"Between the Creeks" Page: 245
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the fastest; when the veritable jackrabbit we were all looking for, bounced up, and as if in
supreme contempt came bouncing past.
"Men, dogs, boys and rabbit went pell-mell, helter-skelter over the prairie at a
speed that was fearful indeed to all, except the jackrabbit.
"A race of a mile and a half served to settle the contest in favor of the rabbit-
distance in his favor being variously estimated at from 150 yards."
It appears to me, that the palm of victory should have gone to Mr. Jack Rabbit.
Now, he was really a bullet!
Brief telegrams of past always brought bad news 5-20-90
The immediacy of present-day communication is amazing. The world watched as
San Francisco began to shake in last fall's earthquake. We watched as countries changed
governments; the Berlin Wall came down; and saw unedited views of the war in Panama.
During this spring's disastrous weather, we waited anxiously with parents for word that
their children were safe from the floods and a rescue from the top of a flooded car by
helicopter. We saw pictures of a tornado made with a home video camera within an hour
after the storm.
Yet, once news was relayed by wire, and a telegram to a home always meant bad
news. Communications were brief, and frustratingly lacking in details.
The spring of 1906 was a time of disasters. The great San Francisco earthquake
was on April 18. Although news of the quake came by wire, it took days for details of
the devastation to reach North Texas. Then on April 26, at 6:30 p.m., a cyclone (tornado)
that swept through Clay County, Texas completely destroyed the town of Bellevue, and
left 17 dead and 20 injured. In this town were many people from Collin County- kin and
friends of families in Allen, Lucas, Forest Grove, Wetsel and Rowlett. You can imagine
the anxiety in these communities when the news reached here, probably that night by
wire. The news report in the McKinney Democrat (printed the next Thursday, a week
later) said "what little left of the town was set on fire from chemicals from a wrecked
drug store and at midnight was burning fiercely. Every animal in the town was killed-
horses, cattle, livestock of every sort and the scene last night was a terrible one, lighted
up by the flames of homes and business houses." "The cyclone...raced through it and ran
eight miles northeast, destroying everything in its path a mile and a half wide. The
people were alarmed by the noise before the wind reached the town, and but for this
many more would have lost their lives.:"
Among those who d to the devastated town from here were Mrs. Mallie
Phelps McIntosh. Other Phelps sisters- Jane, Mrs. James Simmons; Lucy, Mrs. George
W. Simmons; and Virginia "Jennie," Mrs. Jake Faulkner; and their grown children- had
migrated to Bellevue years earlier. Two days after arriving at Bellevue, Mrs. McIntosh
sent a letter to her brother-in-law, Joe McKinney. (Ed Ereckson and I tried to sort out the
relationships of those she mentioned in the letter using a 14-foot long printout from Tom
Brown in Dallas, who is compiling family information, but we could not.)
Mrs. McIntosh wrote: "We arrived at Bellevue Friday night at 12:35. I could see
the fires long before we come to a stop. Oh, what a destruction; not a wall standing.
Melton and Spivy's large two-story stone, leveled to the ground.. .there is nothing,
positively nothing, left south of the FW&D RR from the stock pens, for a mile south.
The debris had been cleared from the mainstreet, so that vehicles could pass. We went to245
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[Name Index to Gwen Pettit Articles] (Text)
Spreadsheet index of personal and family names found in the compiled transcriptions of newspaper articles written by Gwen Pettit about the local history of Allen, Texas.
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Pettit, Gwen. "Between the Creeks", book, July 2006; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth752794/m1/250/?q=Lamar+University: accessed June 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .