The University Museum

Transcript of Sarah Dailey, Ridgway, IL

Listen to this description at the beginning of this recording in one of three formats.

"On Sunday afternoon, the day the levy broke, Dr. Hick's wife and I were taking a walk around New Haven, and we stopped on a high walk over the flood waters where it was coming into town when we heard this awful roar coming up the river, but we didn't know what had happened. And the next morning real early, she came over and told us that Mrs. Maggie Willis-Pool Willis' wife who was with the telephone operator at New Haven at the time-she heard just before the last poles went down that the Shawneetown levy had broken. So Mrs. Hicks came over and told us because she knew we had relatives at Shawneetown."

"Our cousins the Gordons were there and Mr. George Hubbard at the time was living at New Haven and when he heard it he secured two good oarsmen, the Rudd brothers, and they took him down in a skiff, as they were considered the best oarsmen on water. And he went on down as his father and mother or at least his mother, I don't remember about his father, but his mother was living there, and he had brothers in Shawneetown, and he went on down there. Course we never got to go to the flood ourselves until after the water had subsided and then Mother and my Aunt and I went down there."