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THE GREAT FLOOD
“Every
moment, new rivulets popped through. The bank was
becoming a muddy mush. He thought that in minutes the wall would
burst…. Cheney dashed to the house to tell his father he was riding to
Spelman’s in the village. At the barn he bridled his horse as his
father cut him a switch. Cheney climbed on his barebacked mare and
headed her down the trail to the river road, the old horse at a gallop.
His father ran for Hemenway’s farm to warn him to get his cows off the
riverside pasture…. Cheney called, “The flood! The flood! The reservoir
is broken!”
A
convulsive boom echoed through the Williamsburg hills, and
was heard as far away as Goshen. Elias Cheney, George’s father, heard
it as he ran to Hemenway’s to tell him to remove his cows from the
river pasture. Elias later said it was “louder than the biggest clap of
thunder” he had ever heard.”
- from In the Shadow of the Dam
by Elizabeth Shape. The story
of an event that reshaped society.
CHAPTER XIII
ON MAY 16, 1874, Williamsburg was
struck by one of the most
disastrous floods that New England had ever known. Scarcely an hour and
a quarter in duration, the flood stripped the town of property, roads,
stock, and much precious human life. One hundred and forty-five lives
were lost. Although relief work
and reconstruction were carried out
with unbelievable
efficiency and rapidity, our village had undergone in
that short time a permanent change. Many business and manufucturing
concerns have flourished since 1874, but the general character of the
town has remained primarily residential, while previously it had been
primarily industrial.
An eye-witness of the disaster
has described the Mill River
Valley as it was before that May morning.
"Shops and mills lined its course - Spelman's button shop and sawmill;
Adams' flouring mill; Skinner's silk mill, a growing and prosperous
concern; the Hayden and Gere Brass Works, one of the largest producers
of brass plumbing fixtures in the country; and others. These buildings
extended about 600 feet along the river. The office at the lower end
contained also the Haydenville Savings Bank and the Masonic Lodge rooms
and was considered a very elegant and unusual building."
The Mill River and Williamsburg
Reservoir Company was
organized because, with the growth of industry in many villages, the
manufucturers had felt the need of a more extensive water supply. In
1865 this company built a reservoir in the north part of town. When
finished, the next year, it covered III acres to an average depth of
twenty-four feet.
2"Emol)' B. Wells of Northampton and Joel Bassett of Easthampton were
the contractors, and the cost was $35,000. A stone wall was first
built, which was stipulated to rise from a width of eight feet at the
hardpan to two feet at the top. This was forty-two feet above the bed
of the stream. This wall was contracted to be laid in the best-known
cement, and the
projectors claimed, would be as strong as a single shaft of granite.
Enveloping this stone wall on each side was a mass of earth, which
sloped down on the water side at an angle of thirty degrees, and on the
lower side at an angle of forty- five degrees. A lateral section of
this earthen support, the greater mass of which was on the water side,
measured about 120 feet at the base. At the center of the stream,
enclosed in a stone wall running at right angles to the main wall of
the reservoir, ran an iron tube of two feet diameter for controlling
the flow of the water, extending, of course, a few feet beyond this
earthen wall at both extremities of its base. This wall of earth, 120
feet wide at the bottom was sixteen feet across at the top, covering
the crest of the stone wall a depth of two feet, in order to prevent
danger &om fi:ost, and along the top furnished a good driveway. The
water never rose quite to the crest of the dam, being kept about two
feet below that line by means of a waste-way at the western side.
Serious doubts as to the safety of the structure had been entertained
even by the proprietors. In the spring following its completion fears
were felt that it would go off at the very first trial, but it
withstood the strain. At various times subsequently it was
strengthened. Not long before the dam broke, it was made more secure by
'rip-rapping'; that is, the laying of cobblestones along the earth bank
to diminish the force of the water upon the earth.
"The winter and spring of
1873-74 were unusually trying to
an earth dam on account of heavy rains and melting snow, accompanied by
a constant succession of freezing and thawing. But the direct cause of
the disaster, aside from the general weakness of the dam, must remain a
subject of speculation. The gate-keeper detected no sign of danger when
he examined the situation at early dawn. What the last straw was that
broke the great back of the reservoir can never be definitely known.
The gate-keeper had always feared trouble from the fact that a stream
of water flowed constantly through the bottom, just east of the
gate-way, while there were always a number of smaller streams, some of
them quite minute, along the bottom on each side of the center. It was
said, however, that it was quite impossible to construct such a dam so
that there would be absolutely no show of water on the lower side, and
some experts felt that there was no reason for alarm because of the
small streams that trickled through.
"The gate-keeper was George
Cheney, a man of about "thirty-
five, who had held the position for three years. On Saturday morning,
the sixteenth of May he went out as usual at six o'clock to look things
over. All appeared as usual. At half past seven, while at breakfast, he
noticed what appeared to be about forty feet in length of the bottom of
the reservoir shooting down stream. He rushed to the gate, opened it to
relieve the pressure, then jumped on his horse and rode bare-back to
the village to warn people of the impending disaster. He went first to
the house of Mr. Spelman who had general charge of the dam. After
convincing him of the coming danger, he nEhed on to the livery stable
for a fresh horse. The church bell was rung, but there seems to have
been no general alarm in the village of Williamsburg. In the meantime,
Robert Loud upon his farm overlooking the reservoir and stream had seen
the break, and ran the mile and a half to the grist mill near where the
John Hill house stands. Unable to speak, he gave the alarm by pointing
to the rising stream. Cheney rode his exhausted horse to Belcher's
stable and while there, Collins Graves, who was delivering milk around
the village, saw the haste and drove up. On being told that the
reservoir had burst, Mr. Graves started off with his milk-wagon on the
famous ride for Haydenville which was the means of saving the lives of
300 people wolking in James' mill, Skinner's mill, and the Brass Works.
So close was the water behind. Graves that when Cheney mounted to
follow to Haydenville, the water was up across the road so that he was
obliged to turn back. Jerome Hillman was another hero who took an
active and important part in warning Haydenville of the approaching
flood. After riding through the street, shouting to all whom he saw, he
dashed up to the village church, ran in, and rang the bell. One person,
James Ryan, was a young boy who happened to be up in the village with
an old horse. He overheard the talk of Mr. Cheney with Mr. Belcher, and
drove out at once to his home. His mother sent him along to Haydenville
to warn his father who was working there. He succeeded not only saving
his father's life but also the lives of others who heard his warning.
He was just ahead of the flood, and rushed into Haydenville crying,
'It's right here! Get up, get up! To the hills!'
"From Haydenville the news was
warned by Myron Day. He warned
the hands at the cotton mill, raced for two miles with the flood just
behind him, and succeeded in gaining sufficiently upon the waters to
save many lives at Leeds."
"The flood came tearing down the Ashfield road and the first house in
its path was a cottage at the Bullard bridge, occupied by one Collier.
It was lifted as one would lift a feather. The wife and daughter were
drowned, Mrs. Collier being thrown upon the bank along Valley View
Avenue. The saw mill, which was where the old grist mill now stands,
was overwhelmed in a moment The flood tore its way across the open lot
to the house of Gilbert Bradford, making a channel straight past the
Edward Miller place and the mill bridge, sweeping away the houses that
lined both sides of the road. At the turn of the river by the station
there stood some woods, and this for a moment stayed the oncoming flood
which flowed up the Joe Wright brook, canying with it the iron bridge
at the Bradford Mill. As the waters piled up behind this temporary dam,
it broke away, taking with it the Skinner mill of solid brick and all
the little village which he had there built down to Haydenville the
oncoming flood rolled. A floating house struck the corner of the
foundry building nearest the water. It began to crumble and as the
water entered, the foundry collapsed like a house of cards. One portion
after another crumbled away. The heating boiler was tossed up on the
Hayden lawn. The debris, catching on the row of maples along the
sidewalk, held the current to the center where the houses, one after
another, were borne away and down through the channel."
One wonders what impressions
this horrible inundation brought
to the minds of its eyewitnesses. A newspaper of the time gives these
descriptions:
"Of course, the onslaught of the waters was terrible and grand beyond
description; one can only give its results as depicting best its
appalling accompaniments. To one, the thick, on-coming mass of waters
seemed like the heaviest ocean waves; to another the sound was like the
tearing of shingles from many buildings; while a third heard it as
the heavy, sullen thunder which comes before the summer storm. It was
preceded and surrounded by a dense spray or fog, dark and thick as the
heaviest smoke, while even as far away as the Hill, there was an odor
like that emitted from stagnant pools. The wave was generally described
as twenty feet high, though in one spot the spray washed the branches
of a tree forty feet from the ground. It would be interesting to follow
the front of the flood as it thrust itself upon different eyes along
the valley; but we have taken only a representative view from the
village as given by Reverend John F. Gleason. Mr. Gleason got up from
his breakfast table to see the Adams' flouring mill sailing by his
window, while his neighbors' houses in the valley below were taken up
by the water as chips, to crumble as salt; the trees were mown down
like grass; huge boulders were tossed about by the resistless current;
the waves would savagely play while with the barns and shops to grind
them to chips and splinters.
"In nearly a quarter of an hour
the accumulated water had
passed so that its path could be traced. The valley was obliterated,
and its face was the jagged, scarred bed of the destroying stream. A
mile down from the village nothing had escaped unscathed; no green or
whole thing was to be seen; only one or two houses were left on the
street; upon the hillsides were strewn all sorts of household articles,
not one of them intact; while perhaps, near by, would be the beaten and
bruised bodies of the drowned."
Eugere E. Davis, witnessing the
disaster as a small boy in
Florence,
told what it looked like to him when he first saw its approach. "A
great mass of brush, trees, and trash was rolling rapidly toward me. I
have tried many times to describe how this appeared; perhaps the best
simile is that of hay rolling over and over as a hayrake moves along
the field, only this roll seemed twenty feet high, and the spears of
grass in the hayrake enlarged to limbs and trunks of trees mixed with
boards and timbers; at this time I saw no water. "Imagine, if possible,
a mass of trees, brush, logs, cord-wood, hay, broken machinery, parts
of houses, furniture, carpets, clothing, blankets, wool and silk from
the ruined mills, horses, cattle, swine and sheep, timbers from ruined
factories, dams and bridges, tons and tons of sand, gravel, and rocks,
all piled in intricate confusion over an area half a mile long, quarter
of a mile wide and ten, fifteen, and twenty feet deep, and somewhere,
in this mass were hidden the bodies of the drowned."
As soon as the waters had
subsided, the dazed people began to
search among the rubbish. By noon a group was organized to make a
systematic canvass for the names of the lost and to hunt for their
bodies. As fast as found, these were placed in a long gruesome row in
the chapel of the Haydenville Church and in the Town Hall in
Williamsburg. The scenes there were heartrending. One account tells of
the way in which the townsfolk as a whole reacted.
"The blow came upon the village with such abruptness that even the very
participants in the terrible struggle with the waters scarce realized
its import. They turned out to
relieve the saved or to recover the dead with no intense demonstrations
of sorrow, quietly and with studied method. Saturday evening a relief
meeting was held at the church, and necessary committees were appointed
for burying the dead, relieving the needy, and soliciting funds. All
this was done without the slightest display of sorrow with the single
intent of doing all that
could be accomplished to alleviate the situation. The
damage to the town-mills, dwellings, roads, field&-was estimated at
more than
one-third of the valuation of a million and a half. Still more
appalling was the loss of life. One hundred and forty- five people
perished in the flood; sixty in Williamsburg, thirty- four in
Skinnerville and Haydenville, and fifty-one in Leeds."
Mr. Davis added to this
estimate. "Our village of
Williamsburg lost forty-five buildings, and Skinnerville and
Haydenville forty-one. Every bridge (ten iron and as many more of wood)
in the path of the waters was destroyed, and every dam on the river
either destroyed or seriously damaged. The little red house in
Williamsburg just above the Shell filling station is the only one left
of the original fifteen houses between the telephone building and the
new concrete bridge. Frank Bisbee's house was washed back against the
bank and a woman drowned in the house. Later it was brought back to its
original site. At Williamsburg. a new channel was cut by the river,
crossing the present state highway just below the telephone building,
and continuing down the southwesterly side of the road to, or below,
the railroad depot. Practically all the highway from Williamsburg down
through Haydenville and along Mill River, to and through Leeds, was
made impassable, and, in many places, deeply eroded. So thorough had
been the destruction that many of the boundaries of real estate were
obliterated, and many of the survivors were unable to locate the sites
of their former habitations. In a letter to the New York Tribune, a
correspondent of the time described the reaction of William Skinner. He
wrote, 'William Skinner, the wealthy silk manufacturer, who had seen
his mill and fortune lost in a few minutes, said, pointing to a man who
had lost wife and children and all the property he had, "In comparison
I have lost nothing and have reason to be glad it is no worse."
"At the time of the coroner's inquest relative to the cause of this
disaster, William Skinner said to the builders of the dam, 'You ought
to have a rope around your necks, and something ought to be done to the
rope, too.' At this time O. G. Spelman, the personal representative in
Williamsburg of the owners, testified that the work suited Engineer
Fenn, and that he accepted it. Little seems to be known about Fenn, but
that he should design such a structure and accept such fumdulent work
has classified him in the minds of the townsfolk clearly enough."
Relief work was immediately
begun. All the surrounding towns
contributed money and clothing, and a committee was appointed for the
distribution of the funds. The state made
an appropriation of $1 00,000 for the rebuilding of roads and bridges.
By the end of the year, the work on the highways was very
satisfuctorily completed; but all the intervening
years have not restored to the town its former industrial prosperity,
nor led it to forget the sorrows nor the heroism that marked the spring
of 1874.
In March, 1875, at the annual
town meeting, the following
resolutions were offered by Reverend John F. Gleason and were
unanimously adopted:
"Whereas, The town of Williamsburg has received the hearty sympathy and
generous aid of the communities in consequence of the disastrous flood
of May 16, 1874, which swept away one-third of our property, including
many of our manufucturing industries, thereby rendering many of our
families penniless.
"Resolved, that we tender our thanks to the state of Connecticut, which
by her legislature sprang so promptly to our relief: 'They who give quickly, give thrice.'
"Resolved, that our thanks are due our own Commonwealth for reaching
down to us in our hour of need a helping hand, loaded with an
appropriation sufficient to restore our highways and bridges.
"Resolved, that we express our gratitude to all others who by their
sympathy and substantial aid have contributed to our comfort and
relief."
1 Eugene E. Davis at a Kiwanis club meeting at
the Hotel Northampton in 1934.
2 From a paper on the Mill River Flood which bears no name but
acknowledges its sources as current publications of the time.
3 By Mrs. Ada Chandler Hamlin. 4 Taylor and Mellon.
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