West Rindge, New Hampshire Tornado

September 13, 1928

WEST RINDGE TORNADO LOSS $100,000

Scores of Buildings Damaged; Valuable Woodland Ruined And Basket Factory Leveled

Village Scene of Devastation Today; Hundreds Escape Death or Injury By Narrow Margins; Orchards Ruined; 40 Telephone and Electric Light Poles Down; Hugh Trees Uprooted

WEST RINDGE, N. H. Sept. 14--For a period of 20 minutes late yesterday afternoon this Rindge village was the center of a tornado, small in its capacity for covering territory but most intense in its destructive power.

Standing out clearly this morning as the one bright color in the dark picture that the community is facing is the fact that not a life was lost and not a person was injured as a result of the worst storm that this section has ever seen. Nor had there been reported up to noon today any loss or injury to livestock.

Full extent of property loss cannot yet be estimated with any accuracy, nor can there yet be full realization of it, but the common estimate of nearly $100,000 can hardly be too high.

The storm had all the appearances and qualities of those tornadoes which now and then strike this section of the country. It acted very much like the one which passed over Fitchburg on July 17, 1924, tearing roofs from buildings, moving some from their foundations, taking up loosely-built structures only to drop them in a tangled heap. Great trees of close to three feet in diameter close to the ground were torn from their century-old beds and hurled to the ground. Entire fruit orchards are lying low, some of the trees being merely uprooted while others have been torn limb from limb.

The town’s lighting and telephone systems are a tangled mass of pole and wire wreckage, over which work of restoration has been going on with the greatest energy since the storm wore itself out just before dark yesterday. And when darkness came, it was dark, for the street lights and the house lights that required wire service were useless.

Yesterday was in a way a storm-breeder. The wind had been moving lazily from the southwest since mid forenoon, and the temperature and the humidity mounted together.

Thermometers under a dull sun were reaching close to 80 degrees by mid-afternoon. Just before 4 o’clock dense black clouds began to back up in the direction of Monadnock, the mountain peak which is not only a thing of beauty for Rindge, but a breeder of disturbing electric storms. Rapidly the sky became obscured with clouds. Thunder rolled continuously, and the lightning played incessantly, as a prelude to the terrible winds that began to blow. To observers it seemed that there was a great wind current from the southeast backing up against the winds that were moving in a northeasterly direction.

At any rate, spiral movements were visible, and trees began to flop over as if by magic. Holes developed instantly in roofs of big and small barns. The whole glass front in the post office building was pushed in as by a giant’s hand. Trees, some easily and some harshly, fell across the streets of the village. A small building of the basket shop plant close to the post office was crumpled into a pile of boards and beams. The tremendous vacuum created by the tornado did its most perfect work on the long ell of the Philip Prescott home, when it removed cleanly one-half and left the other intact. The operation of this vacuum principle was evident in a score of places, through holes, some big and some small, which appeared in roofs of houses and barns.

The storm was fickle in it choices too. Here would be a house with its chimney down and partly through the roof, while close by would be a home that to all appearances had escaped wholly.

So far as it was possible to observe this morning the tornado began its work of destruction in West Rindge near the common. There is no destruction visible along the highway to the Jaffrey villages beyond that point although toward the Fitzwilliam side there has been heavy damage to fine stands of pine and hard woods. The wild winds left Rindge Center quite well alone although on the town [illegible] beyond the center village are signs of the storm’s might. From reports that are constantly coming in it is certain that the storm’s fringes were [illegible] tagged in shape and widely extended. But the heart of the destruction lies, it seems sure, in a space not over a mile wide and two miles long, with the area of greatest intensity being between Peol pond and Exile Inn farm, on the road to the center.

The path of the tornado is quite clearly marked along the surface of Cheshire County in New Hampshire.

From the point where it struck Rindge, between the center and West village it moved in a direct line from southeast to northwest across the county. It skipped Jaffrey’s villages, but hit that town close to Fitzwilliam in the Stone brook region, and extended out to Fullam hill in Fitzwilliam, where it took the Perry barn.

Fitchburg Sentinel, Fitchburg, MA 14 Sept 1928

Transcribed by Helen Coughlin.  Thank you, Helen!

The damage was distributed as follows.... H. O. [illegible], general store, $1000; Taylor basket factory; John Crosby house, barn and ice house, $3000; Walter O. Hastings, grove [?] and buildings, $12,500; L. T. Warbesher [?], trees and buildings [illegible]; Mrs. Mabel Powers, house [illegible]; Mrs. Liberty Jewell [illegible]; S. Z. Cleaves [illegible]; Ray Chesley [illegible];....R. P. S. Prescott, $4000; [illegible] Blake house [illegible]; Edward Sargent, [illegible]; Mrs. Louis Murphy, house and shed [illegible]; Mrs. Mariana Emery, house [illegible]; Frank D. Converse, pine lot, orchard and buildings $8500; Harlan A. Stearns [illegible]..... [illegible] Morgan, $500; Parley [?] Jones, farm buildings, $3000; Warren F. Kimball, pine lot and cottages, $10,000.

As the tornado swept into West Rindge it ripped off the slates, toppled the chimneys and broke the windows at the home of Mrs. Robinson Converse and the Frank D. Converse farm.  At the latter place it leveled a 10-cord woodlot and an orchard.

At the Harlan Stearns farm the storm leveled the orchard and damaged the house and barn. It reached out and grazed the 15-acre Sargent woodlot while it swept its mad way to the center ripping at the homes of Mrs. Louis Murphy, Mrs. Mariana Emory and the old Blake house, one of the historic West Rindge houses.

D. P. S. Prescott owns the two houses next to the Blake house.  They first received the usual damage to chimneys and roof but the second seemed to be the specter [illegible] of the storm.  One half the roof of the long [illegible] at the rear of the structure was sliced cleanly off exposing bedrooms and store rooms in the house.  A baby's crib sailed around the yard for some minutes before it blew to pieces.

The shingles came off the front roof and the deluge of rain soon ruined the plaster in the upper rooms.  The front door lock blew out of its frame and landed in the kitchen.  The barn in the rear of the house collapsed.

The Prescott place presents the scene of greatest damaged and destruction this morning.

Although no one was killed or seriously injured, many had narrow escapes....a large wooden canopy suspended from the building by wire cables crashed to earth when the building collapsed, pinning Mrs. Abbie Taylor beneath it.  She received slight injuries to her right shoulder.

Marcus M. Cleaves and his wife and Mrs. Taylor were at work in the Taylor shop when the storm hit.  Mr. Cleaves and the two women rushed to the door in time to see trees falling .... Suddenly the building creaked and groaned in the high wind and collapsed as the three started to run.  Mr. Cleaves aided Mrs. Taylor to get from underneath the wreckage and aided her across the street to his home.  Mrs. Cleaves was just ahead of them and was struck by a flying limb but not seriously hurt.

The intense vacuum caused by the tornado as it flattened the building smashed the large plate glass windows of a general store adjacent.  A large hole was also torn in the store roof.

The Oren F. Sawtell [?] home across the street from Prescott's took the brunt of the its damage on one side of the barn, which was ripped open.  The house also was damaged.  An orchard of 35 trees was raised.

The beautiful Mary Lee Ware estate proper was not damaged but the homes of the workers on the estate were damaged by falling trees.  William S. Cleaves, manager of the estate, drove into the yard of his house just before the storm.  He ran into the house closing windows when the storm hit.  He rushed out [illegible] his truck just in time to save it from a falling pine.

The barn of S. Z. Cleaves has a hole in the roof 6 feet in diameter and another n the wall near the foundation about a foot in diameter.  It is believed lightning was responsible although there was no fire.

Although the tornado left suffering and frightened residents and flattened buildings, in its wake, perhaps the worst hit was Waldo O. Hastings.  Mr. Hastings lives just north of the village and owns a large nine lot on the shores of Pool pond.... 

Miss Liberty Jewell, aged 88, mother of Mrs. Henry W. Holman of Fitchburg, was alone in her house which faces the West Rindge common when the storm broke.  Chimnies [sic] toppled, the roof was ripped open and windows crashed in.  Mrs. Jewell was not injured.

Houses facing the common which were damaged are owned by Mrs. Jewell, [illegible], and Mrs. Mabel Powers.

John Crosby's home on the shore of Pool pond was badly damaged.  The roof shed most of its shingles.... It blew down the barn, hen coop and ice house.

Fitchburg Sentinel, Fitchburg, MA 14 Sept 1928

At the home of Mrs. J. Erwin Powers, facing the common, near Mrs. Jewell's home, a swarm of bees has become established on the roof, and judging from attempts to rescue them, they will stay there.

The chimney crashed during the height of the storm and when the sun came out this morning it was found that the swarm of bees had a hive in it.  Honey bees and brick were strewn all over the roof.

Another freak of the storm occurred at the Powers house.  Mrs. Powers had left the house just before the storm.  The plazza rail was decorated with a basket of fern, two potted plants and a large glass vase.  When she returned after the storm she found a tree leveled not six feet from the house, the piazza floor littered with debris and the piazza rail untouched and still bearing its vase potted plants and fern basket.

The Monticello barn on the Rindge center road was moved several inches on its foundation, but aside from broken windows it was undamaged.

On the Perley pond road, which leads to the Arthur H. Lowe summer estate, a virgin pine, four feet thick at the butt, lay across the highway.  Special saws must be imported before it can be moved.  Farther on an ash tree, two feet thick, was twisted off four feet from the ground and the upper part of the trunk slivered in to small slivers.

A though investigation yesterday revealed that Warren E. Kimball was the heaviest loser.   His 100-acre pinegrove, with its seven cottages, was wrecked, the heavy trunks of the fallen trees having crushed the summer houses.  The road to this place is still blocked by the fallen timber, but those who have made the journey by foot proclaim it the scene of the greatest destruction.

On Pool pond a boat owned by Walter Hastings was torn loose from its moorings.  A thorough search has been made for it, but as yet it has not been found....

In Rindge proper a corner of the roof of Mrs. Lillian Knott's home was torn off.

Residents of the town who were here during the entire storm tell of a darkness so dense that it obscured objects less than 100 feet away, of a sighing wind that whipped to a tremendous velocity and with a roar like that of a fast train rushed upon the town, twisted and wracked it in its grip for a few moments and then passed before a curtain of driving rain and hail.  "T' awful noise" they say and suppress an involuntary shudder when they tell of their experiences.

Many women were along with young children during the storm.  Many motorists were caught on the highways and penned in by falling trees and many farmers were surprised at work in their fields.

Today these people are trying to state a come back after one of the severest blows in the history of the town.  Today they are grim and saddened as they see the wreck of their homes and orchards, but,  in spite of all of this, one is able to catch an under current of thankfulness that no one was killed or seriously hurt, and that, in the face of tremendous odds, their numbers were not depleted by so much as one.

Fitchburg Sentinel, Fitchburg, MA 15 Sept 1928

Search for more information on the West Rindge Tornado and other disasters in the  Historic Newspapers Collection.  The number of newspapers on line has recently doubled - search over 1000 different newspapers. Use this Free trial to search for your ancestors.

Search for ancestors in West Rindge, NH among billions of names at ancestry.com. Use this Free trial to search for your ancestors.

History of Cheshire and Sullivan Counties, New Hampshire Use this Free trial to search for your ancestors.