The Great Galveston Disaster / Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Including Vivid Descriptions of the Hurricane and Terrible Rush of Waters; Immense Destruction of Dwellings, Business Houses, Churches, and Loss of Thousands of Human Lives; Thrilling Tales of Heroic Deeds; Panic-Stricken Multitudes and Heart-Rending Scenes of Agony; Frantic Efforts to Escape a Horrible Fate; Separation of Loved Ones, etc., etc.; Narrow Escapes from the Jaws of Death; Terrible Sufferings of the Survivors; Vandals Plundering Bodies of the Dead; Wonderful Exhibitions of Popular Sympathy; Millions of Dollars Sent for the Relief of the Stricken Sufferers

by Paul Lester

THE CRIES OF THE PEOPLE.

The cries of the people still filled his ears. He went out a second time and after being gone for what seemed an hour or more to those who were waiting he returned with the people. They had clung to the branches of a salt cedar tree. Mr. Masterson was not satisfied with that, but went out for other people immediately, the water having begun to fall about that time, and worked all night.

A little black dog stood barking over a sand hill in the west end beyond Woollam’s lake. Those who endeavored to stop his barking by driving him away did not succeed for he returned as soon as they ceased their attempts. It was suggested that he was guarding a body, but others scouted the idea.

Finally they dug beneath the spot where the dog stood, and there they found the remains of a young girl whom they identified by the rings she wore as Miss Lena Everhart, a popular little lady, well known both in Galveston and Dallas. This whole family, with the exception of one son, Elmer Everhart, and a daughter, Mrs. Robert Brown, who lives near Dickinson and was there at the time, was lost. The father ran a dairy just southwest of Woollam’s lake.

At Twelfth and Sealy avenue there lived a colored man and his wife. There was a grocery on the corner and those who weathered the storm report that he stood near the beer keg in the bar room of the grocery drinking steadily until he was swept away, his idea evidently being to destroy consciousness before the storm did it for him. His body was picked out of a pile of debris between Twelfth and Thirteenth on Sealy avenue.

The Catholic Orphans’ Home on the beach at the west end of the city went some time after 5.30 o’clock Saturday evening. Mr. Harry Gray, who lived in Kinkead subdivision, just beyond the city limits, was compelled to leave his house at that hour and says the home was standing then. Now not a vestige of it remains. Eight nuns and all but one of ninety-five children were lost. This child, a little tot, was found on the north side of the island in a tree. “I’se been ’seep,” he lisped. “My head was in de water.”