The following are selected articles from a Newspaper titled, "The Higbee News" which was issued out of the town of Higbee, in Randolph County, Missouri from the years 1888 through 1953. The editors were W. H. Welch and his son H. Scott Welch. This paper covered the Higbee area and also a great deal of the northeastern part of Howard county. The copyright notice at the end of this transcript is there for the sole purpose of keeping this work free to the public, and to ensure that it is not harvested by a fee-based corporate genealogy site, or published in any format for profit. If you decide to use the information from this transcription, PLEASE LIST ME AS THE SOURCE, rather than the paper. My transcription is another generation removed from the microfilm, and would thus be a third generation copy of the original paper. For proper documentation, a researcher should obtain a photocopy of the microfilm for their own permanent records, and use my transcript as a guide or index. The microfilm is available for interlibrary loan through the State Historical Society of Missouri, and a copy is also on file at the Moberly Public Library, generously donated by the Higbee Historical Society. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thursday, 2 June 1927, Vol 41, No. 4, Pg. 1 Col 1,2,3&4--CYCLONE TAKES TOLL OF FOUR LIVES. Swoops Down on Roanoke and Yates Vicinities Friday at 5 p.m. Leaving Death and Destruction. Path of Storm Six Miles Long And About Quarter Mile In Width. Worst in History of This Section and Damage Placed at $150,000.--THE DEAD: John Fray. Mrs. J. R. Williams. Mrs. J. J. Morris. Mrs. Alice Tuggle. INJURED: Miss Annie Yates (probably fatally). William Ferguson.--For a second time in three weeks a cyclone visited this county Friday of last week. Death rode the wind this time and claimed as his victims four of the best and most highly respected residents of the Yates and Roanoke vicinities--John Fray, Mrs. J. R. Williams and Mrs. Alice Tuggle, sisters, all of Yates, and Mrs. J. J. Morris, who resided about midway between Yates and Roanoke and a mile to the north. Miss Annie Yates, of Yates, was terribly injured but it is thought she may have a slim chance of recovery. Prof. Wm. Ferguson of Roanoke was also badly injured--fatally, it was thought at first, but who is now on the road to recovery. Friday opened with clouds from a rain the night before breaking away, the skies clearing about noon. About 3 p.m. a heavy bank of clouds formed in the northeast and which moved to the southwest, while lighter clouds were bearing down from the northwest. Others, not at all threatening looking from here, were coming up from the southwest. Many here saw these clouds join, but how far away they were they could not tell, and they could be seen to boil and swirl furiously as they met. All who saw them knew that it meant trouble, and it created no surprise when news came that Yates had been blown off the map. Drs. Burkhalter and Winn pulled out in the rain and hail to render aid, while all who could get cards soon followed to help in any way they could. The storm first formed near Salisbury around 5 p.m., doing some slight damage in that vicinity, and traveled in a southeasterly direction towards Roanoke, northwest of which place it came down for the first time, destroying a barn and other outbuildings for Chas. Gooch. Coming on it completely wrecked the fine two-story farm home of Holland Ferguson, but injuring no one to any great extent except Prof. Wm. Ferguson of Missouri Valley College, who was on a visit to his brother. The storm did everything to the home that could be done without razing it completely and how anyone in it escaped with their lives is a miracle. As to whether or not any were aware that the storm was about to break we are not advised, but whether they were or not it broke too suddenly to think of taking refuge in a cellar, if they had one, and in an instant the house was ruined inside and out. Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson, we learn, took refuge under a large table and escaped injury from furniture and other articles being shot through the rooms with the force of cannonballs, as well as from tree limbs and wood hurled through windows and walls from the outside. Prof. Ferguson was reading when the storm broke and before he could move was struck in the head by a stick of wood which was hurled through a window, and crumpled to the floor unconscious. The house was not only wrecked as if it had been fired on by shot and shell, but all the outbuildings and trees and shrubbery as well. The home of Wm. Lockridge, across the road, was damaged, the roof being torn off, as were those of the outbuildings. The next house in the path of the oncoming monster was that of Thos. Hulse, which was completely demolished and scattered to the four winds, as was everything in the shape of a building on the place. Mr. and Mrs. Hulse only the day before had decided to move to Detroit and were in Moberly making arrangements to that end, to which fact they probably owe their lives. Although the house was full of furniture, very little of it, nor other personal belongings could be found following the storm. The home of J. J. Morris was the next in line, and the storm hit in full force. both Mr. and Mrs. Morris were in the yard when the saw the storm coming, he pumping water from his cellar and she tending to some turkeys or chickens. As the cellar was full of water, they started for a summer kitchen, it being nearer, but the storm broke before they reached it. One side of the kitchen was torn away, Mr. Morris being carried to one side of the building and Mrs. Morris to the other in an opposite direction. Reaching for a tree limb to hold to as some protection, Mr. Morris was knocked senseless when it hit him, and when he regained consciousness he found himself under the tree which had fallen on him but not pinioning or injuring him in any way, but which had protected him from the flying timbers from the house, which was leveled to the ground, as was the barn and every other building on the place. As soon as he could get to his feet he rushed in the direction which he had last seen his wife and found her dead, she having been struck in the back of the head, presumably with a part of a cream separator which was close by. From there the storm took a course a little more to the southeast, rising, apparently, until it reached the fine country home, a 2-story brick structure, of J. A. Pitts, and in a twinkling laid it, as well as every building on the place and every one of the dozens of very large locust trees in the three-acre yard, in ruins. Mr. and Mrs. Pitts were the only ones at home at the time, and it was only by the strongest persuasion that Mrs. Pitts was inducted to go into the cellar, only a step from the kitchen door, in her panic likely fearing that the cellar would cave in on them. They might have escaped death had they remained on the lower floor, as it was not blown in, although the entire top story was taken even with the flooring. To view what was left of their once magnificent home it is rather hard to believe that all the damage could have been done in an instant, and one can imagine it sweeping back and forth across the place, the storm fiends laughing in ghoulish glee as they vented their spleen on one of the finest gentlemen the county ever produced. The home, while the lower floor was left standing, was a complete ruin, and the loss is all the heavier from the fact that hard wood floors had just been laid, bath and other modern conveniences installed. All outbuildings were as completely destroyed as if they had never been, while the big trees, which ran from eighteen inches to three feet in diameter, were denuded of their tops, while nothing but the bare trunk, with here and there a limb, of most of them was left. We never saw but one thing more desolate, and that was the Alton lake here several years ago when the hundreds of trees and stumps exposed by the low water reminded you of death wherever you turned your eyes. here as elsewhere many freakish things were to be seen, the greatest, probably, being a plank of about the width and thickness of weatherboarding being driven into a large elm tree about four feet from the ground, and to such a depth that there was no puling it out. Several straws, too, were found driven in the bark. The open squares of a tractor radiator had been driven so full of grass and straw that it looked for all the world like a bale of hay and which could be extracted with only the greatest difficulty. Strange to relate the white plank fence which added so much to the beauty of the place was only slightly damaged here and there, only a few panels being down flat, and none gone, so far as we could observe. The storm left the Pitts farm at the southeast corner of the big lawn, twisting off a two-foot tree as it did so and dumping it in the road over the fence, and then taking a due easterly course down the highway for Yates, taking large trees on one side and telephone poles on the other as it went. Approaching to within fifty yards of the new high school building it turned a small horse shed over and then turned southwest, partially unroofing a small residence of W. H. Robertson, damaging some trees and picking up a large hen house and throwing it across the road, and then making a bee-line for the home of John Fray, killing the latter, who was at work in the barn. This building was an extra large one and was made entirely of oak, but it was crushed like an eggshell and was scattered over a corn field to the south for a hundred yards or more, hardly any two pieces holding together. Mr. Fray was found about 100 yards south of the barn site, his skull having been crushed by some heavy timber. A large silo, corn crib and machine sheds were utterly demolished. Mrs. Fray and two grandchildren, who were in the residence, escaped injury, but one can hardly see how. The building, a large two story frame, was all but wrecked, the roof being torn off and windows and doors blown in and out, porches torn off and the building in general more or less twisted and otherwise damaged. All trees were ruined as they had been at the Pitts place, being twisted off as if they were matches. As it had done when it left the Pitts place, the storm followed the public road from the John Fray farm, going due south until it reached the C. & A. railroad, when it turned to the southeast. Three box cars on the side track were picked up as if they had been pasteboard toys, one being carried north either over or under the telegraph wires for about a hundred yards, the course it traveled being circular, and deposited in the road north of the track, while the two others were carried into a field on the south. From this point, in any direction one looked, plank and pieces of timber could be seen driven in the ground. Fate seemed to be piloting the storm, for here it again changed its course abruptly and made for the home of Mr. and Mrs. J. R. Williams to the southeast, and which was perhaps the worst wrecked of all, there being nothing left but the floor. Mr. and Mrs. Williams, were in the home at the time, as was a sister of the latter, Mrs. Alice Tuggle, who lived with another sister, Mrs. Joel Yates, and her son and daughter, Boz and Miss Annie Yates, to the northeast about three hundred yards. Mr. Williams was caught by a falling chimney, being held by the feet with wreckage piled all about him, but escaped without an injury, strange as it may seem. Extricating himself he made his way to Mrs. Williams and was rejoiced to find her alive, and unhurt, as he thought, and as she thought also, she stating that she was not injured beyond a few bruises. Her excited condition no doubt caused her to deceive herself, for three hours later she passed away. Mrs. Tuggle sustained serious injuries about the head as well as over her body, but it was thought she might have a chance of recovery, but it was not to be, she passing away Sunday night. Although the new Yates home to the northeast, mentioned above, was out of the path of the storm, and the house escaped with little damage, a great deal of damage was done, all the trees were wrecked, and where Miss Annie Yates was likely fatally injured. She was out in the yard tending to her chickens when the storm broke, and was struck in the head by some object, her skull being fractured. Her ribs on one side were broken, while the flesh on the other side apparently was torn loose from the bones, as well as injured otherwise. She was brought to Higbee and rushed to a Moberly hospital, where she was operated on for a blood clot, she being totally paralyzed. Late yesterday she was not so well, and her recovery was a matter of grave doubt. The storm lifted at the Williams home, moving to the southeast, next striking the old Edgar Maxfield farm, about midway between Russell and Yates, the house, barn and all other buildings being leveled. The farm was occupied by Lee Perfater and family, who were left with nothing but the clothes on their backs. The next place struck was the large 2-story home of a Mr. Vanderbeck, who is operating the farm for an Eastern loan company, two corners of which were torn off and other damage done, but no one being injured. Continuing its course to the southeast, it passed over the Katy tracks in the vicinity of the strip mine at Russell, but where the principal damage was the blowing down of trees. With the air full of tree limbs, planks and other timbers, things looked pretty squally at the mine, and it would have surprised no one to have seen the whole plant wrecked. No one was injured here, but Frank Roberts was blown over and pushed or pulled along the ground for about fifty feet on his stomach, but escaped with no worse damage than a good scare. The farm of R. A. Reynolds was also hit, the house being unroofed, windows broken, the summer kitchen taken from its foundation. The place is occupied by Asa Warford, who with his family, escaped any injury. The home of Walter Andrews, further to the southeast, was also quite badly damaged, the house being unroofed, the garage destroyed and his automobile wrecked. Here the storm seems to have about spent its force or to have lifted, as there was but small damage to the south of town, a few outbuildings in the john Sumpter neighborhood being overturned. About the last evidence of the storm observable was in the C. S. Hargis neighborhood, where the tops of trees were more or less damaged. Near the J. E. Carter home a big tree that was leaning to the north and was all but ready to fall into the Moniteau creek, was blown to the south and across the road. As is always the case, many seemingly impossible things were done, but the greatest mystery of all was how property loss could have been so great and complete without loss of life being greater, though heaven only knows it was heavy enough. Many chickens, hogs, sheep and other animals were killed. Only in a few instances was tornado insurance carried, and then not in amounts sufficient to begin to cover the loss to total of which is estimated to be $150,000 or more. It was the worst storm ever to hit this section, and it is to be hoped it will be the last. The deepest sympathy of all goes out to the storm victims, and especially those to whose homes it brought death. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright notice: All transcriptions in this email are copyrighted by their creator. They may not be reproduced on another site or on any printed or recorded media, CD, etc. without specific written permission from Kathy Bowlin. Although public information is not in and of itself copyrightable, the format in which it is presented, transcriptions, notes & comments, etc. is. It is however, quite permissible to print or save the files to a personal computer for personal use only. Permission is granted to public libraries, and genealogical and historical societies to print and bind for the use of their patrons. Kathy Bowlin Additions, corrections, comments welcome.