Policemen Joseph Bird and John Rowan rescued about 100 people Saturday from the fury of the storm. They returned to the police station only when the high water floated the patrol wagon and threatened to drown their team. They had no idea that the waters of the gulf had invaded the western portion of the city where they lived until they returned to the police station. They started immediately for their homes, but their families had been swept away. Policeman Bird lost his wife and five children and Rowan his wife and three children.
Many refugees were picked up at Hitchcock and taken to the Jacquard Hotel, where they were given every possible attention. Many of these refugees were suffering from injuries and had been in the water for some time.
Most of these persons had floated in on drift and rafts, and one of the party came ashore on a piano.
One hundred ammunition boxes from Camp Hawley were found near Hitchcock, and a pile-driver from Huntington wharf was driven inland to within a few hundred yards of the town. The prairie was covered with drift of all kinds, dead cattle, water craft of all sizes, buggies, wagons and such like. Searching parties found dozens of bodies in Hall’s Bayou and buried them.
SEES FAMILY SWEPT AWAY.
One of the refugees who arrived at Houston on the first relief train from Texas City, just out of Galveston, and who had a sad experience in the hurricane, was S. W. Clinton, an engineer at the fertilizing plant at the Galveston stock yards. Mr. Clinton’s family consisted of his wife and six children. When his house was washed away he managed to get two of his little boys safely to a raft, and with them he drifted helplessly about. His raft collided with wreckage of every description and was split in two and he was forced to witness the drowning of his sons, being unable to help them in any way. Mr. Clinton says parts of the city are seething masses of water.
ESCAPED, BUT LOST HIS WIFE.
Mr. Jennings, a slater, who resided at Thirty-eighth street and Avenue M ½, Galveston, got to the mainland in about the same manner as Clinton. After losing his wife, he set out, and by swimming and drifting around reached the mainland.
William Smith, a boy about 18 years old, whose home is in West Texas, had a narrow escape. Young Smith was blown off the docks and came ashore in the driftwood. Despite the difficulty he experienced in keeping afloat he held out to the end and reached the shore safe and sound.
A. L. Forbes, a United States postal clerk, whose car was attached to a train which passed through the territory not far from Galveston on Sunday, said that at Oyster Creek the train crew and passengers heard cries coming out of a mass of debris. Several persons answered the cries and found a negro woman fastened under a roof. They pulled her out and she informed her rescuers there were others under the roof. A further search resulted in the finding of nine dead bodies, all colored persons.