The New Madrid Earthquake

The New Madrid EarthquakeAuthor(s): Margaret RossSource: The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Summer, 1968), pp. 83-104Published by: Arkansas Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40018501 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 11:28

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Arkansas Historical Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheArkansas Historical Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.111 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 11:28:01 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=arkha

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40018501?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


The New Madrid Earthquake By MARGARET ROSS

JL\| ATURE WENT BESERK IN 1811, AND DID SO MANY STRANGE

things that it is small wonder that many people thought the end of the world was at hand. Summer came to the upper Mississippi Valley in mid-winter, stayed several weeks, and then rapidly retreated, as the temperature plunged from a balmy 78 degrees to a frigid 10 degrees below zero in four days time at St. Louis in January. Twice during the winter, traffic on the Mississippi River was stopped because the river froze from bank to bank, a sight the oldest inhabitants had never seen.1 On January 30, near the island of St. Michael in the Azores of the North Atlantic, a submarine volcano shot up out of the ocean and created the solid island of Sabrina, crowned by a volcanic mountain with an active crater in its center, 320 feet above sea level.2 Spring brought an unusually disastrous flood of the Mississippi and other western rivers, and the stagnation in its wake produced unprecedented illness.3 The great comet of 1811 streaked spectacularly through the heavens, generating superstitious fears among its beholders until it disappeared in the fall. Even the more sophisticated were apprehensive when thou- sands of squirrels evacuated their northern forests and made a mass migration to the south, as if instinctively running from some terror beyond human ken, with an urge to escape so strong that it could not be checked even by the broad

1H. M. Brackenridge, Views of Louisiana; Containing Geographical Statis- tical and Historical Notices of that Vast and Important Portion of America (Baltimore: Printed by Schaeffer & Maund, 1817), 252.

2"An Earthquake or Two," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, XI (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1855), 799.

'Brackenridge, Views of Louisiana, 253-254; Charles Joseph Latrobe, The Rambler in North America (2 vols., London: R. B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1835), I, 102.



84 ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Ohio River, where many of them perished in attempting to cross.4

All these dramatic caprices of nature faded into insig- nificance in the early morning hours of Monday, December 16, 1811, when the people were rudely yanked out of their beds by the first shock of the New Madrid earthquake. Ac- cording to Myron L. Fuller, the geologist who wrote the definitive work on the earthquake, the centrum of the most destructive shocks was on a northeast-southwest line extend- ing from a point west of New Madrid, Missouri to a point a few miles north of the present town of Parkin, Arkansas, but there is some evidence that the centrum of some of the later and lighter shocks may have been further up the Mississippl.5 The area most seriously affected extended from a point west of Cairo on the north to the latitude of Mem- phis on the south, a distance of more than 100 miles, and from Crowley's Ridge on the west to the Chickasaw Bluffs on the east, a distance of more than 50 miles. Here Fuller saw pronounced earthquake phenomena a century later, such as domes and sunk lands, fissures, sinks, sand blows, and extensive landslides. Some damage was done slightly beyond those boundaries, and one island disappeared as far south as the vicinity of Vicksburg.

The peripheral area, where the shocks could be felt without instruments, covered more than 1,000,000 square miles, half the area of the United States. The tremors were reported as far north as Upper Canada, northwest between the headwaters of the Arkansas and Missouri rivers, southwest in the Red River and Ouachita settlements, south as far as New Orleans, northeast at Detroit, and to the east at Washington and Boston.6

The earthquake has been dubbed with the name of a village in Missouri in the upper end of the affected area,

*Latrobe, Rambler in North America, I, 102. BMyron L. Fuller, The New Madrid Earthquake. Bulletin 494, United

States Geological Survey (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1912), 104-105.

Hbid., 16-17.



THE NEW MADRID EARTHQUAKE 85

because it and the settlement of Little Prairie, a few miles below, now known as Caruthersville, Missouri, were the only settlements of any appreciable size within the area of extensive damage. Although parts of several neighboring states were damaged, the largest area of destruction was in Arkansas.

The affected area in northeast Arkansas was sparsely settled, but there were more people living there than has been generally supposed. Our only means of estimating its population is the 1810 census, an apparently incomplete enumeration taken approximately a year before the earthquake began. Only two enumerators were appointed for all of Arkansas. Benjamin Fooy was assigned to enumerate the people in the settlements of Hopefield and those near the mouth of the St. Francis River, and Daniel Mooney the settlements of the Arkansas River.7 If these assignments were taken literally, the remote settlements were not enumerated, and the total number of inhabitants listed, 1,062, was not accurate. Fooy enumerated 188 people in his two settlements, of which 78 were white people over 16, 81 were white children under 16, and 29 were slaves.8 This figure seems a bit too high for just the two neighborhoods assigned to Fooy, but since this census is not extant, we cannot study the names listed to determine how far from his own home at Hopefield the enumerator went. But it seems safe to say that at least 188 people lived in the affected area in northeast Arkansas, and probably more, considering the imper- fections of the census and the slow but steady migration to the western country.

We cannot discover that any of the Arkansans ever wrote anything about their experiences in the earthquake, or that any curious traveler ever interviewed one of them on the subject for publication, except Thomas Nuttall, who

7Thomas Maitland Marshall (ed.), The Life and Papers of Frederick Bates (2 vols., St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1926), II, 142-144, 148- 149.

8Clarence Edwin Carter (ed.), The Territorial Papers of the United States, Vol. XIV, The Territory of Louisiana-Missouri 1806-1814 (Wash- ington: United States Government Printing Office, 1949), 431.




got enough information from two families at Big Prairie to make one sentence in his book.9 I have found only one who casually referred to it in later years.10

Probably nobody in the affected area had ever been in an earthquake before, certainly not one of this magnitude in the same locality. There was a tradition among the Indians of a great earthquake that had devastated the same region, which a prominent geologist who visited the area 35 years later considered highly unlikely, since he saw no physical evidence of an earlier disturbance.11 However, one traveler on the river while the 1811 earthquake was in progress wrote, "I landed often, and on the main shore as well as on several islands, found evident traces of prior eruptions."12 Myron Fuller, who examined the country a century later, also found evidence of an earlier earthquake that was at least as bad as this one, and probably worse. He did not attempt to date it, but said trees fully 200 years old were growing out of the old fissures.13

There is no volcanic activity in the area, but one traveler in 1838 heard of a slightly thermal spring within 15 miles of the Black home at or near Jackson, in Lawrence County.14 However, there had been a little minor seismic activity in the locality, which was regarded merely as a curiosity. Subterranean explosions had been heard on the

9Thomas Nuttall, A Journal of Travels Into the Arkansas Territory During the Year 1819 (Philadelphia: Printed and published by Thos. H. Palmer, 1821), 58.

10"Mississippius," in Arkansas Gazette, September 10, 1822, p. 2, c. 1. The writer had settled on the Mississippi in 1797, and said, "I have travelled through the country situated between the Mississippi and St. Francis, and before the earthquake it was a beautiful country of land, interspersed with rich prairies well adapted to the culture of cotton. Subsequent to the earthquake I have not seen this country."

"Sir Charles Lyell, A Second Visit to the United States of North America

(2 vols., New York: Harper & Brothers; London: John Murray, 1849), II, 180.

"William Leigh Pierce, in The Weekly Messenger (Boston), February 28, 1812, p. 4.

13Fuller, New Madrid Earthquake, 12. 14Charles Daubeny, Journal of a Tour Through the United States, and

in Canada, Made During the Years 1837-38 (Oxford: Printed by T. Combs, Printer to the University, 1843), 169.




St. Francis and in the White River country prior to 1811. One writer who was in southeast Missouri between May and November of 1810 gave this description, "The sound is like that of a cannon or distant thunder; and the earth and rocks appear to have been convulsed as though by the force of gun powder. The rocks blown up, are glazed with a shin- ing matter, of metallic appearance." The same phenomenon had also been observed further south, on the Sabine, the Ouachita, and other western streams.15

It was this same sound considerably magnified that awakened the people about two o'clock on the morning of December 16, and an instant later the earth's surface began to tremble, roll, and burst open. There were two distinct types of motion, horizontal and vertical. In the horizontal shocks, there was an undulation of the ground that re- sembled huge ocean waves traveling from southwest to northeast, separated by visible depressions, making it impossible for a person to stand, much less walk. The waves increased in height until they burst open, as if exploding, shooting lukwarm water, sand, and coal as high as the tree- tops. The vertical shocks had the "explosions" and other openings of the earth without the undulation. Flashes of light resembling lightning are mentioned, and after each explosion, a dark, sulphurous vapor filled the air.16

A few light shocks followed the first big one, and about sunrise another hard shock came. During the next few days there were shocks at short intervals, gradually decreasing in intensity, and on January 23, 1812, there was another hard shock very much like the first one. The hardest shock of all came on February 7.17

1BBrackenridge, Views of Louisiana, 7-8, 131. Although this book was not published until 1817, it was written in 1812. The Missouri part apparently was written from material gathered in 1810 at St. Louis, New Madrid, and other points in Missouri, and the earthquake was not mentioned.

16Nearly all the source material mentions these phenomena. Some of the best accounts are reproduced in whole or in part in Garland C. Broad- head, "The New Madrid Earthquake," The American Geologist, XXX

(August, 1902), 76-87. "Fuller, New Madrid Earthquake, 10-11.




The fissures produced by the earthquake were a fright- ening sight, and some were made even more so by such things as giant oak trees split up the center, with half a tree on each side of the fissure.18 The people soon observed that the fissures were all opening in the same direction, and they felled the tallest trees to lie at right angles to the chasms, and considered them a place of safety when hard shocks came. This ingenious plan saved many lives, although sometimes fissures appeared underneath the felled trees.1*

In the woods, the undulations caused trees to lean towards the earth, and their boughs became interlocked with those of other trees that were also bent down, so that they could not right themselves when the undulation passed.20

Most of the houses in this part of the country were log cabins, the type of construction least likely to be destroyed by the undulations, but most of the houses at New Madrid were thrown down.21 The cemetery at New Madrid was pushed or dropped into the river.22 At Cape Girardeau, the log cabins apparently withstood the shocks better than the brick construction work, for all the chimneys were either shaken down or cracked, and two fine brick buildings that were not quite finished were left in ruins.23

The earthquake premanently elevated the land in some places, and permanently lowered the surface of the earth in others. What is known as "the sunk lands" were

18Broadhead, "New Madrid Earthquake," American Geologist, XXX, 78, quoting J. W. Foster's Physical Geography of the Mississippi Valley, whose information came from A. N. Dillard of New Madrid.

19Ibid., 87, quoting Lucien Carr's History of Missouri; Lyell, Second Visit to the United States, II, 177; Timothy Flint, Recollections of the Last Ten Years, Passed in Occasional Residences and Journeyings in the Valley of the Mississippi, from Pittsburg and the Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico, and From Florida to the Spanish Frontier; in a Series of Letters to the Rev. James Flint, of Salem, Massachusetts (Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, and Company, 1826), 226.

20Lyell, Second Visit to the United States, II, 175. 21Flint, Recollections, 222. 22Ibid.; Lyell, Second Visit to the United States, II, 174. 23Undated diary of Stephen F. Austin [May 17-19, 1819?], in Eugene

C. Barker (ed.), The Austin Papers, Part I of Annual Report of the Ameri- can Historical Association for the Year 1919 (2 vols., Washington: Govern- ment Printing Office, 1924), II, 206.



Map depicting the form of channels of the Sunk Land district along the St. Francis River in Northeastern Arkansas.



THE NEW MADRID EARTHQUAKE g9

submerged by the hardest shock on February 7, 1812.24 The sunk lands that can still be identified as such today are limited to the flat bottom lands of the Mississippi, Little, and St. Francis rivers.25 In these areas, the undulations of the earth loosened the roots of very old trees and eventually this killed them, so that the forests of dead trees later marked the locations of sunk lands.26

The sudden changes in the level of the earth's surface drained some lakes in a matter of minutes. Probably the largest of these was Lake Eulalie, west of New Madrid, about 300

yards long by 100 yards wide.27 New lakes were created with the same dramatic swiftness, including Obion and Reelfoot lakes in Tennessee, Flag Lake and others in Missouri, and a

great many in Arkansas, among them Golden Lake near Wilson, Tyronza and Crooked lakes, and Little Black Fish Lake near Parkin, Big Lake, Lake St. Francis, and others.28

There are many interesting accounts of the earthquake in the peripheral areas, where the shocks were felt dis-

tinctly, but where little or no damage was done. One of these was told to a traveler at Hot Springs in 1843 by an old hunter, who had camped about 12 miles from Hot Springs and was sleeping on the ground when he was awakened by the first big shock. The ground must have been undulating considerably, because he found it impossible to walk. His two companions slept through it, and refused to believe him when he told them about it. They said he had dreamed he was drunk, but they had to back down when another hard shock came while they were eating breakfast.29

In the most affected area, there was great panic. Many of the people in the towns (Newr Madrid and Little Prairie)

"Horace Jewell, History of Methodism in Arkansas (Little Rock: Press

Printing Co., 1892), 24. 2BFuller, New Madrid Earthquake, 68.

26Lyell, Second Visit to the United States, II, 178. "Ibid., 180. 28Fuller, New Madrid Earthquake, 66; Edward M. Shepard, "The New

Madrid Earthquake," The Journal of Geology, XIII (University of Chicago Press, 1905), 50.

^Arkansas Gazette, May 31, 1843.




fled to the country, some trying to reach the east side of the Mississippi where the devastation seemed less. In Jan- uary, all but two families left New Madrid, leaving all their

possessions behind, to be carried away by travelers on flatboats.30 Evidently some returned, for we are told that in the winter of 1812-1813, they lived in tents on the outskirts of the town, being afraid to return to their damaged houses.31

It would be difficult to say whether the earthquake was more terrifying on land or on the river. Virtually all the traffic on the Mississippi was downstream traffic, and most was headed for New Orleans. Most of the river travelers of the period used the simplest kind of homemade flat- bottomed boat, sometimes with a small cabin to provide shelter from the weather, and often with a canoe or skiff tied to it for landing or investigating stretches where the navigation was tricky. The flatboats were propelled by the current, and oars were used only to steer them or to push them away from snags, sandbars, and other obstructions. After their cargoes had been disposed of at their destina- tions, the flatboats were sold for their lumber or simply abandoned, because to bring them back upstream by cor- delling was so difficult it was not worth the effort.

The first step towards a change that would be a long time developing was taken in October of 1811, when the steamboat New Orleans, the first to navigate the Mississippi, left Pittsburgh where it had been built, for Natchez, in charge of its builder, Nicholas Roosevelt of New York. The boat was taking on coal from an exposed vein about five miles above the Yellow Banks, on the Indiana side, when squatters living in the vicinity brought the news that they had heard strange noises and felt the earth tremble, and had seen the shores shake the preceding day. Continuing the journey, the people aboard saw large sections of the bank tear loose and fall into the river that evening. On the second

80Broadhead, "New Madrid Earthquake," American Geologist, XXX, 80, quoting Godfrey LeSieur.

*Hbid., 87.




day after leaving the Yellow Banks, the pilot said he was lost, finding the channel so changed that he no longer knew where to find the deep water. A large island he had hoped to moor to that night had disappeared, and finally at dark he found a small one. The steamboat was then near the mouth of the Ohio, and had missed the worst part of the first few days of the earthquake, although its passengers had seen enough terrifying sights to keep them enter- tained.

About noon the next day, the steamboat reached New Madrid, where pandemonium prevailed. Some of the people of the town begged to be taken aboard, but they were refused because there were not enough supplies on the New Orleans to feed them. Others were more afraid of the steamboat than of the earthquake, and they hid as it approached.

The New Orleans reached Natchez at the end of the first week in January. Having passed through the devastated area between the hard shocks, the steamboat had no particularly bad experiences with the earthquake itself, and its main problem was the navigation of the altered channel, through a maze of shoals, snags, and sawyers.82

The flatboats were less fortunate. At the time of the first shock, the river bank at New Madrid was lined with these boats. According to Eliza Bryan:

At first the Mississippi seemed to recede from its banks, its waters gathered up like mountains, leaving boats high upon the sands. The water then moved in- ward with a front wall 15 to 20 feet perpendicular and tore the boats from their moorings and carried them up a creek closely packed for a quarter of a mile. The river fell as rapidly as it had risen, and receded within its banks with such violence that it took with it the grove of cottonwood trees which hedged its borders. They were broken off with such regularity that in some instances persons who had not witnessed the fact could

32E. W. Gould, Fifty Years on the Mississippi; or, Gould's History of River Navigation (St. Louis: Nixon-Jones Printing Co., 1889), 82-87; Latrobe, Rambler in North America, I, 102-111; Jewell, Methodism in Arkansas, 24.




with difficulty be persuaded that it was not the work of art.33

This was the retrograde current that was one of the most impressive of the river phenomena, and it became even more impressive in the retelling of the story. Eliza Bryan, an eye witness, said it lasted only a few minutes.34 Latrobe, who was not present but had letters from some-

body who was on the steamboat, did not mention the retro-

grade current in connection with the steamboat, but re- marked that a quarter of a century later there were people who were on the river during the earthquake who still spoke of the river's running towards its sources for an entire hour.35 Senator Lewis F. Linn, who lived at Ste. Genevieve but did not indicate whether he was there during the earth-

quake, said 25 years later that it lasted several hours.36 My own mother, who was a child in West Tennessee 100 years after the earthquake, tells me that she was given to under- stand that the river ran upstream for three full days!

Significantly, the accounts written by people who were in flatboats on the river, except those right at New Madrid, do not mention a retrograde current. On the contrary, they speak of the increase in the rapidity of the current in its usual southward direction, that hastened them on their way downstream with terrifying speed.37

Yet we have the accounts of the flatboats at New Madrid that were shot up the tributary bayou. Timothy Flint, who gathered his information at New Madrid eight years later, attributed this to a bursting of the earth just below the village,38

It appears that the retrograde current was a purely local

83Broadhead, "New Madrid Earthquake,'* American Geologist, XXX, 77. a*/6tU, 76. 85Latrobe, Rambler tn North America, ill. "Senator Lewis F. linn to Mr. Davis, chairman of the committee on

commerce, Washington City, February 1, 1836, quoted in full in Alphonso Wetmore, Gazetteer of the State of Missouri (St. Louis, 1837), 139.

S7Pierce, in Weekly Messenger, February 28, 1812, p. 4; Gould, Fifty Years on the Mississippi, 161, quoting Capt. John Davis.

a8Flint, Recollections, 223-224.




phenomenon, occurring only in the vicinity of large fissures

opening in the river bed, but it may have happened at many points along the course of the stream. Myron Fuller mini- mizes the retrograde current. Admitting that the ejection of water from the fissures opening and closing in the river bed undoubtedly caused large waves that moved in part against the current, he said that it is probable that "the movement of the water was retrograde for the moment, at least in shallow water."39 Obviously, the reason the published accounts written by people on the boats failed to mention it must be that these people did not happen to be at the right spot at the right moment to experience it.

Of all the river accounts seen, I found the one by Wil- liam Leigh Pierce the most interesting, because it was written in Arkansas on Christmas day, only nine days after the first shock; was published in New York and Boston within two months after the first shock, being the earliest of all the published accounts; includes a few details not found in the others, some of which would have been particularly helpful to Fuller, who had the proper scientific background to evaluate them; and because it has been almost completely overlooked. It was not cited by any of the Nineteenth Cen- tury writers, and apparently by only one in this century, presumably because it was lost in the obscurity of newspaper and pamphlet publication.40

Pierce wrote most of his account at Big Prairie, 761 miles from New Orleans. He mentioned no settlements here

"Fuller, New Madrid Earthquake, 91.

40Floyd C. Shoemaker, then secretary of the State Historical Society of Missouri, to Margaret Ross, August 19, 1958, stated that the only reference to the Pierce account in any of the earthquake material in the Society's collection was in the article, F. A. Sampson, "The New Madrid and Other

Earthquakes in Missouri," Missouri Historical Review, VII (July, 1913), 179- 199. The version cited was an extremely rare pamphlet, William Leigh Pierce et al., An Account of the Great Earthquake in the Western States, Particularly on the Mississippi River, December 16-23, 181 1. Collected from facts (Newburyport, 1812), 16pp. Apparently this was a reprint of the news-

paper version, which was addressed to the editor of the New -York Evening Post and copied from that paper by The Weekly Messenger of Boston, February 28, 1812. In the Messenger, a copy of which is in my library, the account runs the equivalent of four full newspaper columns.




or elsewhere, but Thomas Nuttall found two families at

Big Prairie in 1818 who had been there in 1811. All the other houses in this settlement were swept away when a sudden encroachment of the river carried off a strip of land more than a quarter of a mile wide.41

Except for Big Prairie, Pierce gave locations according to their distance from the mouth of the Ohio, and in every case they agree with the distance given in the standard river

guide of the period, usually called Cramer's Navigator, the then current edition published in 181 1.42 I have used the same book to study his account, and as a bit of lagniappe, I found in the margins a brief manuscript journal of one Edward Hollander, who traveled down the Mississippi in

April of 1814, and a few of his notes help to determine some of the changes made in the river by the earthquake.43

Pierce saw most of the affected area along the Mis-

sissippi, including all the Arkansas part, while the earth-

quake was in progress. With remarkable presence of mind, every time a shock came, he wrote down the time and the number and intensity of the shocks. Having no way to meas- ure the shocks scientifically, he did the best he could with adjectives, leaving the reader to decide for himself whether "a very severe shock" was worse than "a violent shock," or "a great and awful shock," or "a long and dreadful shock," or "a long and tremendous shock."

The superstitious will find it interesting that he entered the Mississippi at the mouth of the Ohio on Friday, the 13th of December. The battle of Tippecanoe had been fought recently, and fearing that it might have stirred up the In-

41Nuttall, Journal of Travels, 58. *2The Navigator: Containing Directions for Navigating the Monon-

gahela, Allegheny, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers .(. . To which is added, An

Appendix, Containing an account of Louisiana. ... 7th Edition (Pittsburgh: Printed and published by Cramer, Spear & Eichbaum, 1811).

4sThe copy in the J. N. Heiskell Collection, Arkansas Gazette Founda- tion, Little Rock, has two names written on the inside of the front cover. Thomas Rutters, at the top, evidently was the first owner of the book. The name Edw. Hollander is written beneath Rutters' name, in the same hand- writing as that of the unsigned marginal notes.




dians along the route, several flatboats stayed close together for mutual protection. Some other writers also mention this concentration of boats, and one says there were about 40, evidently strung out for some distance.44

After passing the villages of New Madrid and Little Prairie, Pierce tied his boat up on the night of December 15 on the west bank, 116 miles below the mouth of the Ohio. The Navigator shows the two-mile-long Island 20 on the left shore at this point. At 2 o'clock the next morning, he and his companions were awakened by "the violent and con- vulsive agitation of the boats, accompanied by a noise similar to that which would have been produced by running over a sandbar." Thinking the Indians had cut their boats loose, they checked and found they were still securely moored. Pierce then decided it probably was an earthquake, and this was confirmed by three shocks in quick succession, lasting eight minutes. Tremendous and uninterrupted explosions resembling artillery fire were heard from the opposite shore, and were at the time attributed to the caving in of the river banks. Daylight and other shocks revealed it as the explosive discharge of what Pierce called combustible matter, and by a similar discharge or spouting of mud, sticks, and debris from the bed of the river. A few yards away, a large oak tree was snapped in two and its top thrown to the edge of the river.

Under the best of conditions, it was unwise to try to navigate the Mississippi after dark, and the new obstructions increased the danger, so they stayed where they were until daylight. Pierce took time at daybreak to go ashore and examine the land. He found nothing noteworthy except a fissure about 20 feet from the river bank. They left their landing place just before the hard shock of 7 a. m., when they saw the bank to which they had moored their boat crash into the river, along with huge trees that would have killed them if they had stayed there.

"Gould, Fifty Years on the Mississippi, 160; Conclins' New River Guide, or A Gazetteer of all the Towns on the Western Waters . . . (Cincinnati: H. S. & J. Applegate, 1850), 88.




The sights they saw that day would have made a good nightmare. The shocks continued all day, and the agitation of the river bed caused the water to boil and churn. There was constant fear that one of the many spouts might appear under the boat, with terrifying results the passengers would not live to tell. Trees that had been at the bottom of the river for years shot upwards, some merely to float on the surface, and others thrown up so high and coming down with such force that they were literally planted upside down in the river. Other trees were torn from the forests and thrown flat or replanted at grotesque angles. One that was fully three feet in diameter was partially shattered, traveled more than 100 yards, and came to rest standing upright in the river bed.

Pierce's boat traveled 52 miles between 7 a. m- and 4 p. m. on the first day of the earthquake, averaging about six knots per hour. At flood stage, the Mississippi's current usually was four or five knots per hour, but the river was low when the earthquake began. According to Pierce, the speed of the current was increased for two days, then dropped back to normal, and the stage of the river fell with astonishing rapidity. Capt. John Davis said the water rose eight feet from the first shock until about 8 o'clock the same day, and the current ran seven or eight miles an hour. His boat traveled 35 miles in five hours and 25 minutes.45

On the first day, Pierce passed the Bayou River about 13 miles below his starting point, and said the ruin was extensive and general a little below there, especially on the Arkansas side. At Long Reach (also called Canadian Reach), 16 miles below Bayou River, he found a regular forest of roots and trees brought up from the bed of the river. On the evening of the 16th, he fastened his boat to some willows at the end of an island, and stayed there on the 17th and 18th. Here he examined some of the circular depressions or sink holes formed by the spouts, one of which was 16 feet deep and 63 feet in circumference.

4BGould, Fifty Years an the Mississippi, 161.



2j

CA)

c

<

QJ *-»

I O Z o

C «x

C

U-i

O w

I

O

X,

o




Continuing downstream on the 19th, he found great destruction and increased impediments in the river at and near Island 33 (Flour Island). The river was nearly im- passable at the Devil's Race Ground 19 miles below that, and also at the Devil's Elbow another 21 miles further. Be- low this point, the destruction was much less, and in fact, Pierce saw no material damage below that place, although he said the block house at Fort Pickering, almost a solid mass of hewn timber, trembled like an aspen leaf. The Big Prairie settlement, where he wrote most of his narrative on Christ- mas day, was three miles below the mouth of the St. Francis.

On January 13, after his arrival at New Orleans, he added a short postscript, telling what he had heard from others. Indians from the Ouachita country had brought word to Walnut Hills above Natchez that the Burning Mountain up the Ouachita River had been "rent to its base."

Not all the islands in the Mississippi were on the charts, and it is possible that some of the uncharted islands were among those completely destroyed by the earthquake. Those we can be sure disappeared were Island 32 just above Flour Island and Island 94, called Crow's Nest Island, a beautiful but very small island not more than half a mile in circumference, about the middle of the Nine Mile Reach above Vicksburg.46

Captain Sarpy of St. Louis and his family were on a flatboat tied to Island 94, and discovered that a party of river pirates occupied a part of the island. Perceiving that they planned to rob him, he quietly dropped downstream during the night. After the first shock on December 16, Sarpy saw that the island and the pirates had disappeared, and he presumed that they had been killed.47

Stephen F. Austin, who passed through New Madrid and Cape Girardeau in May of 1812, said the river rose 15 feet in an instant during the severe shock of February 7,

*6Cramer's Navigator, with marginal Mss. notes by Edward Hollander, 185, 203, in copy in Heiskell Collection.

47Broadhead, "New Madrid Earthquake, * American Geologist, XXX, 83.




bringing water all around and in some of the houses, causing another panic among the people of New Madrid, who

thought the whole country was sinking. A kind of falls similar to the falls of the Ohio was created about six miles above New Madrid, making navigation very dangerous. But it was only built-up sand, and the spring floods washed it

away.48 William Leigh Pierce recorded 89 shocks from Decem-

ber 16 through December 23. Dr. Daniel Drake at Cincin- nati attempted to classify the shocks according to intensity. So did Jared Brooks at Louisville, who recorded 1,874 shocks between December 22 and March 15.49

The duration of this earthquake seems to be debatable. There were no destructive shocks after February 7, 1812, but for at least a year afterwards there were small shocks a few days apart.50 The tremors during 1812 are generally considered a part of the same seismic activity, but this was

by no means the end of the tremors, and no authority I have seen mentions a definite ending date for the New Madrid earthquake. In 1816, they were still coming every week or so, and sometimes two or three in one day.61 Tim- othy Flint, who spent the winter of 1819-1820 at New Madrid, noted that often conversations were momentarily interrupted by "the distant and hollow thunder of the ap- proaching earthquake.52 In 1837, a writer whose book was intended to attract prospective settlers to Missouri did New Madrid County no particular favor when he said the people there had become so accustomed to slight shocks that when they were awakened in the dead of night and realized it was only the earthquake again, they placidly turned over and went back to sleep.53 Slight tremors in the vicinity of

"Barker, Austin Papers, II, 207. "Broadhead, "New Madrid Earthquake," American Geologist, XXX, 87. "Fuller, New Madrid Earthquake, 10-11. "Broadhead, "New Madrid Earthquake," American Geologist, XXX, 78,

quoting Eliza Bryan. "Flint, Recollections, 229. c8Wetmore, Gazetteer of Mtssourt, 131.



THE NEW MADRID EARTHQUAKE QQ

New Madrid were noted in a river guide of 1850.54 Earth- quake shocks in northeast Arkansas were mentioned at intervals in the Arkansas Gazette over a long period of years, but these are not associated with the New Madrid earthquake, although some caused old timers to recall it.55

According to a study by George C. Branner and J. M. Hansell, there were earthquakes in northeast Arkansas at the rate of one every 6.7 months from the time scientific measurement began in the area in 1 909 until the date of the study in 1931. Of all the earthquakes affecting Arkansas during those years, 95% affected northeast Arkansas, and only 8% affected the whole state. These writers suggested that the continuation of small shocks of low intensity may probably prevent the building up of earth stresses that would produce an earthquake of great severity.56

Everybody had his own theory about the cause of the New Madrid earthquake. James Dennis, who had just dug up a skeleton he thought was an Indian, thought at first that it was the Indian turning over. A ten-year-old boy who had spent the previous day gathering hazel nuts in the woods near New Madrid considered himself personally responsible, and that the earthquake was God's way of showing his dis- pleasure because he had gathered nuts on the Sabbath. As soon as daylight came, he emptied the nuts on the ground behind a stump near his house.57

Another man with a guilty conscience thought it was caused by the reaction of chemicals on copper he had buried to allow it to undergo a process for making counterfeit money. John Bradbury mentioned that some people thought the earth was caught in the tail of the comet and was trying to dislodge itself. Many were sure it was the beginning of the end of the world, and religion came to many hardened sinners. While others considered the earthquake region a

^Conclins* New River Guide, 90. BBDaily Arkansas Gazette, September 18, 1877, January 16, 1878. "George C. Branner and J. M. Hansell, Earthquake Risks in Arkansas.

Information Circular 4, Arkansas Geological Survey (Little Rock, 1933), 1. ^Jewell, Methodism in Arkansas, 26.




good place to avoid, many preachers moved into the area to

gather the lost sheep. Some could not resist taking advantage of the opportunities the earthquake offered to put fear to work in their favor. For instance, Rev. James Finley jumped onto a table during a shock and yelled, "For the great day of His wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?"

probably with remarkably good effect. The increase in mem-

bership in the Methodist Church alone in the area jumped from 30,741 in 1811 to 45,983 in 1812, far out of proportion to the increases elsewhere. These figures are for the Western Conference in 1811, which was divided into the Tennessee and Ohio Conferences in 1812.58

The opinions of scientists on the causes of the earthquake have almost as much variety as the guesses of the ignorant, though they are less colorful. Since the volcanic theory was the one most generally understood, it was for a time the most popular explanation, but there were some even then who could not accept it, among them Edwin James and Louis Bringier.59 Thomas Nuttall decided the active agent was the decomposition of a vast bed of lignite or wood- coal, situated near the level of the river and filled with pyrites.60

Edward M. Shepard, a geologist who worked under Myron L. Fuller in a study of the artesian waters of Missouri for the United States Geological Survey, made several trips into the sunk lands of Missouri and Arkansas in the summer of 1904. He recognized the possibility that a readjustment of fault lines in the Ozarks or in the Appalachians may have been the primary cause, and said the escape of gas caused by decaying organic matter may have had something to do with certain phenomena of the earthquake, particularly the sulphurous vapors mentioned by most of the eye witnesses. But he thought the main cause was "the great artesian pres-

88 Walter Brownlow Posey, "The Earthquake of 1811 and Its Influence on Evangelistic Methods in the Churches of the Old South," reprinted from The Tennessee Historical Magazine, Series II, Vol. 1, No. 2, (January, 1931), 3-7.

"Fuller, New Madrid Earthquake, 102-103. 60Nuttall, Journal of Travels, 53.



THE NEW MADRID EARTHQUAKE 1Q1

sure from below, which slowly undermined, for centuries, the super incumbent beds of clay by the steady removal of the sand through innumerable springs. A slight earthquake wave would destroy the equilibrium of a region thus undermined, resulting in the sinking of some areas, and the eleva- tion of others. . . ."61

Fuller at first accepted Shepard's theory, which he re- phrased as either a new fault or a readjustment of an old one in the Ozark mountains. But further study convinced him that "inasmuch as the center of activity of the primary shocks is within the embayment area and well removed from the surrounding areas of consolidated rocks, it seems clear that the ultimate cause lies in forces operating beneath the embayment deposits. The action may be associated either with the processes of folding or warping or incident to a depression and deepening of the basin."62

Branner and Hansell, in their 1931 study, attributed it to movements in the basement rocks underlying the Gulf Coastal Plain.63

There seems to be a tendency to evaluate the importance of earthquakes according to the number of lives lost and the amount of property destruction. References are found to a very few deaths on land and a larger number on the river, but in every case they are somewhat idefinite and it would be impossible to make a satisfactory estimate of the number of people killed by the New Madrid earthquake. Certainly the number was not large. The buildings damaged or destroyed were mostly log cabins of negligible value, and the extensive damage to the land itself does not seem to have impressed the scholars of the period except as a curiosity, probably because most of it was unimproved. This is probably the reason that the first edition of the Encyclo- paedia Americana, published in 13 volumes during the mid- 1830's, completely ignored the New Madrid earthquake.

Nevertheless, there were those who even then recog- ^Shepard, "New Madrid Earthquake," Journal of Geology, XIII, 46, 61. «2Fuller, New Madrid Earthquake, 104-105. «3Branner and Hansell, Earthquake Risks in Arkansas, 1.




nized its importance. Timothy Flint concluded in 1819-1820 that it equalled anything of its kind that had ever been recorded.64 The naturalist Alexander von Humboldt said it was "one of the few examples of incessant quaking of the ground for several successive months far away from any volcano/' and the "most extended earthquake ever felt in the United States."65 Modern geologists classify it as one of the 20 greatest earthquakes of the world and the most severe that has occurred in the United States in historic times. It is given the highest intensity rating of X (ten) on the Rossi-Forel scale, which measures intensity of the shocks.66

An earthquake in Venezuela began about the same time, and many people erroneously associated it with the New Madrid earthquake. It was minor until March 26, 1812, when the big shocks came, destroying Caracas, the capital city, and La Guayra, the chief seaport, and burying 10,000 people in the ruins. When the news reached Washington, Congress immediately appropriated $50,000 for provisions to be rushed to the suffering survivors.67

The New Madrid earthquake was felt in Washington, D. C, where houses shook, doors and windows rattled, furni- ture trembled in the rooms, and people became slightly dizzy from the tremors,68 but Congress was not immediately moved to expend its benevolence on the devastated part of its own country.

The St. Francis River had a much gentler current than the Mississippi which was particularly swift and hard to ascend in the stretch between the mouth of the St. Francis and New Madrid. Before the earthquake, many travelers preferred to go upstream as far as New Madrid by way of

^Flint, Recollections, 222.

6BJewell, Methodism in Arkansas, 23, 24. 66Branner and Hansell, Earthquake Risks tn Arkansas, 3, 4, 9. 67"An Earthquake or Two," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, XI, 799-

800; Bolles, "Earthquake Law," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, XLIII

(New York, 1871), 580.

*8Eugene Lawrence, "The Lands of the Earthquake," Harper's New

Monthly Magazine, XXXVIII (New York, 1869), 480.




the St. Francis. The earthquake made this impossible. Ac- cording to one writer, large keel boats could pass up the St. Francis 300 mites or so to a portage about 12 miles back of New Madrid, and cart their cargoes overland to the town. But the earthquake completely obstructed the channel of the St. Francis and spread its water over the great swamp, although it was still navigable about two-thirds of its former distance in high waters.69 Another writer says the keel boats came up the St. Francis and passed into the Mississippi three miles below New Madrid, by way of a small bayou. The earthquake made dry land of the bayou that made this possible.70

After the earthquake, the trip from Arkansas to New Madrid and St. Louis had to be made by land through the damaged area because of the changes in the St. Francis and the difficulty of traveling upstream on the Mississippi, now more than ever filled with obstructions. It was between 400 and 500 miles from Arkansas Post to St. Louis by land, which worked a great hardship on people who had to go to St. Louis to record their land claims. On August 2, 1813, Con- gress passed an act giving them additional time to do this.71

The town of New Madrid was the county seat of New Madrid County, which included the old District of Arkansas after October, 18 12,72 and it was about 200 miles from Ar- kansas Post ordinarily, but by the circuitous route necessary to travel after the earthquake it was about 300 miles. This meant that attendance at court in New Madrid was now so difficult for Arkansas people that it virtually amounted to a denial of justice. So Congress passed an act on January 27, 1814, providing for an additional judge for the Territory of Missouri who would be required to live at or near the village of Arkansas. George Bullitt was appointed, and is said to be

«9Timothy Flint, The History and Geography of the Mississippi Valley (2 vols., Cincinnati: E. H. Flint and L. R. Lincoln, 1832), I, 178-179.

70Broadhead, "New Madrid Earthquake," American Geologist, XXX, 79, quoting J. W. Foster.

"Carter, Territorial Papers of the United States, XIV, 623-624, 694. "Ibid., 600.




the only man ever elevated to the bench by an earthquake.73 The act indemnifying those whose land had been

ruined by the earthquake by granting them an equal quantity of public lands was passed in February of 1815, after opposition from a Congressman who thought it was imprudent to set a precedent that might cause the people to expect indemnification for the ravages of all acts of God. Under this law, 515 location certificates were issued, and the intricacies of the law many times engaged the attention of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Attorney General, the General Land Office and its subordinate departments, and other agencies of the government.74 Only 20 of the New Madrid certificates were located by the original claimants, most of whom sold their claims to land speculators for a pittance.75

There can be no doubt that the earthquake had a pronounced adverse effect on the settlement of the devastated area. On April 20, 1814, William Russell said the affected part in northeast Arkansas had been "tolerably thickly inhabited" three years earlier, and was not surpassed any- where in Missouri Territory for fertility of soil, but almost all the people had deserted the place because of the damage done by the earthquake. He said the lands there would not bring any price, perhaps not even enough to pay for sur- veying them.76 This was in keeping with the opinion of Silas Bent 10 months earlier about the entire earthquake region.77

7ZIbid., 714; Bolles, "Earthquake Law," Harper's New Monthly Maga- zine, XLHI, 581-582.

7*Bolles, "Earthquake Law," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, XLJII, 580-584.

75Fuller, New Madrid Earthquake, 44. T6Carter, Territorial Papers of the United States, XIV, 755. 77Ibid., 684.



The New Madrid Earthquake

Documents

Transcript of The New Madrid Earthquake