Article that appeared in a Greensboro Newspaper in 1954
Wade Cranford Recalls Versions of Cyclone 70 Years Ago
Written by Charlie Manning
TROY, March – “Nathan, Nathan, get up and close the door. It’s raining in,” irritably
called out Mrs. Polly Cranford, 79 – year-old mother to her 35 year old son.
Nathon made no reply. He wasn’t there. So Mrs. Cranford raised herself from the bed and
arose to shut the door. But there was no house for the door to fit in.
Mrs. Cranford was on her fathers’ bed. And it was raining. The apple tree limbs under
which the bed rested failed to stem the downpour. The section of Montgomery County
where Mrs. Cranford lived had been struck by a terrific hurricane or cyclone, that night –
70 years ago. The Cranford home had been swept away and Mrs. Cranford had been
wafted by tornadic winds 50 yards from where the house stood and dropped in the apple orchard.
Troy’s revered educator, Sunday school teacher and newspaper columnist, E. Wade
Cranford, recalled last week the story of the great storm as told by his grandmother and others.
The storm struck between 7 and 8 o’clock on the night of Feb. 19, 1884, and the recent
tornado in the Mount Gilead-Pekin section of the county missed the 70th anniversary of
the 1884 storm by something like 30 hours.
Written Record of Cyclone
The faded pages of a North Carolinas Common School Register Record, printed by
Holdom and Wilson, “Printers to the State,” contains a letter written May 2, 1884, in
graceful penmanship by James B. Ballard to his daughter, Abidale, Which recounts
reports of Montgomery County’s most disastrous storm. Ballard called it “the saddest tale
that I ever told.”
The letter recalls that the storm passed through the county 8 or 9 miles north of Troy. The
tornadic winds crossed from Stanly into Montgomery County near the point where the
Uwharrie River flows into the Yadkin and crossed the county in a northeasterly direction,
passing through the southernmost corner of Randolph and across Deep River into
Chatham County.
Ballard wrote that the storm tore to pieces and demolished houses, tree, barns, stables,
and whatever happened to be in its path. His cousin James Byrd and wife Caroline, were
killed and they left five children.
Clark Hall’s daughter was killed when the chimney was blown down. One of Wiley
Harris’s children was killed and the house swept away. Richard Dennis’s wife and one
child were killed when the home was demolished.
Cut Wide Swath
Ballard’s letter goes on and on in that vein, enumerating many other dwellings that were
wrecked and describing how many occupants were either killed or mutilated. He
describes the cyclone as being two or three miles wide in places but said the core of it
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ranged from one-half to a mile in width
About the same hour that night another storm struck the lower part of the county, causing
great damage. He recounts that 18 persons were killed in a third storm that night that hit
Richmond County completely demolishing a place called Philadelphia that had a
population of about 150 inhabitants, mostly Negroes. Not more than a dozen escaped injury.
Each of these big storms was accompanied by frightening flashes of lightning in quick
succession, deafening thunder, and a steady roar, the Ballard letter stated.
One man, standing in his house was blown some distance through the door and set down
on his feet. Another man was hurled several hundred yards from his dwelling. Part of a
broken pot lid was found sticking in a stump of a pine tree some 30 feet from the ground.
Chickens and animals were swept away, and some chickens were stripped of there
feathers as though they had been dressed for cooking.
The Oddest Story
One of the oddest stories of the storm 70 years ago is told by Henry Dennis; 80-year-old
retired educator and former assistant postmaster of Troy, who says the approaching
cyclone sounded like a threshing machine. He adds: “My skull was broken. Two weeks
later. I had a terrific headache. A neighbor R. N Kearns helped ease the pain with a
pocketknife. Seventy years ago oats sprouted in my skull and Kearns dug them out with his knife. |
Many thanks goes to Robert E. Cranford, Jr. for sharing this newspaper article with the Cranford & Montgomery County, NC Pages. To contact Robert, send email to [email protected] and to contact Cathy, send email to [email protected]
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