“Monday at noon we left the wharf on the sailboat ‘Lake Austin’ in company with five others. We paid $100 for passage to Texas City. The names of those in the party were, J. A. Kemp, of Wichita Falls; Henry Sayles, of Abilene; A. W. Boyd, of Houston; W. A. Frazer, of Dallas, and myself and my wife. Mrs. Griswold was the first woman to leave the island after the disaster. We landed at Texas City at 2.30, caught the Texas Terminal Railway to a junction with the Galveston, Houston and Henderson. From there we walked for a mile to where they were repairing the track, and caught a freight train into Houston, arriving about 10.30 at night.
“The buildings in Galveston that are not totally wrecked are damaged in such a manner that I believe it will cost as much to repair them as it would to build new ones outright. There is not a church left standing. The general offices of the Santa Fe are badly wrecked. On the floor next to the top some of the inside door casings are forced out of the frames, and the entire building will have to be replastered before it will be safe to occupy. The train sheds are gone.
“On the Mallory wharves is a conglomerated pile of boxcars and boats and cotton wreckage of every description. The Mallory liner ‘Comal’ arrived there just after the storm, and, thank goodness, the crew has sense enough to stay on board the boat. Dead bodies are in all the wreckage under the wharf just like dead rats. The Santa Fe officials and the heads of the different departments in the general offices, so far as reported, are all safe. The families of a good many of the clerks have been lost entirely, and in other instances partially so.
“The Blum family came to the Washington Hotel at daylight Sunday morning with nothing on them but shreds. They had lost everything. When they left home they had thousands of dollars worth of diamonds on their persons. These were all lost in their battle with the elements. Their bodies were a mass of bruises.
“There is scarcely a stock of goods in Galveston that isn’t a total loss. But the Sealy residence, standing even as it does, where it seems as if the slightest breeze would strike it, hasn’t a scratch on it.
ENTIRE FAMILIES LOST.
“The brother of John Paul Jones, the general agent of our road, lost his entire family. Will Labatt, assistant ticket agent of the Santa Fe, lost his entire family, with the exception of his wife, who is visiting in the North. He turned up Sunday morning at 6 o’clock more dead than alive and covered with bruises and cuts.
“John Paul Jones, the general agent of the Santa Fe, succeeded in saving his family. His wife was very sick, but he saved her by swimming across the street with his child on his head and his wife between himself and another person.
“Mr. Crane, chief rate clerk to the general freight agent of the road, spent the entire night with his wife on the roof of his residence. His wife had been confined about six weeks ago, and in addition had an abscess on her leg, which bent it nearly double. They were saved. He was a mass of bruises. His heel was crushed.
“I don’t see how any man who passed Saturday night in Galveston can stay there and make it his home.”