Norwich bulletin., 1920-02-25
JEWETTCHY

Jewett City people are tremendously
 interested in the high water question,
 now that it is the 34th anniversary of
 the great flood when Jewett City, busi-
 nesS-wise, was practically wiped off
 the map. Old clippings, records and
 diaries show that Saturday, Feb. 13,
 1886, was a day of horror for JeWett
 City. Never before, and never since
 then, have the people been called upon
 to witness such wholesale destruction.
 One diary says: How many times the
 wonder has been expressed that no
 lives were sacrificed on that memora-
 ble day. Very close approaches to
 fatality were reported, and in fact wit
 messed, among which was the rescue
 of Mrs. Warren Thornton by P. B. i Driscoll, who bravely crossed to her
 rescue the swaying railroad bridge,
 against which was piled an immense jam of debris, which in holding back the onrushing flood served to sustain pressure beyond comprehension. No
 sooner had they reached place of safety, and even while the cheers of the crowd were. rending the air, one of the large steel boilers which were used as petroleum tanks by the Slater | mills, which had been washed from it's 1 moorings, came bounding down the l swollen stream with the speed of a race horse and struck the rick of tim | bers, blanks, parts of houses. etc. 1 With a deafening roar and crash and | groan, which mingled with the excla- l nations of horror and fear from the
 assembled spectators, the whole busi-
 ness, piers. abutments. ties. blanks, 1 timbers, barrels, boxes, hencoops, roofs, swine receptacles, boiler and all l were swept away by the impetuous i torrent, leaving only a swaying sus-
 pension of steel rails.
 1 James McGovern, an old man, who 1 lived on Factory Hill, was nearly i drowned in the river that was left in l the bed of the Slater pond after the 1 dam had been washed away; he was his peril. A wise and allmercifu' i Providence had decreed that no life 1 shoNld be lost. There had been sew eraI days festeady rain, the hills were 1 covered with snow. and the lakes and l rivers with heavy ice. For fon~ time ttere was no apparent anxiety but by
 Friday night things looked q trife l suggestive Tremendous sheets o1 l water came laundering over the com i panv's dams, the great roars of which 1 could be heard throuehout the villa ge 1 all the day and night preceding the food Ire Ouinebaug. too. was l swollen badly and ran across the road
 at either end of the Lisbon bridge i That night when the mills shut down l for what proved to be so long time
 and the employees went home from
 their work, knots of men were here l and there gazing at the fast rising water. Some nrophesied that before
 morning something unusual would !, take place.
 On the banks of the streams, in the 1 nIaces Of business and on the streets ] it was the only topic for the evenings discussion. But few thought of sleep
 for as the time passed, so the water everywhere increa sed, rapidly and steadily. The people on the. lower flats 1 of the village expected to hear every l minute the awful cry that the dams
 had given away and that they must i run for their lives. Special guards watchmen and heralds- volunteered l their services for that night of vigil. Morning dawned, disclosing the fact l that everything must soon succumb tc 1 the awful strain. Many attempts were l made at Ashland to stop up the fast 1 gulleving enbankment but it was la bor lost, and only after hours ot l thankless exertion, and when the ever increasing water warned the workmer l to desist and flee for safety, did they