As the sun began to rise in Orange on September 13, the wind was coming in from the northeast. But if the citizens were thinking they might be getting a fall cool front, they were wrong. That Wednesday ended as the most deadly day in local history as a hurricane with winds blew more than 100 miles per hour landed in the small town that was already suffering from a loss of local men after the Civil War. The year was 1865. The Texas Hurricane History by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that 25 people died in Orange, killed mostly by falling debris and flying timbers. The town was leveled with 196 of 200 homes demolished. The houses “seemed to be nothing more than a pasteboard box in the wind,” wrote one survivor whose sister died. Boats and ships were docked along the curve of the Sabine River. Only one was left afloat after the storm. Nineteen sank, including the Florida, a steamboat that once was the largest on the Sabine River and had been a transport ship for the Confederacy. Meteorology was in its infancy, so no agency was around to name the storm, which now is sometimes called the Sabine River-Lake Calcasieu Hurricane. Weather historians assign the storm as a Category 2. Accounts written by two Orange pioneers give a personal look at what happened. One was by R.E. Russell, who was 18 years old at the time of the storm. In 1911, he wrote his remembrances down and included information about the storm. Dr. D.C. Hewson, a city leader and pharmacist, also wrote about the hurricane. Hewson’s drug store was on Front Street facing the river. The Russell home was also on Front, almost next door.
Russell wrote that the winds started blowing as the sun rose. “Each puff seemed to get stronger. By 12:00 it was blowing a perfect gale and by 2 or 3 o’clock in the evening small houses began to blow away,” he wrote. “Planks and house tops could be seen flying in the air like birds. I stood and saw the roofs of several houses part in the center and then they would be caught up by the wind and would go sailing like a bird. And the roof off my father’s workshop did more damage than any other.”
He recalled that he ran out of his house and was standing by the Gilmer store across the street from his father’s home. Russell’s parents were out of town during the storm. As the winds roared and he stood outside, his sister Georgia, the oldest in the family, fell at his feet. “I picked her up. I thought at the time she was dead and I looked up and saw my eldest brother Henry going right into the river. I laid my sister down and went and caught him just in time to keep him from being blown into the river,” he wrote. His sister didn’t survive her injuries. She died on September 15. Another sister, the youngest, had a head wound and his younger brother was also wounded.
Hewson wrote “the people left their homes to seek safety in the prairie where by crouching in the grass away from the timber they were free from danger. What a time was then. The crash after crash of buildings, the sullen roar of the tempest like a great waterfall rushing in its madness and ever and anon it seemed to gather strength and burst out with renewed violence.”
A.G. Swain was missing after the storm. “No one knew where he was from 5:00 in the evening until daylight the next morning,” Russell wrote. He was found buried in a pile of rubbish with his face down in two or three inches in the ground. “He was a black as could be and it was three or four months before he recovered and he died several years afterward from the results of the injuries he received at that time.”
One of the few houses still standing was a landmark for decades. It was the sprawling Ochiltree house, which was built along Front Street and faced the river. Current Ochiltree-Inman Park across the street from Lamar State College-Orange was the site of the house.
A NOAA history includes a report made from Niblet’s Bluff, which was also destroyed. “The wind blasted increasedly in violence about sunset and continued to 11 o’clock.” Many houses were also blown away in Johnson’s Bayou, Louisiana. The area around Lake Calcasieu was flooded by the storm surge. “Grand Chenier was put under water and many houses were washed away.” Even though tides ran high all the way to the Mississippi River, the only high winds were reported in “extreme western Louisiana.”
People in Orange today remember what happened during Hurricane Rita in 2005. The 1865 hurricane left a similar situation with nature. “There was not a leaf left on a tree or weed and grass was torn out of the ground by its roots. Trees that were not blown down, some of them two or three feet in diameter, were broken off a few feet above ground,” Russell wrote. In addition, he said “the water in the river was all stirred up from the bottom. It was black and stinking and the fish all died, while crabs and crayfish crawled out on the bank or on the timber that was in the sun.” Hewson remembered “the trees budded and put forth new leaves and it was late before a frost came.” Orange, like the trees, came back from the disaster.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
Sept.13, 2014
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