THREE KILLED NEAR ADAIR DURING STORM (1925)

HARRIS, ELGIN, WEDEMEYER, WINKLEMAN, HANLEY, GRANT

Posted By: Ken Akers (email)
Date: 8/9/2009 at 16:28:40

Audubon County Journal (IA)
June 4, 1925, pg 1
THREE KILLED NEAR
ADAIR DURING STORM

________
Property Damage in Audubon
County is Heavy, Though
No Lives Were Lost

________

Three persons were killed during
the storm of Tuesday afternoon and
four others injured only a few miles
southeast of this place (Exira). The dead are
Ed Harris, aged 75, and two daugh-
ters, aged 31 and 34. The dead man's
son, John Harris, aged 55, was seri-
ously injured, as were also Mr. and
Mrs. Henry Elgin and eight-year-old
son and Mrs. H. P. H. Wedemeyer.

The twister completeley demolished
the Harris home and barns. Practic-
ally everything was leveled. Two
horses were killed and two badly hurt.

The bodies of the dead were blown
into a field forty rods south of where
the Harris home once stood. John
Harris, the only one of the Harris
family to escape alive, was blown into
a tree top and then dashed to the
ground. His scalp was nearly torn
off and his collar bone and right foot
fractured. Despite his injuries, he
crawled a quarter of a mile to the
home of a neighbor for assistance.

The bodies of the two girls were
horribly mangled.

The storm followed a path only
twenty rods wide and about five miles
long before it lifted to descend again.
It struck first at the E. C. Winkleman
farm about 13 miles southeast of this
place, where it demolished a big barn
and corn cribs.

The next place hit was the Henry
Elgin home, a quarter mile away. Mr.
Elgin was knocked unconscious and
his wife and son badly injured. The
house was completely wrecked.

The storm next hit the H. P. H.
Wedemeyer farm where the house was
blown from its foundation. Mrs. Wed-
emeyer was injured.

Much livestock was killed and many
buildings were wrecked throughout
the entire storm area.

Pat Hanley and James Grant of
Adair were slightly injured when the
wind demolished a roof on a small
barn on the Grant farm, where the
men had taken refuge from the storm.
Damage in This County Last Night

It looked as though there would be
a severe storm here last night about
eight o'clock, but the clouds passed
over and settled in the northeast and
northwest parts of the county.

Much hail fell west and north of
town and over near Poplar the hail
ruined crops and demolished windows
and buildings.

In the north part of the county a
small twister leveled buildings and
did considerable damage to crops, as
it was accompanied by the deluge of
rain.

Hail stones measuring from two to
four inches in diameter fell west of
town and on the northwest as far as
Audubon, but did not do much dam-
age to crops in this section.

The heavy rains have raised the
Blue Grass creek and it is bank full.
Some alarm was felt last night for
fear it would overflow the bottoms,
but this danger is past for the present.