by Joanne Wiklund
It’s a little hard to stay positive if you see newscasts of earthquake damage in Turkey and Syria. So many lives lost. My recurring question: Where do you go when the earth shakes? We’ve had a few earthquakes here but I’ve never felt them. We are very close to the New Madrid Fault and an earthquake there changed the course of the Mississippi River way back.
Robert Fulton, engineer, with the help of Robert Livingston, put together the steamboat New Orleans to go down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to Louisiana, as the first steamboat to make the journey. They left Ohio Oct. 20,1811 and got to New Orleans January 10,1812. They laid over in Ohio through November due to low water on the Falls of Ohio. The builder of the boat, Nicholas Roosevelt, and his wife, Lydia were on the boat also. She was eight months pregnant at the start of the trip, and gave birth to her second child during the layover.
When they were finally headed downriver again, a sequence of earthquakes hit the New Madrid Fault in Missouri and Arkansas. From Dec. 6, 1811 till Feb. 7, 1812, with magnitudes of 7.6 to 8.0 they were the strongest earthquakes to ever hit that area. The Mississippi River ran backwards, two waterfalls developed and islands disappeared and new islands appeared. It must have seemed like the end of the world. Today I saw a clip of a young boy pulled from the rubble overseas and his face was one of pure joy. I cried along with all the rescuers who were laughing and crying with joy at the time. He’d been under the pile of cement for over 65 hours. God knows where His children are.
Luke 6:35-36 “But love ye your enemies, and do good and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. 36, Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father is also merciful.”
A full and exciting collection of earthquake history in the New Madrid area is available at the Senator John Heinz History Center in association with the Smithsonian. A collection of original letters and articles titled Steamboat Adventures: Down The Ohio and Mississippi Rivers with Nicholas and Lydia Roosevelt 1911-1812 are available at the Rivers Institute & History Department of Hanover College, Hanover, Ind.
I remember an earthquake when we lived in Joslin. The house shook and the kitchen table shook. I thought Mike was doing something but he was right beside me and his eyes were as ine would say, as big as saucers. And after we moved here, we had one, not quite as strong as the Joslin one. I read your articles all the time. Would love to see you.