| Notes |
- Baptized: January 29, 1843 Bergkirchen, Westfalen, Germany
Occupation: Farmer
Ernest bought the farm near Irvington, Illinois on May 1, 1880. It was passed on to Gus and then Robert Brink.
May 27, 1896
What may have been the first tornado of the day killed a woman near Bellflower, Missouri. At 3:15 p.m. three students died and sixteen were injured in the destruction of the Dye School in Audrain County, Missouri. A few minutes later, the same tornado killed one student and injured nineteen at the Bean Creek School. At 6:15 p.m., two children died on a farm in Osage County, Missouri. At about 6:30 p.m., two tornadoes touched down almost simultaneously from separate storms. One leveled entire farms near New Minden, Hoyleton, Richview, and Irvington, Illinois. The other was the third deadliest tornado in US history, taking a total of at least 255 lives. In Saint Louis, Mo., people died in homes, factories, saloons, hospitals, mills, railroad yards, and churches, as a half-mile-wide swath was out across the center of the city. At least 137 people died at St. Louis. Other people living on shanty boats may have perished in the Mississippi River, but were not counted because their bodies were washed downstream. At E. St. Louis, Illinois, the funnel had narrowed but may have also intensified. Devastation there was more complete, and 118 people were killed. twenty-seven more people died in other Illinois tornadoes this day.
The following article was provided by Robert Brink. I do not know what newspaper it came from or what the date was.
IT WAS A REAL "TWISTER" THAT WIPED OUT NEW MINDEN
by John C. Scattergood (written in May of 1996)
It was a terrible year for storms and tornadoes, with each storm a little worse than the other.
A year when the media was stirring curiosity about tornadoes.
The movie "Twister" wasn't playing yet, but Dr. James McIlwain, Jr., of New Minden was intrigued about what he had heard about tornadoes.
"Funny," he said, "how that very morning I was reading of a Texas tornado, and the strange pranks that the wind performed... and I remarked to my wife that I would like to see a tornado, but wouldn't want to be in one. And that same day was IN one, but didn't SEE its approach."
With his wife and sons away on a visit, Dr. McIlwain was concentrating on his work at home and didn't realize the terror that was approaching New Minden from the West.
The suppertime wind bearing terror was about to strike in New Minden at almost the same momment that hundreds of people were being killed in St. Louis, both on land and on the Mississippi River, where they lived on small shanty boats or worked on large river boats.
As the storm's fury bore down on the doctor's home, he didn't pay much attention until the high wind hit his home.
It was a furious wind inside the tornado.
Estimates that have now been made by the National Weather Service say the winds in the vortex were spinning at up to 260 miles per hour in New Minden.
It was a terrible Wednesday evening one hundred years ago this week on May 27, 1896, and a storm that finally roused the attention of Dr. McIlwain and made him decide he was in danger.
He dashed to his cellar, and was crouching there as the house above him blew away.
The loss of Dr. McIlwain's home was only a small part of the devastation, death and injuries that were to face him through the night and in the days to come.
The damage was so great that the storm left behind only four homes out of what a newspaper of the day said had been a town of about 75 homes.
At about the same moment that Dr. McIlwain was running for his basement, Ron Smith, a Nashville farm machinery salesman, pulled his team of horses up beneath a shed. Smith may have been one of the few to see the deadly shaft as it moved towards him and frightened team of horses.
We'll never know though since Smith was killed, and no one seems to have been left alive after that fearsome night who could provide the weather bureau of the time with an eye witness account of the tornado, according to a coopy of a U.S. Department of Agriculture Weather Bureau report written after the storm and given by the present day National Weather Service to The Nashville News.
HOW THE DAY STARTED
The day had been a humid one in nearby St. Louis, a hazy sun managed to cast some distinct shadows. The temperatures rose to the mid-80's before the clouds turned "very peculiar."
The storms struck about the time people would have been home cooking their dinners, about 6:00 p.m. some residents are quoted as sayng in a history being written of the St. John's Lutheran Church in New Minden.
A draft of that book uncovers the story of the people of that church and gives an idea of the horrible time they faced.
"Today, we can hardly imagine the misery in New Minden as darkness fell on that
Wednesday evening: Rubble is everywhere. The weeping of the bereaved mixes with the moaning of the injured," writes the Rev. Timothy Mueller in "Our God, Our Help In Ages Past."
"The dazed frantically search for their loved ones. Dead animals remain tangled in the splinter, shards, and ashes; injured livestock howl with pain. A steady downpour falls, and worst of all, it is dark.
"There are no electric lights, no radio, no television, no modern roads or rescue vehicles--even the telegraph lines are down.
"When the storm hit, many wood-burning stoves must have been hot for the preparation of the evening meal; no wonder that when night fell fires were burning everywhere and could be seen from a distance," writes Rev. Mueller, who has been among those taking part in a two-year effort to write the history of the storm-tossed church, with the finishing touches being put on the book this week.
The night of 1896 was a night that lived on in the memory of people of a wide area that stretched from east-central Missouri and into southern Illinois.
The greatest area of destruction was bordered on the north from about Vandalia, IL., to south of Mt. Vernon, a distance of about 50 miles.
The National Weather Service, says that the May 27 New Minden tornado "touched down about the same time as the St. Louis tornado. It moved east-southeast and east, leveling entire farms near New Minden, south of Hoyleton and near Richview in Washington County, then Boyd and Irvington... "
Altogether, the monster tornado left a damage path 1,000 yards wide and 23 miles long. Fourteen people were killed and 50 were injured along its path.
From historical records, the weather service believes the tornado would ahve ranked as an F-4 on the Fugita Scale that was developed a few years ago by Theodore Fugita. Fugita has for years researched from Chicago the mysterious monsters that prey on the mid-section of the continent.
The sale Fugita developed to measure their strength runs from an F-0, which is a funnel shaft containing wind speeds as little as 77 miles per hour. An F-4 is ranked as a devastating tornado with winds ranging from 207 miles per hour to 260 miles per hour.
An F-5 has winds scientists speculate can be as much as 100 or more miles per hour higher than an F-4.
LOSSES FOR THE CHURCH
Four members of the St. John's Lutheran congregation perished immediately, three of them children, according to Rev. Mueller.
Ten others were seriously injured, with one dying of his injuries June 25.
The church was heavily damaged and the brick school bulding near what is now the intersection of Illinois 177 and Illinois 127 was demolished.
There was continuous rain, which prevented the people from rescuing their belongings and, one paper reported, only two cook stoves were left in the town fit for service.
Dr. McIlwain said her "lost everything but the shirt on his back... but even so I was very lucky. The next two months I lived in a tent and this humble abode also served as my office, while New Minden residents rebuilt their scattered town."
The Centralia Sentinel of teh time reproted that "at Richview much damage was done to trees, out-buildings and orchards... (while) in Hoyleton Prairie, west of there, several residences and barns were blown down and Ernest Brin, a well known farmer, was killed."
(This is Robert Brink's grandfather and these notes are written on Ernst's records.)
The Western Union reported ninety telegraph poles down between Centralia and Du Bois.
The home of Robert Foster, Irvington Prairie, was destroyed and he was killed. Foster was described as being on e of the oldest settlers of that section.
"The Wettenburg place, near Richview, a large two story brick house was unroofed and the walls partly destroyed."
As that paper was going to press, it said "an authentic report reached us of the damage in Irvington Prairie" and of the deaths of three people.
The stories uncovered by Rev. Mueller and the History Book Committee's Geraldine Twenhafel and Trudy Windler show a church that went through a lot of trouble in its 150 year history.
But there is also an attempt to show that "the Lord was ever 'Our God, Our Help in Ages Past...Our Shelter from the Stormy Blast.'"
The book says God spared many from harm, by having the school children at home before school buildings in the area were destroyed. The book also notes that the steady downpour was a great help in putting out the fires.
The book, which should be ready for sale in the new few weeks, also reprints a portion of a sotyr in the old Nashville Democrat outlining the death and destruction still another tornado created for the church and the town.
The church had been rebuilt, and a new steeple had only recently been installed when the second tornado undid about everything including the church and the church steeple.
The pastor of the church, Rev. E. Koestering, put his horses in the barn and then he, his wife and two sons"seated themselves on the back porch to await the coming of the terrible twister. Their desire was to die together if it should transpire that they should fall victims to the storm."
|
1843 - 1896 (53 years)
