Two Views on Flooding
Union County
Natural disasters can be spectacular. Their power and scale of damage can be attractive as a dangerous challenge to confront or just a sublime scene to watch. Two early residents of Union County, resident after the disappearance of most Pottawattamie and perhaps most Mormons as well, provide two different perspectives on the dangers that accompany flooding.
W.F. Craig tells the story of coming to Afton in 1857. He and his brother were young men from Ohio when they determined to join their uncle in Union County. From Burlington, where they begin their journey in Iowa, they take the railroad to Mount Pleasant. From there they take an omnibus, proceeding well until they get to Ottumwa. There they find the Des Moines River “terribly swollen, being spread out over the adjacent bottom.” The few passengers, including one woman, and the driver determine they will have to cross the river in a small rowboat spotted nearby. But when all of them and their belongings are seated in the boat, it is riding very low, level with the rushing water. They make their way to the river’s channel where they soon encounter a steamer coming in the opposite direction. The driver alerts his passengers that the waves from the steamer will swamp them so, with effort, they force their boat into the “overflowed bottom land.”
They survive and are met on the river’s west bank by a hack. Due to heavy rains, however, their adventure is not over. The roads are so muddy that all the passengers secure tree branches used to pry the vehicle’s wheels out of the mud—repeatedly. Craig remembers crossing another swollen river in an even smaller dugout. He agrees to go first rowing a fellow passenger, but in the strong current the two drift and reach the opposite bank well downstream. Still he goes back to retrieve other passengers. With the hack now empty, the driver urges the horses and hack into the water. They start slowly from the shallow edge but the lead horses soon reach the steep bank and plunge into the current. The wheel horses, hack, driver, and a US mail pouch soon follow. When the lead horses finally get their footing on the opposite bank, the wheel horses are able to land as well with the front wheels of the hack behind them. All else is caught in the river current. Hanging onto the reins, the driver is dragged ashore. Calling on passengers to catch the horses, he runs downstream to overtake the mail pouch “and after a desperate struggle succeeds in landing it.” The body and back wheels of the hack are still in the water. Someone finds a missing piece meant to hold the front and back of the hack together. With the body of the vehicle out of the water, they drive the front wheels under it. They pause just long enough, says Craig, to let the body and seats dry out before they continue on their way.
When they reach the east side of the Grand River at Petersville, it too is in flood and the area is inundated with mosquitoes besides. Unable to cross on foot, their journey is saved again by the presence of a boat, this time a crude ferry owned by a man with a mill at the riverside. He takes them across the Grand where they are—miraculously– met by their uncle.
At least in memory, Craig tells of this journey through flooded southern Iowa as one of the peak experiences of his life.
Mrs. H.M. Way tells a very different story.
She recalls that in the early days most towns had no ministers so “early citizens struggled on without pastoral guidance, except at intervals.” She and her husband were often aroused at night by neighbors on the prairie so that they might come and pray with the dying. When death did occur, a minister had to be summoned from a neighboring town.
“There were many sad days in that early period,” she remembers, “and not the least of these was during the prevalence of an epidemic which resulted from the impure water and imperfect conditions of drainage. Almost every household had its quota of the sick, and the few who escaped were in too great fear of infection to be of much assistance. It was only possible to relieve the weary watchers by going from house to house at stated intervals, in order to give members of the different families much needed rest. At dead of night the twinkle of a lantern across the prairie marked the journey of the lonely relief and afforded a glimmer of hope and companionship to the saddened watchers in the darkened homes. Poverty, privation, hope, disease and death marked the first few months, but each new trial seemed to lend fresh powers of endurance.”
After this description of early hospice care, she then continues, describing one “singularly pathetic circumstance which those who witnessed can never forget.” A young daughter of a Mrs. Johnson died after a long illness from typhoid fever. Mrs. Way had rendered what assistance she could “and [then] went home completely worn out by my vigil, intending to return for the burial.” Seeing her exhaustion, her husband convinced her to stay at home offering to go to the burial himself. “It had been impossible to obtain a minister.” Her husband must have reported his experience at the burial because she goes on to describe the scene at the graveside. The distraught mother begs someone to lead those gathered in prayers for her daughter. But even Mrs. Way’s husband, Captain Way, is too affected by the mother’s grief to do as she requests. Finally, the mother leads the prayers herself.
Looking back, Mrs. Way is thankful this extremity of situation was rare.
Source: SHSI: George A. Ide, History of Union County, Iowa, Chicago, 1908.