Hollis, Kansas Tornado

May 14, 1909

Kansas City, May 14. - - A series of tornadoes in Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma late today killed at least seven, injured fifty-five, laid waste one town, wrecked a train and did great damage to property.  Twenty-five were injured by a storm

that swept over Mount Washington and Fairmont park, suburbs of Kansas City.  At least two of these are thought to be fatally injured and others seriously.  The town of Hollis, Kas., near Concordia, was swept away.  Here three were killed and ten injured.  The killed:

FRED JEARDO

JOHN CYRE

JOHN ECKERT

The Eckstram family, consisting of five persons, is missing.  Their house is laid in ruins and it is thought they are dead.

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A elevator was blown over on the railroad tracks at Hollis, Kas., on the Concordia branch, where it is said a tornado passed through and killed two persons. Details of this storm were lacking and telephone and telegraph wires leading to that locality were reported down.

The Nebraska State Journal, Lincoln, NE, 15 May 1909

Kansas City, May 15 - - Five members of the Eckstrom family, supposed to have been killed on their farm near Hollis, Kas., in last night's tornado, and Charles Quance, a ranchman, who was believed to have succumbed near Larned, Kas., escaped unharmed to  tornado cellars.  The fact became known late today when wire communication, demoralized by the storm, was resumed with these points.  The known dead from the storm in this part of the southwest is three and the injured fifty-five.  None of the injured succumbed to their injuries today.

The principal damage was done at Hollis, a town of 150 inhabitants near Concordia, Kas., and at Mount Washington, Mo., a suburb eight miles east of Kansas City.  In both of these places practically every house was either damaged or demolished, and dozens of persons injured.

The dead:

FREDERICK JEARDOE, a boy, at Hollis, Kas.

WILLIAM ELLIOTT, a carpenter, blown from a derrick at Chitwood, near Joplin, Mo.

WILLIAM ACKLEY, engineer of a pile driver, a member of a Santa Fe rail bridge gang working near Great Bend, Kas.

The injured: Hollis, Kas., three.

The Nebraska State Journal, Lincoln, NE, 15 May 1909

DAMAGE BY KANSAS STORM.

Two Persons Killed and Several Injured Near Hollis.

CONCORDIA, KAS., May 15. – Details of the tornado at Hollis and vicinity about 5 o’clock last evening show it to have been most destructive to life and property. The storm covered a distance of about six miles, its path being narrow, but it took everything before it in Hollis. The Lacy and Loughmiller stores, the Burlington and Union Pacific depots, the Midland elevator, the Wesleyan Methodist and Methodist Episcopal churches were all completely wrecked, together with four residences in the town, while only three of the twenty-five or thirty buildings which constitute the village escaped damage.

In the country adjacent the H. Roswell farmhouse and barn, the A. E. Fortney house and barn, L. A. Price’s house, A. L. Abbott’s house and Miles Billings’s [sic] house were torn to pieces.

The Union Pacific freight train which stood on a siding at Hollis when the storm struck was turned completely over, nine freight cars and a passenger coach being upset. There were several passengers on board and all were more or less injured. Many persons were caught in houses or struck by flying debris, two persons being killed and many injured. FRED JEARDOE, 15 years old, was killed beneath a wagon which was turned over on him as he was hauling a load of corn. MRS. WALTER DALTON was blown out into the yard when the house was wrecked and died last night. A list of the more dangerously injured, follows:

J. M. Lacy, leg broken, internal injuries, probably fatal.
Charles Lacy, arm broken.
Charles Krohn, neck and back injured, serious.
Henry Christie, bad injuries about the head.
A Clay Center traveling salesman named Laird, head badly hurt, may die.
Conductor [illegible], Brakeman Carmody and Brakeman Eagan of the Union Pacific, bad contusions and sprains.

No estimate has been placed on the property loss, but it will not fall short of $50,000.

The Kansas City Times, Kansas City, MO 15 May 1909

Transcribed by Jenni Lanham.  Thank you, Jenni!

Photographs of the Hollis Tornado from Kansas and the West Photograph Collection, from Wichita State University Libraries, Department of Special Collections.

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