Harper’s Weekly 1886 – Johnson’s Bayou, Louisiana

On October 12, 1886, Johnson Bayou was completely destroyed by the “great storm of 1886;” a storm surge of between seven and twelve feet that swept inland at Johnson Bayou, killing between 50 and 100 people.

OCTOBER 12, 1886:

THE NIGHT THAT JOHNSON’S BAYOU, LOUISIANA DIED

By W. T. Block

Although a series of seven hurricanes, dating back to Sept. 13, 1865, had buffeted the area periodically, none, not even the storms of 1865 or 1879, had been so severe as to inundate the ridges or discourage settlement. But the great storm of Oct. 12, 1886, was something different; it drowned 110 persons in one night, swept the ridges clean of all animal and plant life, and left only the sorrow and stench of death in its wake.

As the sun rose that morning, there was nothing to indicate that the furies of the sea were smoldering. The men had left to pick cotton in the fields, and wives went about their household chores. About noon, a moderate wind blew from the southeast, but no alarm was felt until around 4 o’clock P. M., when the waters of the bayou rose four feet in one hour. By six o’clock, a gale was blowing, and water was beginning to enter houses; by 7 P. M., a full-flown hurricane was rattling the windows and doors; and by 9 P. M., the waters of the bayou and Gulf had joined into a raging sea twelve feet deep, sweeping everything away in its path.

As the waters reached waist-deep in the homes, terror gripped the settlement. Some retreated at first to second story levels, while others abandoned home for the outdoors — to cling to driftwood or the tops of trees. Parents lashed their small children to tree branches, only to see the trees uprooted by the winds or the branches blown away.

Some houses, such as that of Duncan Smith, broke loose and floated into Sabine Lake (seven years earlier he had lost another home on the Calcasieu Pass the same way). But at least half of the casualties, such as the entire Owen Jones family, were drowned or crushed in their homes. Eight occupants of the Jones house retreated upstairs when the waters rose, but the continuous pounding of the waves and winds weakened and tore away the walls until the roof collapsed.

There were five people, the parents and three children, in the Joseph Paisley home, when the house began to disintegrate piece by piece. A son, 6-year-old Hancock, floated away on a bed. As the first arc of dawn rose above that panorama of death and destruction, four members of the Paisley family were drowned, but Hancock was found, alive but insensible, 10 miles away on his feather bed.

The Jeremiah Quinns were prosperous cotton and orange growers when the flooding began. When their home went to pieces, they clung to floating debris, with the waves casting them against walls and wood until their heads were a mass of contusions. Twelve hours later, Quinn was found six miles away, still clutching his dead wife, and muttering mostly incoherently but affectionately, “Cheer up, Mary! It’ll soon be over.”

Bill Stafford, a boisterous and hard-drinking farm laborer, was alone, except for two toddlers, ages 2 and 4, left in his charge at the Ralph Hackett home when the massive storm struck. For 12 torturous hours after the waters rose, he gripped the clothing of the infant in his teeth, held the older daughter tightly with one arm, and clutched a floating log with the other. The next day, a relief party found them alive but insensible. The baby soon died, but Stafford and the little girl recovered. The parents, Mr. and Mrs. Hackett, also floated out alive, clutching debris from a Radford store, but the couple were 10 miles apart when found.

When the night of horror ended, there was hardly a bayou family left intact. Everyone had lost someone near and dear among the 110 drowning victims of the storm. Another 86 had died at Sabine Pass. Seventeen small children at Johnson’s Bayou were orphaned without parents or siblings, and 20 parents lost all of their children. None, or no more than one, survived of the Jones, Paisley, Quinn, F. Gallier, S. Gallier, E. Fanchett, Joseph Luke, George Stephens, William Ferguson, Frank Tanner, George Smith, Alfred Lambert, Michel Wagley, Adam Smith, Henry Johnson, and Richard Hambrick families, and eight children of the Sam Brown family also drowned. Within five days, 75 of the bodies were recovered and buried, but many of them were never found.

By Oct. 14, rescue parties were arriving to ferry the dazed survivors away to Beaumont and Orange. In their greatest rescue effort ever, these two towns were soon housing and feeding 1,800 destitute victims from Johnson’s Bayou, Radford, and Sabine Pass, and the hearts of the state and nation opened up with large gifts of money and provisions.

After the waters receded, the scenes of desolation were appalling. Only one store building was still standing in Radford; Johnson was entirely swept away, and the stench from the putrifying carcasses of 20,000 cattle became unbearable. The few surviving cattle soon went mad for want of fresh water, but before dying, they often charged and attacked the rescuing parties.

“Tuesday,” wrote a Galveston newspaper correspondent, “Johnson’s Bayou was a thriving community with more than one thousand inhabitants. Today it is a community of beggars . . . . The buzzards are the only feathered fowl in the air.”

Radford was never rebuilt, for many of the survivors returned eventually to the Northern states or moved away to Texas. But like Sabine Pass, a nucleus of nestors straggled back to rebuild from the debris and keep the settlement alive. Their children and grandchildren have since survived more recent storms, but unlike the grandparents, they’ve had the advantages of modern technology to keep themselves abreast of the weather conditions and help them escape before the furies of the Gulf churn in around them once more. Since June 26, 1957, when Hurricane Audrey killed 500 people in Cameron Parish, one need only shout, “Storm!,” and the people of Johnson’s Bayou scurry across the causeway to safety in Port Arthur, Texas.

(Photo source: Trent Gremillion)