#52Ancestors #Week35 - DISASTER

 Amy Johnson Crow has brought my Cuzzin and I together in a quest to make it through 52 weeks of writing about our (mostly Pearson) ancestors with her weekly topical challenges.  This week's "Disaster" prompt encourages us to highlight a disaster that befell our ancestors or a disaster in our own research. Why not both?

^^^America, Illinois March 2018

Much has been documented about the Great Ohio River flood of 1937. My grandmother was a teen that year, and most of her Pearson and Chamberlain relatives lived far away from their hometowns on both the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers by that point. Her grandparents, however, were still living and had many cousins and friends still living and farming in the flood plain. 

There had been so many major floods over the years, bringing evacuations and significant damages. This was a time when many rural folk still lived on what passed for houseboats on the major rivers, when even major roads weren't yet paved, and the Great Depression had not yet been relieved by the War Effort. I've spent a small amount of time in both Pulaski County, Illinois on the Ohio and Pemiscot County, Missouri on the Mississippi, some of it on land so flat it feels as if one can see at least all the way across the state. I've read reports about how the water in 1937 came up to the 2nd story of small houses that were miles from the river.  I will not even pretend to imagine the terror as the river swallowed everything the residents knew. Every neighbor's house, every general store, every school in so many little towns with people already struggling to get by.

The flood brought another kind of destruction I know that any genealogist or historian will understand:  It destroyed the bulk of old records at the Pulaski County Courthouse. Few records remain prior to 1900, and even those after 1900 are often faded or water stained. SO many records that really should exist and often are easily found in other locations, are just gone. Also, on my first trip to research Grandma's roots, I said many times and wrote in my journal that I had never seen so many cemeteries in such poor repair. You can see the toll that's been taken right there, in the eroded stones and the stones tipped off of their bases due to the sodden ground. 

These events were tragic when they occured; they changed lives and futures. I have no intent to diminish the impact felt then.  The effects are only frustrating now, as Cuzzin and I call, email and scroll, hoping that the ONE record we NEED has survived and can be found.