The Flood at Home, 1889

The Potomac Higher Than Ever Before—
Wreckage of the Canal—
Vast Destruction of Personal Property and Ruin of Homes and Business—Speedy Restoration of Railroad Travel and Traffic.

The cataclysm of the past week which has appalled the whole reading world visited with unprecedented destructiveness our own immediate section of the country. Its first burst was noticed in THE MAIL of last week, when, as we were going to press, the telephone from Williamsport conveyed intelligence of the cyclone which had crossed the Potomac below that place into Virginia, swept around demolishing buildings on the property of Martin Boward, of Mr. Criswell and others, and then re-crossing the river above, sweeping in devastating course up the Potomac until, as afterward appeared, it struck the mountain spur and was there broken. A section of the storm passed over Licking Creek and carried ruin into Indian Spring District. At Mr. Criswell’s the two men referred to as killed and fatally injured were James E. Powell, a pump-maker of Martinsburg, and Charles Vogle, a brother of Mr. Leonard Vogle, of Smithsburg. He died soon after and his remains were, with much difficulty, in consequence of the great flood, brought across the river. In the house of Mr. Boward were Mrs. Boward and Miss Alice Bloom, of Hagerstown, both of whom were painfully injured, from the effects of which Mrs. Boward subsequently died. The cyclone was phenomenal in this section, and took the regular funnel formation in its eccentric course up the river.

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