was a large sidewheeler, with a wooden hull, said to have
been about the finest ever turned out
of a shipyard; her cabin was finished throughout in
hardwood, with panels of birdseye maple, mahogany, and walnut. In appearance she
was a typical Mississippi River packet of that period, but was the first
steamer on Western and Southern rivers to adopt the Edison electric light
system throughout every department, and was considered one of the fastest, most
economical, and successful 'packets that ever plied the Mississippi River. The
memory of the first Kate Adams is still green among the steamboat men of
the lower Mississippi and the people of Memphis. She .was their pride-always on
time and the fastest boat belonging at the port of Memphis. In the office of
the firm of James Rees' Sons and Company hangs a picture of the first Kate
Adams, and under it is the following inscription:
'The
Kate Adams, designed and constructed in 1882 by James Rees. - On her
famous trip on the Mississippi River
from
Helena, Arkansas, to Memphis, Tennessee, 'March 18, 1885, a distance of 90
miles, her time was 5 hours,
18
minutes, and was and is to this date, the fastest time on record between these
points.'
The first Kate Adams burned at Commerce Landing, about 40
miles below Memphis, early Sunday morning, December 23, 1888. The boat was a
total loss, but by the coolness and nerve of her commander, Captain Mark R.
Cheek, every passenger, except one, was saved, and all the crew.1
Kate Adams - magic name!
How memories come trooping to mind till in fancy we again live in those
eventful days when "The Kate" in all her glory plied the mighty
waters of the Mississippi.
It is 1882 and the young Kate, first
of her name, has just begun to ply the river from Memphis to Arkansas City. She
stands at the home port, awaiting the bell's clang to start on her trip down
the river, her hold well laden with freight, the United States mail in her
office, and her cabins filled with passengers. The bell rings; she clears port,
graceful as a swan, slender, white, beautiful-the Kate on her maiden voyage.
Again it is night on the river - the
moon above the willows throws a silver sheen over the rippling waters, save
where dark irregular shadows fall from the trees along the banks. On the bank a
dim yellow light gleams in the darkness indicating a landing. The silence is
broken by an occasional night bird's call, a low laugh now and then, mingled
with the soft voices of the darkies and the gentle lapping of the water against
the banks.
'Quoted
from an article by Mrs. S. Kussart, Pittsburg, Pa.
There comes a
whistle, clear, and sweet, a long, a short, a long. Sudden bustle and stir, the
bank awakes, all is activity as the Kate swings round
the bend and looms into view, her outline dark against
the moonlit sky, her breast aglow with spangles of light. The searchlight plays
upon the bank; swiftly, silently, save for the muffled throb of her engines,
the Kate lands. Then begins a scene of activity. Roustabouts dart here and
there busily unloading and reloading the hold. The incoming and outgoing mail
is exchanged, passengers come and go. Voices call words of greeting and
farewell. There are the mate's crisp orders, laughter, talk - the bell clangs -
up goes the stageplank, and the Kate is again on her way. As she sails down the
river, strains of music come floating back from the cabin where the young folks
are dancing to the tune of "The Heel and Toe."
A variety of
activities hold sway on board, romance and gayety where the young folks
"trip the light fantastic," or couples court on the guards. More
serious folk are gathered in the lounge reading or engaged in conversation. And
the gentlemen so inclined, may be found in that male sanctum sanctorum, the
barber shop, and the forward cabin, at cards and drink.
November 23,
1885. This time the Kate stands at her moorings awaiting the arrival of the
"Will S. Hayes," manned with the Kate's crew and sent out in her
place, because of the Hayes' lesser draft, to bring into Memphis the largest
cotton bale shipment of the season1638 bales, totaling 819,000 pounds.
The first
Kate's career is drawing to a close; it is early morning, December 23, 1888,
and she is headed for Commerce Landing. The fire alarm arouses the passengers,
who are bidden to dress quickly and come on deck. Through the wise and
courageous management of her master, Captain Cheek, all passengers are
assembled on deck ready to disembark from the flaming boat when the stageplank
is lowered. Suddenly an accident occurs. A cotton bale tips over and fastens
the dress of a lady who is holding twin babies in her arms. Her husband,
spurred by roaring flames and billowing clouds of smoke to put forth superhuman
effort, lifts the bale alone, freeing his wife's skirt. As the stageplank is
being lowered, one man frantic with terror springs upon it and dashing to the
end jumps to the bank. What happens next fills everyone with horror. The plank
falls on the unfortunate man, breaking his back. Thus one life is lost
unnecessarily, because of unreasoning panic. The passengers and crew standing
on the bank watch in silent grief the flames consume the beautiful Kate
Adams.
"The hull of the second Kate
Adams was built by Howards, of Jeffersonville, Indiana, in 1888, for James
Rees and Company of Pittsburgh, who constructed the machinery. Like the first Kate
Adams, this steamer was a sidewheeler with a wooden hull and was built for
the Memphis and Arkansas Packet Company. Her cost was about $80,000, and she carried
1,000 tons. After being used in the Memphis and Arkansas City packet trade for
a time,
this boat was sold to Captain Lee
Cummings, and plied in the trade between Memphis and Vicksburg, her name being
changed to Dewey. Later she was sold to Captain Thomas B. Sims, and her
name changed to the Lotus Sims. She was destroyed by fire, early in the
morning of October 28, 1903, at the wharf at St. Louis, Missouri."2
Again memory
paints mind pictures as our thoughts turn to those busy years when the
Mississippi was the great highway, and the Kate Adams, the connecting
link between the outer world and the vast acres of the Delta lands along the
river front.
There was
much for the Kate to do in those days; each landing was a-buzz with activity. There
were passengers and huge shipments of freight to take off and on at points all
along the way. At each landing the stout roustabouts, singing at their tasks,
loaded and unloaded the cargoes. As the passengers left the luxurious packet,
and others boarded her, the genial master - Captain Cheek, speeded the parting
and welcomed the coming guests with kindly smile and friendly word; while Rose,
the maid who ministered to the comfort of the ladies and gentlemen on board,
having bid good-bye to the departing guests, awaited in the cabin the
newcomers.
During those
years when river trade was at its height, close friendship sprang up between
the Kate Adams' officers and the passengers, so that throughout the
Delta there are many who still hold in affectionate memory Captain Cheek, and,
of course, our own Mr. Will A. Shelby, who was for a time chief clerk; Messrs.
Lew Price, Pell Thomas, N. C. Blanker and Mr. Matson, the steward.
Many were
the gay parties held on board the Kate, where the young folks danced the waltz
and two-step to the strains of "After the Ball Was Over" and
"Washington Post"; and couples continued to seek out secluded nooks
in the moonlight.
Then came
the overflow of 1897 which flooded Bolivar County. It was during this time that
the Kate, because of her splendid service in transporting refugees away from
and supplies to the stricken area, became noted for her flood relief work. The Kate
Adams was absolutely the only source of supplies for the entire area. Towns
like Rosedale were entirely dependent for sustenance upon the Kate's cargo,
brought out of Memphis twice a week. How faithfully and well she fulfilled her
task is gratefully remembered by those who were living here at that time.
It was shortly after 1897 that the Kate
Adams was sold and for a short time her place was taken by another boat.
The third Kate Adams was built
in 1903, and her career, the longest of the three, lasted twenty-four years.
During the first decade of her career, though the railroads were encroaching
upon her trade, the Kate did a thriving business.
'Quoted from an article by Mrs. S.
Kussart. Pittsburg, Pa.
But the
decline of river trade in favor of swifter modes of transportation was
inevitable. However, the decline was gradual, and it was not until 1924 that
the Kate was taken off the run from Memphis to Arkansas City. She was made into
a freighter and used on the Ohio River until October, 1926, when the Delta Line
Boats, Incorporated, of Memphis, brought her back to inaugurate a through
packet system from Memphis to Vicksburg. Shortly after her return to the
Mississippi she was chartered by the Universal Films Company for the filming of
"Uncle Tom's Cabin". Only two months later, during the first week in
January, 1927, she was burned at her moorings in Memphis.
The third and last Kate Adams, whose
memory is cherished in the hearts of all true sons and daughters of the Delta,
was for 24 years an integral part of the life along the Mississippi, from Memphis
to Arkansas City. She was, indeed, Our Lady Kate Adams-true aristocrat of river
packets, regal of bearing, full of grace and beauty - worthy successor to an
honored name.
How well does memory bring to mind
those scenes of my childhood when the Kate - our pride and joy - plied the
river each Tuesday and Friday on her run from Memphis to Arkansas City. As she
rounded the bend at Terrene, clear and beautiful came her whistle, which
brought forth the never-failing cry, "There's the Kate!" from
every man, woman and child in Rosedale, be they black, white or yellow.
The Kate was to us more than a boat;
she was a personality, a beloved friend-hostess on hundreds of gay parties,
match-maker for many a young couple, kind helper in time of need, business associate,
mail carrier. She was truly Our Gracious Lady Kate, always hospitable, always
ready for service, and as most gracious ladies are, always late!
How many times have we waited hours on
the bank for the Kate to take us to Arkansas City for one of those most
important of town activities, the baseball games. It was back in the early
1900's that the rivalry between the two towns began. Year after year we made
our pilgrimages to Arkansas City to the games on the Kate.
Picture the scene enacted over and
over again: it is ten o'clock of a bright summer morning; the Kate is scheduled
to arrive at 10:30. Young people eager for the excursion begin to arrive at the
landing. The hacks and surreys continue to arrive, some making two trips,
bringing dozens more of young folks, chaperons, and others. Then begins the
long wait, for the Kate, as usual, is late. But at last she arrives heralded
from afar by her whistle.
Embarking upon her we arrive on deck, and what a scene of
gayety follows! In anticipation of the excursion, a colored orchestra from
Memphis is aboard. And as we climb the wide stairs to the deck at a signal from
Captain Agnew the orchestra strikes up, and the young folks begin to dance
to the tunes of "Clover Blossoms", "Eva",
and "In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree."
No longer is the forward cabin
reserved for "gentlemen only"; it is now a ballroom. The bar occupies
an alcove just off from it, but though it is there for all to see, it is
patronized only by the men. No lady would ever step up to the bar!
However, it is permissible for the gentlemen to bring refreshing claret
lemonades from the bar back to the lounge for the ladies. Time does not allow
me to describe the sumptuous meals served on the Kate, nor the varied and delightful
happenings along the way.
The boat arrives at Arkansas City -
late, of course - but the Arkansas City citizens are not dismayed; they are
waiting in the grandstand for us as we wend our way through the deserted
village to the ball park. This is the peak of the excursion, the climax to
which we have been climbing all day. And such a wild scene of excitement
ensues! After the game is over, sometimes losers, more often winners, we troop
back to the Kate, hot, dusty, and tired.
It is time to dress for dinner.
Everyone retires to the staterooms to emerge later freshly dressed - the women
in dainty lawns and organdies, the men in white trousers and blue coats. Ah,
those beautiful, moonlight nights on the Kate-and yes, those nights when the
clouds obscure the moon, and we arrive after midnight to find the landing
knee-deep in mud, and we lose our slippers in the bog as we endeavor to reach
the waiting vehicles-hay wagons, surreys, hacks, and rubbertired buggies.
Time flies, the ball games have
ceased, but the excursions on the Kate continue. In 1912 there is the overflow
at Vermillion Lake, with noble work of relief done by the Kate. In 1917 and
1918 the boys are going to war; there are farewell excursions on the Kate and
dancing to the tunes of "K-K-K-Katies" and "Tipperary". In
1919 the boys are home again, and there are more excursions. Then 1924 - that
sad time which sees the Kate shorn of her glory and sold up the Ohio River.
There she is ignominiously put to work as a freighter, neglected,
misunderstood, unloved. But this does not last-the Delta Lines Boats,
Incorporated, of Memphis, brings her home. It is true she returned
battlescarred, bedraggled, but still the Kate, beloved by all her people.
One last honor was paid her when she
was chartered by the Universal Films Company for use in "Uncle Tom's
Cabin". But her time was nearly out-only two short months later, she, like
her predeces�sors, was burned, at her moorings in Memphis. But though
she is gone, the memory of her remains green in the hearts of her friends.
"To me it now seems that the last lingering vestige
of 'De old plan�tation days' has yielded itself up in flames as the Kate
Adams burned there in her moorings in Memphis. She was the only remaining
evidence of a glory in a great river's history that now has faded into the dim days that are gone.
She was the replica - the embodiment of a regime in the
river's record that is no more - of a regime in the Southland that is no more.
. . .
"If
that old river could only submerge beneath its swift crest the modern
inventions that have robbed it of its by-gone glory, to bear once more over its
sheening surface the royal race of craft whose heritage the 'Kate Adams' so
royally bore, then might the words of a famous river song spring appropriately
to the lips in telling of her death:
'There's crepe on
every steamboat
From Memphis down to
Natchez,
Down to New Orleans.'
" 3
3Quoted
from the words of one who loved her upon hearing of her burning.
I consented
to contribute this article with the expectation of acquiring information from
older people about their experiences with showboats, but the more I have
inquired, the less information I have obtained. I have met with answers like
this: "Well, really, you know, I was raised in Natchez," (or
Greenville or New Orleans), "and, er, well, nice people didn't ever go,
you see."
At length I
began to wonder whether Rosedale was the only town on the river where the elite
indulged in such common pleasures, or worse still -whether I was really of nice
people. Then I questioned people who, I knew, were reared right here in Bolivar
County - Bolivar with her dark, rich soil -and this is what I heard: "Oh,
I went a few times, but there were not enough people to have a show," or
"Transportation was too bad to go any distance."
So with all
my interviews availing me nothing, I am forced to rely on my own resources,
feeling ancient - yes, even hoary - and very plebian, for I am, apparently, the
only living daughter who has had actual experience with showboats.
Consequently, any words that I may utter concerning this extinct craft of the
remote past pertain strictly to my own experience, and the responsibility for
them is totally and exclusively mine.
What were showboats, anyway, and where
and when did they originate? The first one appeared in 1833-though candor
compels me to admit that I never saw this one-and consisted of a large flatboat
with a rude house built on it, having a ridge-roof and above this a staff with
a flag. Upon this was flaunted the word "Theatre." This vessel,
called a floating theatre, plied up and down the Ohio River and was run by an
English family of Chapmans - the father, three sons, and two daughters. Their
admission price was fifty cents. A few years later the Chapmans bought a
steamboat and fitted
it up after the manner of a theatre. A crew was added and
they showed at all places along the Ohio. This was the ancestor of the
"floating palaces."
As I knew showboats, they consisted of
a big showboat proper, that is, theatre, and a smaller steamboat, which
afforded living quarters for crew and cast and pushed the theater. They all
carried a calliope and band. The theater part had a small box office and lobby,
then seats on the lower floor with two or three boxes on each side, and a
balcony above for the Negroes. The stage was fairly large, and, as I remember,
the scenery for it was fair. The boats were always strung with numerous rows of
electric lights - no small attraction for coal oil lamp addicts. "The
Golden Rod" and "French's New Sensation" were names
of two that frequented Rosedale from 1900 to 1914 - not quite as far back as
the gay nineties.
Let us take a typical day in Rosedale
in the fall of 1910. We are at school in the new school building over on Levee
Street, so named because every other hundred yards parts of the old abandoned
levee stood, with barrow pits behind. Suddenly far-off music is heard.
Immediately the morning recitations are abandoned, and everyone races to the
windows shouting, "There's the calliope!" "The showboat has
come!"
"Can
we go to the parade, Miss Tillie?"
"We are going in a surrey tonight
from Mr. Matthews' livery stable."
"Pop's
going to take us in a box tonight, so if it catches on fire we can jump right
in the river."
"We've got passes cause my cousin is the deputy
sheriff. If some of the niggers (sic) have a cutting, they won't make the boat
people stay over."
"Gosh, I'm going to run off with a
showboat some day."
Much conversation of this type mingles
with the strains of Turkey in the Straw, and Miss Tillie smilingly lets
the children listen until the calliope ceases. The excitement is too much for
further study, though there is pretense of reciting.
Finally a band is heard closer, the parade has come up
town. School is dismissed, and the children scurry away to see the showboat
band. It is a brass band of, perhaps, twelve or fourteen pieces, the players in
gorgeous colored uniforms, looking a little tired from their mile hike from the
landing. But their music sounds glorious to the spectators. Children and
Negroes crowd close, but the young ladies and men are careful to be at Chaney's
Drug Store so they can easily step outside and hear without appearing too
interested. After the band has played several pieces, one member gives out
handbills, with a picture of the showboat, and an announcement of the program
and the price of admission. Then a final
selection, and they march
back under the October sun.
In the
afternoon a few lucky people drive down to the river just to look. They are
few, because most people are saving their horses to drive to the show. Only
once did I see a floating palace by daylight. It was decidedly disillusioning,
for the washing was strung all along the top, the actors were disheveled, and
the heroine was cleaning fish.
The show
began at 7 P. M. At six we had finished with supper and were ready to start.
The favorite way to go was in a hay wagon - favorite, that is, for young
people. But whatever rig we went in, we had a glorious sensation as we arrived
at the top of the levee and caught our first glimpse of the boat, lighted from
stem to stern, with myriads of electric lights on the boat reflected in the
water. It was truly a floating palace. The teams were hitched to convenient
trees, and we descended the steep banks of the river, crossed the gangplank,
and were actually on the showboat. I would not trade my thrills on such
occasions for all the movies in Christendom.
Once we were
inside and seated, the fun began. There were always peanuts for sale, and
baldheads were the targets for many of these, thrown by exuberant youngsters.
The aim of the ungodly was none too accurate, and those seated near the
unfortunate gentlemen were likely to receive a generous share of the missles,
as May Jones, and I, who once sat immediately behind Mr. Alex Shattuck, can
testify.
Finally the
show began. Sometimes it was melodrama, but I remember more vaudeville. It was usually
good and never obscene. I once saw a troupe of Japanese acrobats that I
afterwards saw in Ringling Brothers' Circus. The show lasted about two and a
half hours-a good evening's entertainment for people starved for the theatre.
The trip home was always sleepy. I can shut my eyes and see a typical family
man struggling up that steep bank with a sleeping child over one shoulder and a
lantern swung in his off hand, while the mother and several children came
walking behind. Such a hunt as then began for our respective vehicles! The big
search lights on the boat were always turned on the bank and kept there until
the last struggling mule and buggy disappeared over the levee.
I once went to a showboat in an
automobile. In the fall of 1912 the Sillerses had a Maxwell, and incidentally,
some of the new Ogden inlaws from Chicago were visiting them. One of the
visitors was a boy about fourteen, and I was invited to have supper with him,
Evelyn, and Warfield. A showboat was in town, so we all went down in the Maxwell.
How all the Sillers and Daddy and I got into that car I can not exactly
remember. What I do remember most distinctly was the coming home. We let every
rig start ahead of us, so we could make a display of speed-in the vernacular,
just plain "show off" -and beat them home. We started and the car
began to climb the levee, but she stalled (every automobile was a she in those
days) near the top.
Finally,
Harry Ogden, the machine man of the party, discovered that we did not have
enough gasoline to run the engine uphill. He and Daddy walked to town to get
gas while the rest of us waited on the levee. Cold! I can shiver now. I can
never recall being cold going to a showboat, nor warm coming back. On this
particular occasion we made a fire and burned dried weeds. They burned like
tissue paper. We three native kids had tried to show off before the Chicago
visitor, but those hours on the Mississippi extracted all our starch. And so
ended my only visit to a showboat in a car. I suppose such vessels belong,
after all to horse and buggy days.