bushels. It was a large, heavy, "Pennsylvania" barn, on a stone foundation. The barn was whirled to atoms. The stone and mortar under pinning, two feet thick and five feet deep, was torn out. $1,000 dollars worth of wool was blown into the trees for miles. A large threshing machine was torn to fragments; bolts, cylinder teeth, iron and wood work being torn apart and whirled no one knows where. His loss is about $16,000. rent. The house, barn, fences, trees; all were torn up and scattered far and wide. Dr. Tinker lost a portion of his house, but saved himself and family. He lost a valuable horse. His house was in the edge of the whirl. A boy ten years old was rolled past in the street; he ran out and saved his life. After administering to the sufferers in the village till nearly dark, he left Dr. Rusk to attend to village calls, and working all night within three miles of the place had cared for thirty-two wounded, some of them terribly and fatally, when sunrise. came next morning. Dr. Weeden lost a fine house and large barn stored full of tobacco. A lumber wagon was lifted from the front of Judge Terhune's barn and set down uninjured behind it. A buggy in the barn was sucked through the roof and Mr Gillett's family took refuge in a cellar. Lydia Gillett, aged twenty, ran up stairs to shut a door. In an instant the house was dashed into the woods and demolished. Miss Gillett was found dying in a plowed field. Those in the cellar escaped with slight bruises. Mr. Barstow's residence has disappeared. Himself and wife were killed. Mr. and Mrs. Drake, Mrs. Barstow's parents, he aged eighty-lashed to pieces against the ground near by. four, and she seventy-six, were found near by so badly bruised we doubt if they are alive now. Their son, Phineas Drake, was sawing wood for Col. Bierce, and was found twenty rods from the remains of the wood pile, in a plowed field, so badly injured he cannot survive. Col. Bierce was at his office in the north end of the town. Mrs. Bierce was ironing when the storm came up. The house and barn a few rods east were lifted into the air, sucked together, demolishing both buildings, and fairly whirled no one knows where. Fire from the stove caught in the hay in the barn. The upper and ground floors of the house were carried across the street, and between the two Mrs. Bierce was found, badly bruised and insensible, and the broken timbers nearly saturated with blood. She was got out and will probably live. Col. Bierce had the handsomest residence in the village. His house was a beautiful model, well furnished. A splendid yard filled with flowers; a large garden filled with choice fruit, grape arbors, etc., now looks as though it had been the bed of an Alpine tor A fence board from a garden fence forty rods away was driven into Judge Terhune's house, one end of the board protruding about five feet into the parlor through the ceiling. A pitch fork was carried a half a mile and the end of the handle driven into an oak stump, where it was found. The store of Mr. Nichols disappeared so quick no one saw it go, and $5,000 worth of goods are not to be found. A mill pond six miles east of Viroqua was emptied of logs and water, as the wind dipped in the pond. The mill is gone; the logs were whirled over the country. The store of D. B. Priest, in the upper part of which was a fine Masonic lodge room, was churned up and down, and so racked and torn that no one dare enter it. Horses, cows, dogs, sheep, hogs, cats, fowls, men, women and children were hurled to great distances. Dead cattle and other stock are to be found all about. Fragments, such as broken furniture, torn clothes, books, papers, contents of book cases, wardrobes and libraries, are being brought in from the country, so torn and broken as to be worthless and unclaimable. Log chains, harnesses, dead hogs, pieces of furniture, broken plows and other agricultural implements, feather beds badly ripped, picket fences, rails, fence posts, door frames and barn timbers, dead chickens, calves, sheep, cats, and all the things imaginable hang in the tops of trees, bushes, etc. The scene is one which beggars description, and one which was never equalled in this country. The air was filled with fragments of houses, entire outhouses, broken timbers, log chains, rocks, cellar walls, stoves, fanning mills, hoes, plows, wagons and horses. People half a mile away say the cloud of ruin which swept on east was grand, terrible, awful and indescribably terrific. J. A. Somerby had his dwelling blown away; his printing office "pied", and the contents of a book store distributed for miles. The house of Col. Rusk was in the edge of the whirl; the front of the house was torn out and all the furniture in the room carried miles away. People ran wild with terror. Men, women and children, horses and cattle were nearly frightened to death. The terror was indescribable. People thought death and the final destruction of the earth had come, and gave themselves up for lost. Had it been in the night time, imagination can only dwell on the scenes of horror the darkness would have augmented. There was neither rain, thunder or lightning at the time, though it rained the night following. 150 persons are left wounded and entirely destitute. Many of the houses could be hauled off in a handcart, so badly were buildings and contents torn to pieces. The labor of years was annihilated in two minutes, and everything was swept from many who must have relief or die. Tate's Hall has been made into a hospital where several are being cared for by the good citizens of the place. Nearly every house in town has one or more wounded therein, some more or less injured, Fourteen miles the storm extended, destroying everything before it. Farm houses, barns, school houses, fences, cattle, crops, trees, etc., etc., all being swept away from spots as the clouds rose and fell from the earth. II. STATEMENT OF DR. E. W. TINKER. I was on the main street of Viroqua when the storm first appeared. There was first an appearance of a great mass of rubbish in the air coming from the northeast, although where I stood everything was calm and quiet; then there came a roaring of wind from the west. The two currents appeared to have met a little west of the village. I went immediately to my house, east one block from the street, as I felt considerable alarm owing to the unusual appearance and noise in the air. As I reached home the fences and other material were flying about me, caused by the current from the northeast. I ran into the house, where I found my wife and my married daughter, with her two children. I hurried them into the cellar as quickly as possible. My wife ran back to shut the kitchen door, which had blown open. Just as she came back out of the kitchen into the hall, my daughter said: "Pa, your kitchen has blown away!" I paid little attention to the kitchen, but hurried my daughter into the cellar. I then ran back and met Mrs. Tinker and got her about half way down the cellar steps, when I heard a child cry on the porch. I rushed up, found the hall door blown open, and a little boy on the veranda. He was crying and asked if he could come in. I took him by the hand and led him into the house; how the little fellow came there he could never tell; but the last he remembered he was at the place where Goodell's livery stable now stands, nearly a block away. By this time, the tornado was over, and I went out of the house, and the rest of the family came out of the cellar. Mrs. Tinker, on looking out where the kitchen had been, exclaimed: "Oh, the barn is gone, and the horses are killed!" I answered: "I am inclined to think it has, and the kitchen, too." One of my horses was so badly injured that I had him shot. Mine was the most northerly house injured-the the damage being south of me. I told my black servant to kill the horse that was injured, while I started immediately for my daughter's-Mrs John R. Casson-and to see who of my neighbors were injured. I met my daughter on the way, with hair dishevelled and covered with mud, but not injured. I then went on toward Col. Bierce's residence, when I met Mr. Casson and Mr. Lowrey and some others carrying Mrs. Bierce on a litter, they supposing her to be dead. I directed that she be taken into Mr. Trowbridge's near by, where I dressed her wounds, as she was not dead. Dr. Dean and Dr. Weeden were both badly hurt, this left Dr. Rusk and myself to attend to the wounded. There was, of course, an immediate rush. Before I had Mrs. Bierce's wounds dressed more than a dozen were after me. I then was busy until dark attending to the wounded-bruises, cuts and fractures, some mortal, others very serious and some slight. Before the wounded in the village had all been cared for, the people began to come in from the ers injured. The next place visited was at Mr. Morley's, where there was one wounded. III.-ACCOUNT WRITTEN BY DR. W. C. WILSON, 1880. The great tornado came on the 28th day of June, and at a time when nature had assumed her most bewitching attitude, and was dressed in her most gorgeous robes of summer verdure. Little did any of its (Viroqua's) inhabitants apprehend that before the close of that eventful day, the angry elements, at the beck of an invisible power, would lay in waste the fairest portion of the village, strewing its streets with bruised and mangled victims of its fierce rapacity, and weave a funeral pall for seventeen of its helpless citizens. About 4 o'clock of the fatal day, dark and portentous clouds were being marshalled beneath the dome of Heaven's high arch, as though the invisible spirits in the realms of space were about to contend with each other for the mastery. To the westward, black clouds narched and countermarched, with noticeable and alarming rapidity. To the eastward a simiar phenomena was observed, not unlike the novement of two vast armies manoeuvering for dvantageous positions, pending a bloody con country, imploring me to go and look after their ict. At length they came nearer, and still wounded. This induced me to leave as soon as I could and leave those who were injured in the village in the care of Dr. Rusk. I traveled all night within three miles of town. I went east first to the school house three-fourths of a mile distant, where I found two, Mrs. Good, with a broken thigh, and her daughter-in-law. Mrs. Good survived, but her daughter-in-law soon died. Then I went to Mr. Cook's, beyond the school house about one mile, where I found two children dead that had been killed at the school house, and two persons severely wounded; then to Mr. Sands', about a mile from Mr. Cook's; there I found two children dead, also killed at the school house, and one or two wounded. From there I went to Mr. Derby's, where I found one dead and oth nearer to each other, until they met in deadly embrace, a short distance above the western limits of the village of Viroqua. The western division of the contending forces seemed the stronger of the two, and back to the eastward hurled their antagonists with tremendous and death-dealing force. On and on came the victorious power, crushing buildings in its maddened march, and ever and anon demanding a human life, to satiate its thirst for conquest. When its savage fury had been spent a scene of horror, such as mortals seldom behold, presented itself to the terror-stricken survivors of the great disaster. Seventeen persons were killed, including those who died soon after, as the result of the injuries they had received. |