1883 Flood

Mr. Ed Delaine, foreman if the Carrollton Democrat writes to a friend in this city [Madison, Indiana] as follows, under date of the 13th:

We are having a wet time here. The river is in nearly all the principal business houses. The Point House is under water except the roof. Several small houses are ready to float off. Prestonville is all under water. There was afire about 1 o’clock; Leep & Bro.’s drug store. The water was four feet deep in the street and two feet inside the store and yet it burned to the water’s edge. Those who could went over in skiffs, pulling a quarter of a mile before they could get to it. The idea of burning a store to the water’s edge; but it’s a fact.

The National Hotel has three feet of water on the first story. Business is almost entirely suspended. We have but one mail a day; I don’t know about the Madison mail, but I think it comes regularly. Barker’s tobacco warehouse has half a foot of water in the basement. The backwater is up to Fifth street, above High. The river is rising 1 ½ inches an hour. The mail wharf is tied above town on the Ohio, to some apple trees in an orchard.

The steamers E. A. Woodruff and St. Lawrence are in Kentucky river, tied to tree tops. The old States is at the lock, also tied to tree tops.

Madison Courier, February 17, 1883