Various Locations, LA Wind And Rain Storms, Sep 1879

WIND AND WATER.

DESTRUCTIVE WIND AND RAIN STORM IN LOUISIANA.

SEVERAL TOWNS INUNDATED -- THE STEAMER GILMORE SUNK -- SUGAR HOUSES DESTROYED, A PIILOT DROWNED, AND AN IMMENSE AMOUNT OF DAMAGE DONE.

New Orleans, Sept. 3. -- Reports of losses by Monday's storm continue to come in. At Lewisburg and Maudeville, wharves, bath houses and fences were destroyed and residences damaged. The town of Lewisburg was inundated. The light house at the mouth of the Tichefuncta River was destroyed. At Madisonville the water was three feet over the wharf, flooding the streets. The steamboat Trenton left Baton Rouge that morning, and eight miles below, encountered a hurricane and made fast to the banks. The wind increasing, the passengers went ashore. The lines soon after gave way, and the boat went adrift and capsized, the passengers and crew losing their effects. The Trenton had eighty-eight bales of cotton, one hundred head of cattle and sundries. The steamer Cannon brought the Trenton's passengers and crew, and recovered fifty-two bales of cotton.
The sinking of the Gilmore and barges caused a loss of $125,000. The steamboat Paragon, during the storm, landed at Newton, twenty miles above Bayou Sara. Here officers report the warehouse at Texas Landing blown away. All the sugar cane and cotton back of the river at Texas Landing is destroyed. Three or four gin houses were demolished, and fences and cabins blown down. Damage to sugar houses, dwellings and crops is reported along the coast. Houses were blown down in Bayou Sara, Baton Rouge, at Port Hickey and other towns. So far as could be ascertained no lives were lost. The storm in St. John Baptist was a fierce and continuous gale of wind and rain from eight in the morning until eleven in the morning, with an occassional lull of a few minutes, was followed by increased fury of the gale, carrying away trees, shaking houses, and prostrating fences. Everybody seemed on the alert. Some sugar houses, stables and cabins were blown down. The orange crop was badly damaged. Pecan trees were stripped of their fruit. The cane and rice are in a deplorable condition, levelled close to the earth, as if cut for the mill.
It is reported at the Chicago, St. Louis and New Orleans railroad office that a train ran off the track at Eclipse Mills, and a brakeman slightly injured. No passengers were hurt.
WM. E. BUST was the name of the pilot drowned. He with others, went to the barges for safety, and when the barges sank all swam ashore except BUST.
Telegraphic communications with the interior is still interrupted.
The officers of the Cannon report the destruction of a dozen sugar houses on the coast below Baton Rouge. Emile Le Fevre had two sugar houses destroyed at Conrad's Point, and Cougan & Kelley lost a magnificient sugar house at Avery Place.
Coal and ferry boats at Baton Rouge were sunk and several buildings damaged.
In the storm, Monday, three barges of the John Gilmore were sunk above Baton Rouge and one of the pilots drowned. The sunken barges had cargoes of produce, including seventy-nine thousand bushels of wheat.

Burlington Daily Hawk Eye Iowa 1879-09-04
__________________

Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!