JAMESTOWN, OHIO |
| This is a Three Part series of the History of
the Jamestown Cyclone that hit Jamestown on Sunday, April 27th, 1884. First
published in the Greene County Journal on April 28th, 1951. 2nd Editions was
published on May 5th, 1951 and 3rd edition on May 12th, 1951. The Jamestown Journal
was a newspaper published every Saturday at Jamestown, Ohio. Publisher was Eugene J.
Miller. Because of space, I will attempt to publish the complete history as written, but in several episodes, beginning with episode 1 and running until Part three of the newspapers series is complete. |
1st Edition: |
Headlines: Aged Residents Remembers Storm That Almost Destroyed Town 67 Years Ago. |
| That Stiff, wiping wind last Wednesday that
had you chasing your hats and trying to keep the door from slamming in your face was
serving as a reminder of what happened in Jamestown 67 years earlier - April 27, 1884. That was the Sunday afternoon the cyclone struck the town and almost wiped it out. The "Big Wind" holds a place in Southern Ohio annuls as one of its most destructive storms. That day the Storm God gave Jamestown its first hit-and-run demonstration. Riding on a funnel-shaped cloud, he poured out his wrath and hurried on, leaving behind a Trail of disaster a town long and a half-a-town wide. GEORGE BISHOP, veteran horse buyer, was 20 years old when the cyclone wrought havoc in Jamestown. "My father lived out on the Paintersville Road, at the swimming pool" and I remember seeing the "strange looking cloud in the west. It behaved sort of queer." he told a journal reporter. "We got into town as fast as we could after the storm." We had to cross the narrow-gauge railroad, and found five cars of coal had been lifted off the track by the wind, and the Irish trainmen were expressing their opinion of the storm. I still remember what one of them said, Mr. Bishop laughed. The cars had left the rails about a mile west of the depot. A special train was passing over the line that afternoon, history reveals, and was held up for hours by the storm-wrecked freight. XENIA STREET, Mr. Bishop remembers, was such a total shambles that, picking their way through the wreckage, he and his companions could not tell one house from any other house. "Parts of one building might be found at the other end of the street, while other bits of wreckage might cling to the destroyed house." said Mr. Bishop. "I Remember a funny thing- there were a lot of strange incidents- one farmer had set a single-bar plow he had been using to furrow out some potato ground up against a gate post. The cyclone twisted the post out of the ground and tore it to pieces, but after the storm the plow was found standing right where it had been put." IN THOSE days the town was full of barns, with hay mows. The cyclone played pranks with these, sticking hay straws here and there in unbelievable places. Mr. Bishop remembers seeing the east bank of Silvercreek sticking full of big nails, some driven farther than their heads, into the dirt. Asked about what time of the day the tornado hit, he said he remembered it as about 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon. This man who saw the storm and was indeed 20 years old at the time, remembers it vividly. When the journal reporter asked about the rebuilding that followed, Mr. Bishop spoke with enthusiasm about the pluck and courage and alacrity of the people. "Why, in two years time nobody could have ever told there had been a storm" he exclaimed. HISTORY records that the storm which began at Miamisburg and sped eastward, wrecking the OSSO Home en route, first hit Jamestown at the fairgrounds on the west side of town. "The fury of the storm was along Xenia Street; turning sharply to the right it swept down a cross street turning again to the left, passing out into the country." "Churches seemed especially to be singled out for vengeance. The Methodist church was reported a total wreck; the colored Methodist church was almost destroyed, the Presbyterian and Christian churches were badly damaged. Scarcely anything like the vestige of a building was left on the site of the Baptist church. The public school a new two story school was wrecked, as was also the town hall, which had been built but a short time before at considerable expense." Houses more or less seriously damaged numbered 187; about 600 left homeless. AS EVIDENCE; of the fury of the storm, "some of the goods from Jamestown's stores was sucked out by the wind and later found at Jeffersonville, seven miles distant." One published story of the tornado states. It was not until Tuesday- two days after the storm-that word concerning it reached Dayton.
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