Sunday, May, 1, 1898, was a sultry Spring day in Jerico, the morning air carrying hints of a looming storm.
Mrs. L. C. (Mollie) Gates and dozens of other Jerico residents paid little attention as they made their way to the United Methodist Church for Sunday services. Mrs. Gates, in a letter written to her sister in Oklahoma two weeks later, described the horror that descended upon the church that day.
“It got cloudy while we were at Sunday School. We came near coming home after Sunday School, but concluded we would stay for preaching. While we were singing the first song it got so dark we could scarcely see the words in the book, and it began to rain furiously. I just thought it was going to be a hard rain and maybe hail, but did not think of a cyclone.
“After the song, the preacher prayed, and just as he said Amen, the window shutters slammed shut on the south side of the house and on the north side too, and the windows on both sides seemed to bend inward, and the timbers began to pop and everybody jumped up to get out, and before they could leave their seats, the building went down.
“The last thing I remember was hearing the house pop, and then I felt the floor move like a boat, and I felt nothing else till I was being pulled out. I did not feel myself fall or feel anything strike me. When I came to myself, I was lying on my left side and could not see a bit of light anywhere. I managed to turn over on my elbows and then I saw light in the west, and I tried to crawl out but I couldn’t. The roof was so close to me I could not raise up only on my elbows. Frank Davis pulled me out. If you could see the ruins you would wonder that we all got out alive. All that were injured are getting well.
“You know the church faced the east. I was sitting in the choir in the northwest corner of the church, with my back to the north. The building moved about twenty feet off the foundation before it fell.
“The north side fell to the north. The west end was blown out and turned clear over with the weather boarding up. The south side came down on the south half of the floor and the roof fell with the south edge about middle way off the floor and the north edge on the north wall. The chairs held the south wall and the roof off of the people.
“I did not say a word till I got out. Then I began to cry and scream for Lester (her husband). He was away out southwest of town, and I was scared to death until he came home. It seems the wind just came down right at Mr. (George) Clark’s house (where it killed Mrs. Clark), and we can see the path of it from there to the church, then it raised and struck the Neuman Hotel at the second story.
“The church was insured for $700 and the contents for two hundred dollars. They have paid it already and we will commence building soon.”
Mrs. Gates’ letter also contained information on the health of family members, size of her chicken flock and the state of her wardrobe.
Bad as the storm was, the initial reports carried in the Springfield and Kansas City papers had it being much worse.
The Springfield Democrat Leader reported May 4 in a wildly inaccurate story that 13 people were killed and an additional 10 fatally injured.
The first story I’ve found was in the Kansas City Journal of May 3, from a correspondent in Greenfield, and datelined May 2, the day after the storm.
The story said many buildings “were scattered to the earth” and ‘the list of the dead and the injured cannot be given as the wires are down and no messages can be sent between Stockton and the stricken village.”
Many Stockton residents and nearly all its doctors went to Jerico the next morning, the paper said.
Note: Mrs. Gates’ letter was published in the Jan. 16, 1975 Cedar County Republican, a copy of which was saved by Charles Skaggs, who shared it with me. -jcb
Copyright 2019 John Beydler
Jerico Springs on parade 