Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/283

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EXTRAORDINARY OCCURRENCES IN NEW HAMPSHIRE.

��275

��A correspondent of the Boston Patriot wrote from Providence as follows :

" Yesterday, about 8 o'clock, a tremen- dous gale from S. E. commenced, and in- creased till 12 o'clock. From 10 to 12 was a continued scene of horror. The Great Bridge was carried away by ves- sels driving against it; and, literally speaking, all vessels in the harbor broke their fasts, and drove like lightning up the Cove, where they now lie. some of them five to six feet above high water mark. The number that can never be got off exceeds thirty. The tide rose from ten to twelve feet higher than was ever known. Nearly all the buildings and stores on the wharves were washed away. The buildings destroyed, includ- ing a meeting-house, exceed one hundred and fifty. All the ships below where the bridge was are on top of the wharves. The distress is past all description. The water in Weybosset and YVestminster street was from six to eight feet above the pavement. All the commercial part of Providence is ruined. All round the town are seen broken buildings and ves- sels, mingled with coffee, cotton, soap, candles, grain, flour, and every other ar- ticle of merchandise you can mention, together with household furniture. Many people have lost much property, and a number their lives. No business but what regards the calamity can be done for a number of days. The streets on the west side of the bridge are so full of fragments of vessels, boats, buildings, etc., that people can only pass by climb- ing over them. Vessels were driven into the streets, and remain before the houses. About three hundred men are constantly on guard round the town."

The papers of that day, all over New England, contain accounts of the mem- orable gale, but no where was the wind so violent as in the harbor of Providence.

THE HURRICANE IN THE KEARSARGE REGION.

This was the most destructive tornado of which there is any record as having swept over any portion of New England, and, in proportion to its extent, infinitely more destructive than the Great Wind of September, 1815. The only full account, accessible to the writer, is found in the New Hampshire Patriot of the 17th of September. 1821. We recollect that at the time this narrative appeared, papers at a distance utterly discredited the state- ments it contained; but we remember that when verbal accounts reached Con- cord, Mr. Jacob B. Moore, one of the proprietors of the Patriot, proceeded at

��once to the scene of the tornado, and pre- pared, on the spot, the narrative of which the following is an abridgment :

" About six o'clock, Sunday evening, after a very warm day. a dark cloud was observed to rise in the north and north- west, illuminated by incessant flashes of vivid lightning. There was a terrific commotion in the cloud itself. Few, how- ever, apprehended danger ; much less the awful destruction that ensued. In Cor- nish and Croydon much injury was done. The house of Dea. Cooper was damaged, his barn blown down and its contents scattered. Passing in a S. E. direction into Wendell (now Sunapee). it swept in- stantly down the house and barn of Mr. Harvey Huntoon. The people in the house — eight in number — a moment be- fore the dwelling was struck were fright- ened hy the appearance of the cloud,~for they saw the air was filled with birds and broken limbs of trees. Mr. and Mrs. Huntoon stood in the kitchen, and al- though injured by bruises, escaped with- out further injury. Mrs. Huntoon was carried across the field by the raging wind. A Mrs. Wheeler, who, with her husband and child, were living in the house, fled to the cellar, and, after the blast had passed over, were somewhat injured by falling bricks and timbers. A child, eleven months old was asleep in a a bed. The garment it wore was found on the shore of Sunapee Lake, 150 rods from the Huntoon house, and its dead body at another place on the shore. The bedstead on which the child slept was found in the woods eighty rods from the house. Bricks were blown more than a hundred rods, and pieces of the frame, seven and eight inches square, and twelve feet long, were carried eighty rods away. Cart wheels were separated from the body, and carried sixty rods ; a large iron pot seven rods; the orchard was not only demolished, but some of the trees torn up and carried from seventy to an hundred rods, and casks, furniture, clothing, and dead fowls to a much great- er distance. A bureau was blown across Sunapee lake, two miles, and except the drawers, was found half a mile beyond the water. A door-post of the barn, thir- teen feet long, and eight by twelve inch- es, was carried forty-four rods up rising ground. A hemlock log, sixty feet long, and three feet diameter at the batt, was removed from its bed in the earth, where it had laid since the great wind, Septem- ber, 1815, carried by the tornado several rods up hill, over rocks seventeen inches high. It struck a rock and was broken in two. A wood lot of forty acres was utterly demolished— not a tree left stand- ing. A horse was blown forty rods up rising ground, and so iujured that it was necessary to kill him. The width of the

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