Today we return to our regularly scheduled program of morbid deaths. Specifically, in this case, the death of Myrtle Barrow, my fifth cousin twice removed. She was born 29 August 1899 in Athensville, Greene County, Illinois, to Robert Newton and Fannie (Canatsey) Barrow, part of the Sweeney line on my paternal side.
In 1900, 9-month-old Myrtle appears in the census in Athensville along with her parents and 3-year-old brother “Loyd.” In 1910 the family was enumerated in Barr, Macoupin County, Illinois. Myrtle’s older brother (Lloyd Irvin) is now listed as Irving, and three more boys have joined the family: Robert, 9; Carlos, 5; and Ebert, 2. By 1920 the family is back in Athensville, but Lloyd is living on his own with his wife and family, and Myrtle now has a sister, 8-year-old Fannie.
Myrtle would not survive long enough to be enumerated in 1930. Ninety-seven years ago this past Friday at a little after 12 p.m., a series of tornadoes struck central Illinois, in particular Calhoun and Greene Counties. The Jacksonville Daily Journal of 20 April listed eight known dead at that time, including a schoolteacher, Annie Keller, who died when she was struck by a falling rafter as the Centerville schoolhouse collapsed. She had ordered the schoolchildren to get under their desks and had only just gotten them all in place when the rafter fell; all the children survived.
Myrtle Barrow did not die in the initial storm. Instead, 97 years ago today, she succumbed to the injuries she had sustained in Greene County two days earlier. Again the Jacksonville Daily Journal provides a detailed account. According to an article that appeared on 22 April, Myrtle’s brother Robert testified in the inquest held after her death (aside: wouldn’t her cause of death be fairly obvious?), stating that he had been in Athensville when the tornado struck his home. He returned home afterward to find his father at a neighbor’s, but received word that his sister had been injured. Myrtle was found 100 yards from the family home lying in a couple of inches of water. Flooding made it impossible for anyone to take her to the hospital until the afternoon of the following day. Though Myrtle was unable to provide a lot of detail, she was lucid enough to tell doctors at the hospital that she had seen the tornado approaching and taken shelter in a shed.
Though doctors had originally thought Myrtle was improving, this improvement did not last, and she died at the Passavant Hospital in Jacksonville about 2:30 p.m. on 21 April 1927. The inquest, unsurprisingly, blamed the tornado for her death, but provided detailed specifics: “shock and hemorrhage, the result of disarticulation of right knee joint, fracture of left tibia and fibula and the left humerus. Injury acquired in tornado in Greene County.” According to the National Weather Service, the storm was an F4 and claimed a total of 11 lives, including Myrtle’s. One small consolation is that by surviving the initial storm, Myrtle did not die alone; the Daily Journal article tells us that her brother Robert was with her in the hospital when she died. A very small consolation, but a consolation nonetheless.