NEW MADRID, MO 8-26-2016

The tiny, sleepy little town of New Madrid, on the “bootheel” of Missouri (that little stick-out on the lower eastern edge of the state), has a population of 3,116 and has existed here since the late 1700s.  Benjamin and Permelia Higgerson were among the first to arrive when they came here from Virginia.  Apparently, during one of our early wars, there was a battle fought on their land and it sort of trashed the place.  So they packed up and headed “west” and arrived at Higgerson Landing, just a short distance up the river.  Folks lived in this little village for awhile and the Higgerson School was created, a one-room school house where grades one through eight were taught.  The Higgerson School was later relocated to New Madrid and continued to educate children through the 1960s.  It is now a National Historic Landmark.  I guess that makes me one, too, because I can remember all the things that I saw in this little school:  chalkboards, erasers, a green strip of cardboard across the top of the chalkboards with the alphabet written in cursive (capital letters followed by the lower case letters) and rows of small wooden desks with storage shelves beneath the writing surfaces.  The back door opens into the playground.  One lady who is a docent is my age and she attended this school and was taught by the other docent lady who was standing at the front behind the teacher’s desk.

Docent at an antebellum home

Docent showing off the foundations!

Inside the Higgerson one-room schoolhouse

Higgerson School

New Madrid’s claim to fame is the series of earthquakes that shook the town to its core beginning at 2 AM on Dec. 16, 1811.  Scientists who have studied the effects of the quakes, which continued into 1812, believe that even the aftershocks and tremors would have measured 8 on the seismic scale.  By comparison, the earthquake in San Francisco in 1906 measured 7.8.  The New Madrid earthquakes would have caused widespread damage, destruction and death but the area was sparsely populated (about 400 souls scattered over long distances) so the actual death toll is not known.  One account tells of the steamboat New Orleans that was on its maiden voyage on the Mississippi River and was moored to an island overnight.  In the morning after the quakes, the island was gone, sunk.  The earth rock and rolled with explosions, cracks, holes and landslides.  Sand spewed out of the fissures and covered thousands of acres of fertile land, rendering the land useless.  Sand in some places measures 5 feet deep to this day.  The town of New Madrid itself had sunk about 12 feet, not submerged in water but fallen.  Damage occurred as far away as Charleston, SC and church bells rang in Boston.  For a short time, the flow of the Mississippi River was reversed as land sank and the water rushed to the low areas.  Shaking was felt as far away as Montana and northern Canada.   Now, the New Madridians capitalize on the quakes with memorabilia, hats, books and shirts (that read, “It’s our fault!”).  And to this day, tremors occur here and the natives are so used to them that they hardly notice.

We are currently tied to a couple of trees at Ashport Landing.  The stop is brief, we depart at 1 PM.  Rob asked me if I wanted to go on a 3 ½ hour bus trip to drive to a Civil War confederate fort, Fort Pillow. Not really.  This is a lazy day lollygagging about on the boat.

A little piece of trivia for you:  one bit of lore has it that in 1830, Nicholas Roosevelt (brother of Teddy’s great grandpa) built a luxurious steamboat, the George Washington.  There were 26 rooms on the boat and at the time, 26 states in the Union.  So each room was given the name of a state and later, the word “stateroom” went into the dictionary.

“Always do right.  This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” – Mark Twain

Toonie time!