When A Tornado Destroyed My Home Town

I was born near Lake Payne in the Oakmulgee Division of the Talladega Naitonal Forest in the NE edge of Hale County. However, I grew up one-half mile south of downtown Havana Junction and I am very proud of my roots.

There was only one country store in Havana Junction, so everyone considered Moundville, six miles to the north, as our shopping area. There were a couple of dry good stores, grocery store, two doctors and the Hale County News newspaper office to name a few.

I am leading up to a story about how Moundville was virtually wiped off of the map by a powerful tornado. Bill Murray mentioned this in the 7-day planner yesterday morning. It happened on January 22, 1904. This, of course, was a little while before I was born, but it happened soon after Moundville was established.

Ray Chandler, with the Moundville Times, wrote an interesting story about this tornado a few years ago and there was a full page of very interesting old photographs. I am holding a copy of all this in my caffeine stained hands.

One of the most interesting things about this tornado was that it happened about 20 minutes past midnight. Fortunately a train heading north on the great Southern Railroad pulled into Moundville a short time later and the engineer saw what had happened. He immediately put the train in reverse and raced backwards about 10 miles or so to Akron (where I graduated from high school) and telegraphed news of the disaster to Tuscaloosa asking for help. Doctors from Moundville, Tuscaloosa and Birmingham worked for two days treating the injured in temporary “hospitals” set up on Dr. Griffin’s back porch and the Elliott’s store (that was the only store left standing).

This tornado killed 37 people and seriously injured 63. Remember, Moundville was a very small town. As usual, with all tornadoes, there were some freaks of nature. One young man had his face crushed and then a 2×4 piece of timber was driven through his body entering through the neck and protruding through the left side of his stomach. A trunk was picked up and blown to Taylorville south of Tuscaloosa. A hat was found 9 miles away. Bolts of cloth were carried several miles.

The tornado reached its maximum strength in the vicinity of the railroad depot and in the heart of the business section. Everything was swept aside including the heavily laden freight cars standing on side tracks. Some of those cars were loaded with heavy timbers and those timbers were scattered like matchsticks.

Looking at that full page of old photographs furnished by Cary Findlay, it looks like a bulldozer had leveled the entire town.

Unfortunately, there was no such thing as a tornado warning in 1904. I don’t even know if telephones had been invented. I don’t believe there were any radio stations and certainly no TV stations.

How would you like to have lived in those years?

Category: Uncategorized