1900 Storm of Galveston Part III

Notes on letter of Joseph Henry Hawley (referred to hereafter as JHH):

On Saturday, September 8, 1900 a hurricane swept in from the Gulf of Mexico, the center passing about thirty miles west of Galveston between noon and 8:30 p.m. Winds gusted at 120 miles per hour and the storm tide reached a height of fifteen feet between 8 and 9 p.m. The best estimate is that 6,000 people died and 3,600 homes were destroyed.

The first news the Willis family in the north had of the catastrophe came in a telegram on September 11th. On September 14th Short Adam wired his wife, Mary Carter Hawley Willis, who was in Marietta, Ohio, that another wire had been received from her father and all was well.

"During the 1900 storm in Galveston, Joseph Henry Hawley was appointed Commissioner of the Home Guard. This office carried not only the responsibility of safeguarding private property and identifying the dead, but also of disposing of the thousands of corpses. His vivid description of this tragedy was in a letter written to his wife Sarah, who at the time was visiting in New Jersey with their daughter, Mary Carter Hawley Willis. The original letter is in the Rosenburg Library in Galveston." from Chips From Old Blocks, Compiled by Richard Short Willis II and Genevieve Murphy Willis, p. 7.

JHH: "I superintended the handling of 500 bodies over the wharves at Galveston on to barges, whence they were taken out to sea, with weights attached to them and sunk, as only means, at that time, by which they could be disposed of."

"There were so many bodies that after a while the senses numbed, and the corpses seemed to be merely some sort of demented design. They were heaped together in the streets, strewn across vacant lots, sticking from mounds of wreckage , floating in shallow pools of the bay. Most were naked, mutilated and dashed beyond recognition. They hung like macabre ornaments from trees, trestles and telephone poles. One observer counted forty-three bodies dangling from the framework of a partially demolished railroad bridge. The horror and unspeakable suffering of the victims’ final moments were often preserved in ghastly frescoes of death."

From Galveston by Gary Cartwright, p. 176.

"At first, the burial details tried to dig trenches for mass disposals, but the ground was so saturated that the holes filled with water. Nest they decided on burial at sea. By Monday evening, the crews has collected seven hundred bodies, mostly naked, enough for three barges. A gang of fifty black men were on board at gunpoint, and the barges were towed eighteen miles into the Gulf. The corpses had to weighted and dumped, the next day the barge workers returned, ashen in color. Two days later, the body of a woman buried at sea with a two-hundred pound rock attached to her was discovered on the beach. Others shortly began to float ashore on the west end of the island. Following that grisly episode, workmen burned the bodies where they found them."

From The Great Storm & Technological Response, p. 130.

"The only solution, it became apparent, was immediate and wholesale burial at sea. All day Monday and Tuesday carts and wagons full of corpses plodded along the ravaged streets of Galveston, in the direction of the wharves, arms and legs protruding under tarpaulins. The job of loading the bodies onto barges and taking them to sea was so abhorrent that recruits had to rounded up at bayonet point and plied with whiskey. "An armed guard brought fifty Negroes to the barges and went on with them," wrote Father Kirwin, who help supply whiskey to the white volunteers. "The barges were taken out into the Gulf and remained there all night, until it was light enough for the Negroes to fasten weights and throw the bodies overboard. When the barges returned those Negroes were ashen in color." Two days later Father Kirwin’s face was similarly ashen. A member of his congregation came to the cathedral and told the priest: "My mother-in-law is back." "That’s impossible!" said Father Kirwin, reminding the man that they had dumped his mother-in-law’s weighted body eighteen miles out to sea. But she was back, as were the bodies of hundreds of others: they had washed up on beach overnight. The committee had to rethink its strategy."

From Galveston by Gary Cartwright, p. 179.

JHH: "at different points along the wreckage funeral pyres were erected and 10, 12, 14, to 16 bodies piled thereon, saturated with oil, and burned, while hundreds of bodies were burned in individual instances."

"Since it was no longer possible to haul decaying bodies through the streets, the committee decided to burn corpses on the spot. The bodies, and the mountain of debris created by the storm’s battering ram, were burned in sections. From one end of the Island to the other, funeral pyres burned night and day: at night you could see their glow from the mainland. No one alive during that terrible time would ever forget the sight, or the smell."

From Galveston by Gary Cartwright, p. 179.

"The days passed, and at night time observers on the mainland could see the long line of cremation fires glowing in the darkness across the water. There were no vultures in Galveston, and the pyres burned into November."

From The Great Storm & Technological Response, p. 132.

JHH: :Every man here has nerve and has tried to do his duty--the measure of it was that which he could do. For two days and two nights we stayed up not knowing even that we were tired, until we could go no further. Instances of courage and heroism are thick, for every man seemed to have the courage necessary to meet such an occasion.

Westmont Ranch, Montgomery, Texas. Home of Smart Highbrow Doc, son of Color Me Smart

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