The 1913 flood killed seven people in Fort Wayne.” · “No, six. — Famous Stories & the Record, Fort Wayne

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Famous Stories & the Record

FLOOD 1913

Both, once the count is defined. Jarosh's News-Sentinel reconstruction, three 1913 dailies checked against birth, death, funeral-home, cemetery, census and directory records, names seven: Herbert Snow, drowned from a rescue boat at the Main Street bridge; four Allen County Orphan's Home girls (Ardah Woods, Alice Mannen, Esther Kramer, Kittie Wise), drowned when their evacuation boat capsized; William Singer, not quite four, in swollen Spy Run Creek on 29 March; and rescuer Peter G. Monnock, who collapsed, heart failure attributed to overexposure and overwork. That is six drownings + one flood-attributed collapse = seven flood deaths. Summaries saying “six” are counting drownings.

Any larger toll applied to Fort Wayne itself. The ~700 deaths of 1913 belong to the multi-state flood, not this city.

Primary reconstruction: Jarosh, News-Sentinel, egen.fortwayne.com

Two supports for reading the count this way. The Midwestern Regional Climate Center's community profile of the flood prints “6” under known fatalities — the drownings count, arrived at independently of the Sentinel's work. And the flood around those names is told day by day in the Events record: 4.75 inches of rain in under three days, the Maumee at 26.1 feet by 11 p.m. on 26 March, the Lakeside dikes gone that night, some 15,000 people homeless and the river back below flood stage only on 3 April. The count has never needed a larger number to be bad enough; it needs the definitions kept straight, which is why this record prints the seven with their causes attached.

Added source: Midwestern Regional Climate Center / Purdue, 1913 Flood community profile: Fort Wayne, mrcc.purdue.edu

The 1913 flood killed seven people in Fort Wayne.” · “No, six.

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