HURRICANE!
1900 storm hit Baptists hard
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GALVESTON IN RUINS is evident in this panoramic photograph taken after the 1900 storm. The view is looking south toward the beach from 12th and I Streets. (Photo courtesy of Texas State Library and Archives Commission)
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___By Toby Druin
___Editor Emeritus
___GALVESTON--One hundred years ago this week, Sept. 8, 1900, the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States slammed into Galveston in the form of a killer hurricane.
___The storm hit over the course of about 15 hours, beginning with higher than normal tides
at dawn. Then a storm surge sent almost 16 feet of water rushing down the streets and crashing over the homes of Galveston's 37,000 residents. The deluge ended about 9:30 that evening with winds estimated at more than 120 mph.
___Galveston was hammered by the wind and then almost obliterated by water as the sea, which had been piled up in the bay by the fierce gales, rushed back over the island into the Gulf of Mexico as the storm passed.
___Winds of record force were recorded as far north as Temple. The low pressure area that spawned the storm in the Eastern Atlantic continued northward through the United States and on into the Atlantic near Newfoundland, leaving heavy damage all along the way. But nothing could match the carnage on the Texas coast.
___By morning light, those who survived the onslaught got their first clear glimpse of the unbelievable havoc wreaked by the storm.
___More than 6,000 people lay dead in Galveston alone--almost one-sixth of the population. The total death toll of the storm over a 75-square-mile area extending past Houston was estimated at between 10,000 and 12,000. An exact count was impossible because many of the dead were washed out to sea or buried in the silt and sand. Bodies and body parts were found on the beach months later.
___Thousands of the survivors were unaccounted for because with their means of livelihood gone, they left the area without a trace. Many of these were Baptist church members.
___Two Baptist pastors, G.W. Lane of Fourteenth Street Baptist Church in Galveston and J.B. Watson of China Grove Baptist Church, were killed in the storm. Lane, his wife and
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STAINED GLASS windows in the chapel at First Baptist Church of Galveston commemorate the church's loss of life. A close up view of the inscription is shown below.
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ANOTHER WINDOW in the chapel memorializes the dead from Second and Third Baptist churches.
(Stained glass photos by Jacob Samuel of First Baptist Church in Galveston)
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children and many of his church members were "swept into the sea and perished," according to Union Baptist Association minutes for the annual meeting of 1901. The Annual of the Baptist General Convention of Texas in 1900 reported that Lane was a "missionary pastor" who had led in building the church and had been a full-time pastor only briefly.
___"He was full of hope," the annual stated, "The mysterious Providence which carried him and so many others into eternity is too deep for us to solve. We would bow in submission to the Divine Will."
___The storm also claimed the life of Mary Parker, a "Bible woman" working in Galveston for the Baptist Sunday School and Colportage Convention. She was one of 14 women assigned to various areas of the state to "seek the lost and neglected women and children and to take Christ to them, and to leave with them the infallible word of God and a Christly literature." ?
___More than 3,600 buildings were destroyed in Galveston, including three Baptist church buildings--First Baptist Church, Second Baptist Church and Fourteenth Street Baptist Church, which also was known as Third Baptist Church.
___First Baptist Church and three other Galveston churches were invited by the local Jewish rabbi to hold their worship services in the Jewish synagogue, which survived the storm.
___The building of First Baptist Church of Houston was destroyed. Pastor B.F. Riley had come to the church only a week earlier. At the time, the church had a membership of about
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CLOSEUP VIEW of inscription honorng those lost in the 1900 storm.
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575 and a building valued at $37,000.
___In the Sept. 13 Baptist Standard, Riley reported that wind and rain battered Houston and his church for 10 to 12 hours.
___"Houses are demolished, and the streets are barricaded with beams, bricks and stones,trees, telegraph poles and wires," he wrote. "Among the wrecked buildings is the Baptist church. The steeple in falling carried away the whole south end of the building. The remainder is practically useless for service. Our people have suffered severely. ... I have never seen more universal desolation."
___At the time, First Baptist Church of Houston was the largest in Union Baptist Association, which then listed 27 churches and covered a vast area, including Galveston.
___First Baptist Church of Galveston had a membership of about 470, but its average Sunday School attendance of 240 was the largest among Union Association's congregations. Its building was valued at $40,000.
___Pastor W.M. Harris "made the building as secure as possible, with his family safe in the parsonage," according to a church history compiled by member Diane Zimmerman. "The family cow, Besty, was tied to the back porch.
___"By 6 p.m., the water was so deep that old Besty was treading water and about to drown, so Mrs. Harris brought her into the kitchen. About 6:30 p.m., a tornado hit the church building next door, and the seven steeples of the church fell, completely destroying the church and damaging an upstairs bedroom of the parsonage.
___"At this point, Pastor Harris decided to move his family to safety to another house nearby, so he stretched a board from a windowsill in the parsonage to the top of a stone wall, and the Harris family walked the plank to safety."
___The next morning "dawned fair and clear," the history recounts. "It was spent trying to relieve the suffering of survivors and to bury the dead."
___Nearly one of every 10 members of First Baptist Church was killed in the storm.
___Because of the damage done by the falling steeples on the church building, the church passed a resolution soon after the storm never again to put a steeple on the church building, Zimmerman said.
___The other Galveston churches lost in the storm were much smaller. Second Baptist Church had an average attendance of 76, and Fourteenth Street Church averaged 45.
___But they too were devastated in life and property and livelihood.
___The effect of the storm hindered the work of the Galveston churches for years. The building of First Baptist Church was restored, thanks to contributions and the fund-raising efforts of Pastor Harris. But in 1910, Sunday School attendance averaged only 225. Second
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FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH OF GALVESTON stands in ruins after the Sept. 8, 1900, storm. (Photo courtesy of Texas State Library and Archives Commission)
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Baptist Church of Galveston was not mentioned in Union Association minutes from 1900 to 1905.
___Various reports at the time stated that 25 to 27 Baptist church buildings were totally destroyed and at least 50 more were seriously damaged, many to the point that major repairs were required before services could be held in them.
___In a letter in the Sept. 27, 1900, issue of the Baptist Standard, D.Y. Bagby of Navasota said the storm damage was great in at least seven counties--Jefferson, Chambers, Galveston, Brazoria, Fort Bend, Harris and Waller.
___"Outside of Houston," Bagby wrote, "we have scarcely a house in which worship can be held respectably in nearly all of the above counties. Practically all the churches in both town and country, together with all three in Galveston, are totally wrecked. So thoroughly have the churches in Arcola and Juliff been torn to pieces and the members scattered, that they have been disbanded, and the same may be said of the Third Church at Galveston."
___The churches at Angleton, Velasco and Columbia had no more than six members left, Bagby said.
___"I mean by this, some have been killed, but so many lost all their property that they have been obliged to leave the country and go elsewhere to live that the churches have none left."
___One pastor, H.T. Money, who was serving five churches, had been forced to move to North Texas, Bagby said. In a letter to the Standard on Sept. 20, Money reported that he was away from his home in Juliff at one of his churches when the storm reached its peak at 9 p.m. His wife and three children left their home and clung to a well pump for seven hours while pelted by heavy rain. Their house disintegrated in the wind 10 minutes after they left it.
___"Five-sixths of the houses in all this section are wrecked, and most of them in splinters," Money wrote. "'The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.'"
___"Much the same," wrote Bagby, "though not quite so bad, is the condition of Baptist affairs at Seabrook, LaPorte, Richmond and many other points. There is not a congregation which has not suffered very greatly, and some as named above totally obliterated."
___He challenged "brethren in the more fortunate parts of the state" to show their gratitude
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The storm's death toll was estimated at between 10,000 and 12,000.
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for their "more favorable environment" and "come up to the help of the work, so as to make up for the loss in these strickened localities."
___Another letter in the Sept. 27 Baptist Standard from T.E. Muse of Weimar said church buildings at Rosenberg, Alvin, Rock Island, Eagle Lake, Richmond "and I don't know how many other places were all reported badly wrecked or entirely destroyed."
___Muse, who previously had served as pastor of the church at Rosenberg, said, "So little was left the people that they are pressed to live at all and completely helpless to do anything to rebuild their church house."
___"Now will the favored people of the state help us?" he asked. "The State Board has placed a good amount of mission money in this country, and which was beginning to return in results. The board cannot build houses. If the assistance is not given to rebuild the church houses, the situation is rendered more deplorable, for many of them cannot rise again, and the money and labor heretofore appropriated will be forever lost."
___Muse said Methodists in the area had been promised by their bishop that the nations' million and a half Methodists would help them rebuild their churches. "Will Baptists do as much?" Muse asked.
___People from all over the United States, including thousands of Baptists, contributed to the need in Galveston, but the funds initially went to alleviate immediate suffering. Church buildings had to wait.
___The Baptist General Convention of Texas was only 14 years old at the time of the storm and had nothing in place like today's disaster relief fund. Nothing existed like Texas Baptist Men, who today immediately move into a disaster-stricken area to render all kinds of assistance.
___The BGCT met in annual session at First Baptist Church of Waco Nov. 9-12, two months after the Galveston storm. A section in the convention annual titled "The Galveston Storm" noted that it "put added burdens on your board at a time when it seemed we were already pressed to the last limit. Before such an overwhelming calamity we stand appalled."
___The convention had paid the salaries of Harris and Pastor Creek of Second Baptist Church of Galveston and of Pastor Behrman of Alta Loma, the report noted.
___"The rehabilitation of the cause in the storm-swept section of the state is a matter of grave concern," the report stated. "Our duty is plain. The abundance of the favored sections must supply the lack in South Texas, according to the Apostolic Rule."
___The report noted a nationwide movement to help rebuild churches in the stricken area, adding, "It has been proposed that the Home Board of the Southern Baptist Convention take up this work in connection with the Home Mission Society of the North. The secretary of the Home Board thinks your (Texas) Board should undertake it. ... We are of the opinion that your future (Texas) Board should be instructed to undertake to see that suitable houses be built in the place of those destroyed by the storm, and be authorized to solicit help from abroad."
___At the 1901 meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in New Orleans, Harris, pastor at First Baptist Church of Galveston, presented a "Report of the Committee on Texas Storm Sufferers," noting 25 churches had been wrecked in the storm and still lay in ruins. The report said the Texas State Mission Board had estimated it would take $75,000 to restore the churches, and the SBC Home Mission Board had agreed to raise $30,000 of the total.
___The death of F.H. Kerfoot, secretary of the Home Mission Board, stalled the Southern Baptist effort, however, and at the 1901 meeting of the BGCT it was noted that the churches remained in "deplorable condition." The state mission board recommended that $20,000 be raised within 90 days to assist the churches."
___At the meeting of the BGCT in 1902 at First Baptist Church of Waco, a report on "church building" noted that "substantial progress" had been made in the rehabilitation of the churches in the area.
___"Through the liberal assistance of the Home Board, a suitable house for Galveston is now well advanced toward completion and will be completed in the near future free of debt. A number of other houses destroyed by the storm have been rebuilt by the assistance of the board, and others are under construction. The exceeding stress of that situation is passing away and conditions are once more becoming normal."
___Galveston was rebuilt, and a seawall, 17 feet high and 54,790 feet long, was completed in 1962 to protect the island and city from other hurricanes.
___Baptists today have a strong presence there. Galveston Baptist Association has about 40 churches and 15 missions with a total membership of more than 27,000.
___And First Baptist Church of Galveston has one of the largest steeples in the city.
___Research contributors to this story included Alan Lefever and Naomi Taplin of the Texas Baptist Historical Collection, Ron Ellison of Beaumont, Royce Measures of Pasadena and Diane Zimmerman of First Baptist Church of Galveston
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