Geoffrey Williams (1970–)
Autor de Washed Away: How the Great Flood of 1913, America's Most Widespread Natural Disaster, Terrorized a Nation and Changed It Forever
Geoffrey Williams es Geoff Williams (1). Para otros autores llamados Geoff Williams, ver la página de desambiguación.
Sobre El Autor
Geoff Williams is the author of C. C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America. For most of his life, Williams has lived less than an hour away from the Great Flood's epicenter in Dayton, Ohio.
Obras de Geoffrey Williams
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
- Nombre canónico
- Williams, Geoffrey
- Fecha de nacimiento
- 1970-01-17
- Género
- male
- Nacionalidad
- USA
- Lugares de residencia
- Ohio, USA
- Ocupaciones
- journalist
historian
Miembros
Reseñas
Listas
Premios
También Puede Gustarte
Autores relacionados
Estadísticas
- Obras
- 3
- Miembros
- 151
- Popularidad
- #137,935
- Valoración
- 3.3
- Reseñas
- 8
- ISBNs
- 32
Although there are no sources specifically referencing every fact he represents, he does point out at the end of the book that he scoured the newspapers, focusing on the dates from March 23-27, but also looked beyond, into April and May of 1913 for the writing of this book. He does list all of the newspapers he collected information from in the last chapter, in Notes and Research and Acknowledgments. He has also collected information from a few books that had been written on the Great Flood of 1913 (just Google it and now many books will pop up), and from magazines and websites. He is from the area, so was able to visit most of the critical areas, especially Dayton, Ohio, where flood waters reached upwards of 25 feet, to get a feel for the depth of the flooding and even interviewed a few descendants of the victims. I love that he did all the hard work and collected the information for us from so many newspapers to tell the story of this great historical event. If one is serious about finding and verifying particular facts, it can actually be done with a little effort.
This book is a genealogist’s dream book. If you have family or ancestors from the area, I would definitely check into this source. He does have a complete alphabetical name index. And behind the index of names, he has included 37 photos of the flood.
The scene opens with detailed personal accounts of the Omaha, Nebraska, tornado that devastated the city and killing hundreds. He pulls together different stories from different areas of the city and at different times up until the second the tornado hit. Other tornadoes, at least six, and possibly more, all in one massive storm hit Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, and Indiana, within a two-hour time span and killing more than two hundred people and destroying thousands of homes. The gathered little tidbits of experiences during this tornado is quite amazing!
He then moves into play by play, recording the time and the five days during which the rains and the flooding in different towns of, mostly Indiana and Ohio, began on March 24, 1913, the day after the Omaha tornado. The author doesn’t just slam down names of people who lost their lives. He has researched and gives a little background on some of the lives lost. And he wonders and expresses what may have been their last thoughts, which he has received a lot of negative feedback from reviewers…but I loved it! Here, he really wants you to feel their struggles and even describes exactly what happens to the body as it is drowning. He intertwines a little historical background as he is telling their stories.
I chose to read this book because it did mention that Louisiana was also affected. Since my ancestors are from Southwest Louisiana, I thought it would be interesting to first see which of them would have been alive during this time and may have experienced the end of this flood. But, Louisiana was only briefly talked about in the Epilogue, and only about the New Orleans area…well away from where my family would have resided. Water was barely topping the levee at one spot, in which they put down a couple of large boards on top and had 12 black men stand on them while others filled sand bags and piled them up from behind. As the sandbags reached the height of each man, they were, one by one allowed to step down to safety. The levee held and no men were lost to the flooding. Crazy!
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My Cajun ancestors alive on March 23, 1913 during this:
Grandparents:
Paul Sully LeBlanc (1883-1970), age 30
Ina Wilma Roberts (1907-1982), age 6
Great-grandparents:
Paul Albert LeBlanc (1859-1948), age 54
Elizabeth Broussard (1860-1946), age 53
and
Julius Leslie Roberts (1881-1974), age 32
Mary Laplace (1888-1948), age 25… (más)