Below is the posting to the Gibson County List which was posted last week. Vicky -----Original Message----- From: RTR [mailto:dixey@ix.netcom.com] Sent: Saturday, December 05, 1998 2:58 PM To: TNGIBSON-L@rootsweb.com Subject: [TNGIBSON-L] 1811 Earthquake I copied this from The Messenger, Union City, Tennessee, a newspaper which is on-line. 2:52:30 PM Saturday, December 5, 1998 Family Bible reports earthquake Family Bible reports earthquakes of 1811-12 By JOHN BRANNON Messenger Staff Reporter An old family Bible found in Dyer County recently may yield more information about earthquakes on the New Madrid fault that formed Reelfoot Lake 1811-1812. "Any new account that no one has known about before is very important to us. We would like to come up and see it," said Arch Johnston, director of the Earthquake Research and Information Center at Memphis. The Bible's leather-bound cover is cracked and broken. Its pages are brittle and water-stained. A few pages are missing. Yet it's not in bad shape for the shape it's in. Pen-and-ink entries from the early 1800s are faded but readable. There are several pages of a family record of several generations. The Bible was given to Henry Dozier of Rutherford by his aunt, Janey Somers of Dyer, in mid-November. Dozier, an employee of Kellwood at Rutherford, said he immediately noticed the handwritten entries about the earthquakes. "I took a flashlight and went over it letter by letter and copied the whole thing down on paper," Dozier said. "I may have missed a letter or two, but I think I got it all." Here's what Dozier copied from the Bible: "December the 16th day 1811 this day there was an earthquake the earth received the First shock at two o'clock in the morning - at half past, another, and at 7 A.M., very severe, one at 10 A.M. another at 12, another at about 10 in the evening, another the 18th at Nine in the evening, another shock the 23rd, 4th of January 1812, there was two very scary shocks then But till the 12th of February in the morning at Six, this has been the severest shock we ever expericed" (Sentence structure, wording, and punctuation are repeated as they appear in the original.) Dozier doesn't know who penned the entry or where he or she was living. That information may have been contained in the pages that are missing. In the family record section, there is an entry, dated 1806, that has some of his ancestors living in Davidson County. "I just hope the information about the earthquakes will be helpful. It might tell us something about the next one to come," he said. Johnston said the accounts of the earthquakes may be very valuable to modern scientists. "Virtually all the accounts that we have say the Feb. 7 shock was the strongest felt in the New Madrid region which would certainly include West Tennessee," Johnston said. "This wording makes it sound like it's the 12th of February. We'll have to check and see if there's any record of a strong after-shock on the 12th. This gives a lot more detail on the other earthquakes than almost all other accounts we have." Johnston said a man in Louisville, Ky., kept "careful records" of the quakes. "From December 1811 to March 1812 he totaled over 1,800 shocks," Johnston said. "We think a magnitude 8 was the biggest." On the Richter scale that modern scientists use to measure earthquake intensity, each full-point increase is 10 times greater than the last. For example, a quake measuring 5 on the Richter scale is 10 times greater than a quake measuring 4. Hence, it would be more destructive. When it comes to energy produced by an earthquake, how much is much? Johnston said a magnitude-8 quake "is equal to a nuclear explosion of over 100 megatons." Hence, some of the strongest 1811-1812 quakes were felt as far away as Boston where ground waves caused church bells to ring. "My best estimate is, there were three principle events back then," Johnston said. "Dec. 16, 1811, was the biggest. We estimate it would measure 8.1. Then the next largest was a 7.8 on Jan. 23, 1812. Then on Feb. 7, 1812, an 8.0. All those are big quakes. Each had its own after-shocks. "Of course, there's an uncertainty on those estimates. There were no (seismological) instruments back then. So our estimates are a plus or minus point-3." Johnston said seismologists believe the Tiptonville area rose and dammed off Reelfoot Creek, forming Reelfoot Lake. The total difference between the lake bed sinking and the Tiptonville dome rising was 12 to 15 feet. "That was from the Feb. 7 shock. We know that because we have two riverboat accounts that were in it," Johnston said. "One of them talks about being swept back up the river. That's where the legend about the river running backward comes from." Johnston said that he or some other professor will visit Dozier this month to see the old Bible for themselves. "I want to get the feel for something 200 years old," he said. "Also, I'm very intrigued about the Feb. 12 entry. Sounds like it most probably was an after-shock. We just don't have anything on that date at all."