Martha Donelson Katz recently gifted to the Colrain Historical Society a letter written by her grandmother, Winnifred E. McKay Lincoln (1875 - 1951,) after the hurricane and flood of September, 1938. Winnifred lived then in the Methodist parsonage, now gone, which was near to the old Colrain Central School, now the town garage. In vivid prose she describes the harrowing experience of being alone in the house as the North River tore over its banks and into her house. She goes on to describe the huge work of recovery and the effect on the town of Colrain.
Winnifred Lincoln leased this house in Colrain Center from the Methodist Church. It was the former Parsonage. In her letter she refers to the round porch on the front right corner as the “front piazza.”
The first page of Winnifred Lincoln’s letter to her Aunt Emma, written in cursive on personalized letterhead paper.
Monday Evening
October 3, 1938
Dear Aunt Emma,
Your letter came several days ago, but this is the first chance I have had to answer it. You said that Brewster did not suffer from the flood of Sept. 21 at all, and you are very fortunate.
Colrain not only suffered, but is practically ruined,--the damage to roads and bridges alone being nearly $400,000! As the town is bonded for only $70,000, you can see that the state must bear the burden. Every farm the length of the valley met with loss and devastation, unless their buildings set high up, as do the Donelsons, for they were unharmed, although they worked like mad, all night, to keep the water from going into their incubator cellar.
Every little brook had become a roaring torrent, the river had been filling and rising steadily for four days of rain, and on Wednesday afternoon of the 31st, at about 4:30, the hurricane started.
We could see the trees snapping and breaking across the valley, and the sound of the roaring river was deafening. At 5:15, all the lights in town went out, and I immediately lighted five candles, got my flash-light, finished my supper, called Bunny [her cat] in, fastened everything securely outside, and locked every window and door. I kept going to the front window to watch the river, which was almost up to the floor of the bridge by that time. Something told me to begin to pick up everything I could, so I went to work in the darkness and alone, hurrying like mad. I turned up all the bedspreads, picked up all scatter rugs, cushions, pillows, afghans, etc, and threw them up the attic stairs, piled the beds with all the small chairs, tables, folding screens, sewing cabinet, hatrack, footstool, magazine rack---everything I could lay my hands on! The beds were heaped! I actually threw Bunny upstairs, he was so frightened. I moved all vases to firm places, so that they’d be safe, looped the velvet portieres up over the door-casing, and tossed the clothing in my own closet up on to the shelf above. I was racing thro’ the house, holding my flashlight all the time, and just as I came from the kitchen to the dining-room the last time I saw water on the floor, and instantly heard it begin to thunder into the cellar-- just like cannonading!! I could not see outside the house, it was so dark but the wind was frightful!
My house was marooned even then, although I did not know it, the cellar filled almost instantly, and in less time than I could possible tell you, every single room in the house was filling, the big rugs lifted from the floor and I could feel them billow as I walked. In a minute or so, the water was over my ankles, and simply pouring in everywhere, and everything dark except for my flashlight and my little flickering candles. I telephoned to Ruth [her daughter Ruth Donelson] for help, but they couldn’t get out of their own yard, because the river was several feet deep over their road [Rte. 112 north of town]. The central operator telephoned to say that some men were coming in a boat to get me, and just then the telephone went out of commission.
Just then, also, I heard the sound of breaking glass, and I thought that the hurricane had blown in an upstairs window, and my mind said, “How are you going to fix that in this darkness?”
I started to find my way thro’ the water to the attic stairs, and as I waded up the first two stairs, I heard someone call my name. And, to my amazement, three men were in the attic, having entered from over the woodshed roof, smashed a window, and came to take me out of the house.
So we came down the stairs, the second one being already under water; we ploughed through the rooms to the back door which opens on the side piazza, and a boat had been rowed right up on to the piazza floor, so I was told to step into it, and I did so. The water all around my house, over the garden, past all my neighbors’ buildings, etc., was six feet deep. It was even with the window sills outside my house, but inside, on all the floors it was 15 inches deep!!
I was taken to a neighbor’s house at the upper end of the village that night, and I stayed there until the Sat. following when I went to Ruth’s, and where I am now.
The next morning when I came back to my house, I came to a scene of ruins, wreckage, and mud! The water receded that same evening, but all the big rugs, lower parts of gables, chairs, stuffed furniture, book cases, etc., were soaked and plastered with heavy river muck! It was heart-breaking!
So, all my furniture was moved out at once and put into temporary storage, and all rugs, portieres, all linen from my linen chests (some 21 sheets in the bottom drawers), 6 table-cloths, clothing galore, etc., etc., were sent to the cleaners at once. What that bill will be, I do not know! Then every linoleum in the house had to be taken up, the floors throughout the house were flushed with the fire-hose to get out some of the mud.
Just now, my house is empty of everything, and it is the most desolate looking place you ever saw. I have had a man working there for eight days steady, and the floors have been swept three times each, washed four times each, and then disinfected!
And today a man has been scrubbing all the base-boards and lower half of all doors. Then he must clean all the registers, finish the woodwork, then go down cellar to shovel out more mud.
I had an electric pump at work last Friday, to pump water out of the cellar, and when that was done, about two and a half feet of river mud and silt was left. All my preserve jars had been tipped from the shelves when the water poured in, and they had to be shoveled out of that deep mud, washed with the fire hose about five times, then each jar immersed in a lysol bath for several minutes, and then have a final rinsing. The Board of Health says that all products in sealed jars will be all right to eat. Any garden product which grew in the ground, like potatoes, can be used this winter, but cabbages, beans, etc., are not to be used by anyone.
I am staying at Ruth’s now, and Reuben [Donelson, Ruth’s husband] takes me back and forth to my own house every morning and noon. All the water is shut off, electricity is shut off, and the sewer, which empties into the river, is buried under tons of gravel. A man dug there all day yesterday, but there are tons of gravel over the end of that sewer pipe, and it will be hard work to find it.
So with the shock and tragedy of it all, I am about exhausted. I could write much more, but I mustn’t do so this time. Suffice it to say, that I am well and “holding my own,” and am starting again to live and settle. Every house on River Road met with the same experience, some of them worse than mine. My piano is now up at Ruth’s, and it is to be examined and repaired tomorrow. My oil burner for the furnace is to be reconditioned, and all electric motors cleaned at once. My front piazza had all its brick supports knocked out by the water, and the whole brick walk torn wholey up.
The bricks from the underpinning of my piazza were found away across the next yard. My rose trellises were blown to bits. The furnace was, of course, filled with water and when the flood poured into the cellar, the register pipes all filled at once and the water shot up through the registers themselves like a geyser. In the morning, all the registers were out of place and somewhere else on the floors. My over-stuffed furniture (which was a very nice set of Evie’s) was soaked about six inches up, and is slowly drying out. I had rescued the five big cushions from them, so that’s a little help.
This bridge in front of my house had one big pier washed out, and it has dropped twenty feet into the river. For three days after the flood, we had to climb a 20 ft, ladder to get up on to the bridge, for all the road bed was washed out from the end of the bridge about a hundred feet up past my house, Mr. Hall’s house, and the school-house. The sidewalk is entirely gone, my garden, driveways, etc., have a six inch deposit of mud which is like a heavy hard cake. I do not see how it can ever be shoveled out. My barn sits a long way back from the road, and the planks in the floor of it were lifted, so that there was about no floor the next morning.
My oil burner which Mr. Robinson saw, has been sent to the Hartford factory to be entirely reconditioned, so, until that comes back, and the furnace has been taken apart and cleaned, I am working in an empty house with a fire in the parlor fireplace and a wood-stove set up in the dining room, and we keep a fire going in it night and day. But for the first 10 days we had no heat here whatever, and I have worn my rubbers, two sweaters and a coat all the time here in the house. Yet I have not caught any cold.
The linoleums throughout the house have had to be taken up, washed and scrubbed out-of-doors, dried and rolled, and are now ready to go back when the baseboards, doors, and wall-paper have been cleaned. The house was washed on the outside with the fire-hose, and all windows also. A cord of wood in my cellar was buried in two and a half feet of muck, and had to be shoveled out piece by piece. Now it is all out in the yard being dried. The lovely front piazza has settled four inches already, and the front steps are in bad condition. A carpenter is coming Thurs. or Friday to see what has to be done here. The heater and electric range cannot be put back into the kitchen yet because the floor boards have buckled so from the dampness, so the carpenter must take them up. Two cellar windows have been smashed out entirely, and under my front piazza it is gullied out about five feet deep.
You see no mention of little Colrain in the papers, but its condition is tragic! In the little school-house next to me,the water was over the tops of the pupils’ desks, so all the books were ruined. Farther down River Road, where the houses set lower to the ground like Cape Cod houses, the water reached a level of 33 inches inside the houses, covered the tops of their kitchen ranges, and was over the keyboards of their pianos!
My own piano stood in 15 inches of water, so the pedals are all out of order, swollen and spring, the case is blistered from the water and mud, and I am having a piano man come from Greenfield today or tomorrow to attend to it. Another big expense item!
One of the very tragic things which happened here in town occurred in one of the cemeteries. There had been a burial that Wed. morning of a young woman named Emily LaCrosse. So, of course, the earth at her grave was loose and soft, and when the flood came that night, about 60 or 70 stones in that cemetery were tipped over, and washed away, that new grave was washed open, and the casket in its box was floated away. They found pieces of the outer box the next day, but the body was not found for several days (casket all gone), and the body was several miles from here down the Deerfield River, which is at least five miles from us.
The Avery poultry farm next above Donelson’s had about 60 poultry houses out on their range near the river where they own much land. There were about 125 hens in each house. Thirty or forty houses were utterly demolished, the hens swept down river several miles, and the next day they could rake dead poultry out of the mud below Griswoldville (5 miles away) by the hundreds. Their loss to poultry alone is about $4,000, and that doesn’t include their 40 houses. The big iron bridge at Griswoldville just lifted up and floated completely away downstream. Old covered bridges have gone; almost every bridge in Colrain has either gone entirely or is so damaged that they have had to be discarded for a period, or temporary ramps of heavy timber made so that they can be traversed. Many farmers have lost acres of land which are now so buried under a deposit of mud, gravel, and heavy stones, that they have reverted to river bed, and can never be reclaimed.
Cows out to pasture that night took to the hills in fright, because of the hurricane and the rushing waters, and some were killed by falling trees. One cow here in Colrain was caught by the current, washed downstream and over three dams before anyone could see her or rescue her. But they got her out the next morning, and she gave birth to a fine calf, and is all right!! Can you beat that.
In some sections here, the roads have been so torn out, to such a depth, that they can never be rebuilt, and roadways must be laid elsewhere. On Deerfield Street in Greenfield, the water poured in the second story windows. The damage to trees everywhere is appalling, for row upon row of trees in either woodlands, forests, or in streets, have been snapped right off. Even Malden has lost most of the lovely shade trees on Dexter, Hawthorne, Maple and Clifton Sts., as well as in Maplewood, and all thro’ Middlesex Falls.
And so I might go on, but I have told you enough to give you an idea of the cruel
horror that has swept thro’ here. I have had no time or strength to write letters, but I did manage to write Paul yesterday, and now I have written to you. Lutie was to have visited me sometime this fall, but now it would be impossible for at present I have no home, and it is also practically impossible to get from Shelburne Falls to Colrain because the roads are so torn up. I wish you would write to her for me, and either tell her the circumstances, or better still,send her this letter for her to read, and then she will return it to you---that will save your having to write her any explanation at all.
Ruth’s family are all well, and the children are so lovely. Everyone has done and is doing all they can to help me, but I shall get through it somehow. I always do, and I must maintain my home, no matter what comes. The expense of all this is what disturbs me, for labor, cleaning, repairs, etc., count up amazingly. I am trying to write one letter a day, but there is so much to tell that it is exhausting to write it, even a part of it.
Every man in town is working on the roads, and has been summoned by the W.P.A., who permit only a 40 hr. week,--so they are all idle today, and things at a standstill when everyone ought to be working like mad! Idiotic!!
No more now. I do hope you are well. Please remember me to Miss Calder. I meant to write her earlier but I haven’t been able to do so. Martha [Donelson] will be two years old this coming Monday, the 10th.
Much love to you
From Winnifred
The last page of the letter.
The location of the house (outlined in yellow on Colrain’s tax map) This lot is now owned by the Town of Colrain. The house and barn shown on this map were demolished a few years ago.
A recent street view showing the empty lot at 3 River St.
North Adams Transcript newspaper article about the flooding in the River Street neighborhood and other areas in Colrain.
Photo of the Methodist Parsonage in 2012 taken by Samantha Terrill.
