The tornado of 1851.
Few residents of West Medford today know of, or can form an idea of the scene of devastation and ruin presented in this now beautiful section of
Medford after the tornado or cyclone of seventy-five years ago had passed through it.
Friday, August 22, 1851, was a hot, sultry, oppressive day. As the afternoon waned, the quiet was ominous.
An old resident, who had been a sea captain, made remark, ‘If I was at sea I should expect a waterspout.’
Suddenly, at about quarter past five, there appeared in the west beyond Wear bridge a whirling cloud, something in shape like a spreading tree or an inverted cone.
Its lower part seemed to writhe about like the trunk of an elephant, reaching toward the earth.
As it came on over the river, it began its terrible work, as if with teeth and jaws of steel.
Its track covered a space of about eighty rods wide, taking the general course of High street with varying force and incredible velocity.
[p. 33]
Passing over the valley of
Meeting-house brook, it continued through the woods and re-appeared on Forest street. While its general course was eastward, trees were blown in other and varying directions within the width of its track, and all sorts of freaks were later observed.
A little shed or hen-house escaped, while large, strongly-built houses and barns were demolished.
Others were unroofed, while chimney tops, windows, blinds and fences went like chaff before or with it.
A freight car on the railroad siding was rolled along ten rods, then lifted from the track and landed sixty feet away, where now is Playstead road.
Gleason's Pictorial of
Boston, September 6, 1851, presented its artist's view, saying:
The locality is at the east of the West Medford station.
The dismantled house on the right was that occupied by Mr. Costello.
The next across the road, the dwelling of Mr. Sanford, the depot master, which was moved twenty feet, crushing beneath it his son, a young man of 19 years, who was obliged to suffer amputation of both legs.
The two-story house next to it was occupied by Mr. Nye, a carpenter.
It was completely unroofed.
In the second story Mrs. Nye and newly-born infant, injured by the wreck.
In the extreme left is Captain Wyatt's house which was completely riddled.
In one house there was pasted on the wall a variety of pictures and portraits.
That of (then)
President Fillmore was stripped off without fracture or injury and borne by the gale into a garden a half-mile away.
Its finder restored it to the owner who replaced it. Of it,
Rev. Mr. Brooks remarked, ‘Political prophets may tell us what this foreshadows.’
But
President Fillmore did not succeed himself in the
White House.
Mrs. Caldwell (of Irving street) took a journey on the wings of the wind and was safely set down one hundred and fifty feet away.
Less fortunate was one of the workmen at Mystic street (who in 1902 visited the writer and told of his experience) on the fateful day. Living at
Cambridge, he was on his way home, when he was taken up and hurled into a pile of debris from which on recovering
[p. 34] consciousness he crawled, bruised and bleeding.
A brakeman helped him into the baggage car, and procuring cotton waste from the engine stuffed it into his clothing and partially stopped his bleeding.
Arriving at East Cambridge, he was taken home, where the surgeon removed a splinter five inches long, which, striking his thigh-bone was deflected downward.
He had never been to the village since that day to make any stop, but looked over the ground somewhat and while there met a man he knew, the late
Lorin L. Dame.
One person was fatally injured,
Mr. Thomas Huffmaster.
Struck by a joist in the breast, he died from its effect soon after.
His house was on High street, corner of Allston, later that of his son-in-law,
J. H. Norton.
The schoolhouse on Canal street was utterly destroyed, its floor with the seats attached laid upside down across
Whitmore brook.
School was to have begun on the following
Monday.
The big
Whitmore elm escaped with little injury, but a horse-chestnut at Warren street was so wrenched and twisted as to show the effect thirty years later.
Another, near by, blossomed anew in the following weeks.
The storm seemed to have begun its havoc with over $4,000 damage in
Waltham, $23,606 in
Arlington and $18,768 in Medford.
These figures we gather from the report of a committee chosen by citizens in West Medford during the ensuing week.
This report was in a neatly bound volume of seventy-two pages,—forty pages by
Mr. Brooks, ‘in the interest of science.’
eleven by the committee, and the rest relative to
West Cambridge and
Waltham.
Less explicit, but terse, was the reply of one of the sufferers in relating his views: ‘Och!
sure the wurrld has coom to an end, the houses are slivered entirely, and o'im kilt.’
In a later edition of the report was a steel engraved portrait of
James Sanford.
This book is very rare.
[p. 35] On Sunday following the disaster, Medford was thronged by many thousands who came to view the scene.
The writer was among them, and though less than six years old then, still has vivid memories of wrecked buildings, uprooted and fallen trees, and of the gale at his home, five miles away.
It seems miraculous that no greater loss of life occurred.
Doubtless the expression made in the citizens' meeting referred to, ‘Now we feel ourselves called upon to acknowledge our gratitude to God for the preservation of our lives in the midst of greatest peril and danger,’ was heartfelt.
