Mt Vernon, IL Tornado, Feb 1888 - Deadly Cyclone

A DEADLY CYCLONE

Loss of Life at Mt. Vernon Sunday Night. The Latest.

While the rain was falling in torrents, the lightning flashing and the wind blowing, Sunday evening in Decatur, a terrible cyclone was getting in its deadly work in the southern part of Illinois, chiefly at Mt. Vernon in Jefferson county. Below are copies of telegrams received this morning telling of the ravages of the mid-winter cyclone.

Evansville, Ind., Feb. 19. – A terrible cyclone struck Mt. Vernon, Illinois, between 4 and 5 p.m., doing great destruction to the town, killing about 30 persons, and injuring about 200. Engineer CUMMINGS is among the killed and many of the Louisville & Nashville employers are injured. The city is on fire – a special, with 5 engines and physicians have been sent from Evansville.

LATER

The fire is under control at 9 p.m. The depot is slightly damaged in roof; all frame buildings of round house and shops, more or less damaged: roof blown off – side and end crushed in; store room and Wabash office totally wrecked and contents damaged – two cabooses turned bottom side up; Walsh’s house blown down. Mr. Walsh is master mechanic of the L. & N. railway.

A full account of the calamity appears on our telegraph page.

Mt. Vernon is in Jefferson county, Ill., and is situated seventy-eight miles almost due east of St. Louis, on the Louisville and Nashville and the St. Louis and Southeastern railroads. The town has about 2,500 inhabitants. It is in the midst of a flat, prairie country. It has a city organization, and besides being the county seat of Jefferson county, it is the place for holding the sessions of the Illinois Supreme Court for the Southern Grand Division, as well as the Appellate court of the Fourth District. The town has many beautiful residences, most of which are wood. The two principal business streets are lined with substantial brick houses.

He Was at Mt. Vernon
From Tuesday’s Daily

A. J. Crawford, representing the Detroit Casket Co., was in Decatur to-day. He spent yesterday at Mt. Vernon, where he viewed the destruction wrought by the cyclone of Sunday evening. He says it was a fearful looking sight, two-thirds of the town leveled to the ground, including whole blocks of brick buildings, 34 people killed outright and 150 wounded, mostly bruised. Those who went through the whirl and lived to tell the story relate hair-raising accounts of their experience. Mr. Crawford says the survivors were wild with fright yesterday, and there is mourning in many households. Aid for the sufferers is coming in from every direction and all the physicians for miles around are at the scene of the catastrophe. Mr. C. thinks that while the court house was destroyed, most of the supreme and appellate court records are saved. The eastern end of the town looks as if it had been swept over by a fire – everything flat.

Decatur Republican, Decatur, IL 23 Feb 1888