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Writer's pictureRobert Scott Davis Jr.

A Night of Terror: The Whitestone Flood of 1938

Updated: Mar 4



The foundation pillars of the Conner house/store that washed away on April 7, 1938.

April 7, 1938, was one of those fortunately rare days when the

weather moved from the back to the front page of newspapers.

Savage storms raged over half of the continental United States,

from blizzards in Texas to high winds in Massachusetts. On that

eerie night tornadoes in Alabama killed eleven people while

floods drowned another fifteen; floods in Rome, GA trapped 250

families who were later rescued; in Cornelia, GA hen-egg sized

hail damaged homes and trees; in Douglasville, GA houses were

leveled by high winds; and at Fairmont, GA, eighteen of forty-two

cars loaded with coal were derailed by the rising waters of the

Coosawattie River. Across the county, the Red Cross estimated

150 communities suffered significant damage.


The Atlanta Constitution reported on the morning of April 8, that

fortunately, Georgia had suffered no serious damage. However,

the Constitution is a morning paper and no one had yet reached

an operating telephone to report the tragedy in far-off Pickens

County, GA.


On the Pickens-Gilmer County line is the marble mining

community of Whitestone, which in 1938 had a population of

around two hundred people. It was a quiet little community where

people set out fish hooks to catch their dinner from Talona Creek

and where the nightlife seldom went beyond games of Rook.

Situated in the Talona Valley and surrounded by high hills and

mountains, from the air Whitestone (see picture) looked like a

giant soup bowl, a geographic circumstance that proved deadly on

the night of April 7, 1938.



April 9, 1938 Atlanta Constitution Map


The Reverend Walter Payne lived at Whitestone and in his

memoirs wrote that the day began as just another overcast day. A

heavy hail storm and rain occurred at 4 PM, followed by more

showers from 6 to 8 PM. Then the weather turned bizarre. The

clouds became heavy, the rain came down so heavy that it sounded on

the roofs like barrels were being emptied, and the sky became a

continuous electrical storm, so bright that you could almost

read by the lightning. Talona Creek left its banks and the

whole valley began to fill with water. A loud crash was heard by

Rev. Payne and his family, what other witnesses would later

identify as a series of simultaneous water spouts (cloud

bursts) on the hill tops around the valley. Rev. Payne thought

an entire mountainside had come crashing down. Mill dams that

had stood for almost a century began to give. People at home

woke their sleeping neighbors and then abandoned their homes for

higher ground. Others of the people of Whitestone had set out

for the singing at the Talking Rock School, only to have to

abandon their cars and trucks as the rising waters drowned out

their vehicles.


Will Ponder, night watchman at the Willingham-Little Stone

Company, punched in his time card at 9 PM. He saw a water spout

on the mountain just above his house and the combined house-dry

goods-grocery of Forrest Carter Conner. He hurried to warn the

Conner family. Their house was on the banks of Talona Creek and

on that particular night Ponder's two young stepdaughters were

there spending their first night away from home. However, the

creek was already too deep to wade. Ponder tried to wake the

family by throwing rocks at the windows. Failing to get a response,

he went to his own house and brought back two fifteen-year-old boys

Howard Lindsey and C.W. Owensby. The boys swam to some box cars

between them and the Conner house and from there to the Conner porch.

They banged on the doors until they woke up the family. The young children

began screaming and Forrest Conner came out on the porch with a flashlight.

Will Ponder unsuccessfully tried to throw a rope and chain to the

porch but was pulled into the swirling water and had to rescue

himself. The water was already knee-deep in the Conner house.


During this time, the waters had washed away a nearby saw

mill. Logs from the mill jammed in the gap in the road

embankment where the creek passed, creating a dam. The water

rose behind the embankment and suddenly rushed over the

embankment and broke through the logs, causing the water in the

valley to rise four feet in ten minutes.


Forrest Conner, his son James, and brother-in-law Carl

Lindsey (Howard's brother) was now with Howard Lindsey and C.W.

Owensby on the porch. They were going to try to swim for the

rope Will Ponder was thrown when the sudden rise of water hit

the house. The porch gave way under them and the house was

lifted off of its concrete block foundation. It began to float

down the creek. Howard and C.W. swam to the safety of the box

cars and Will Ponder found refuge in the train station (another

person escaped by climbing the station flag pole) but Forrest,

James, and Carl returned to the house to share the fate of the

rest of the family. Forrest Conner was last heard to say that

whatever happens, it will happen to all of us.


Witnesses saw the house float away with its lights swinging in

the windows. Some people thought that they heard screams

but Mr. B.L. Green, who stood on the bank trying to find some

way to help, later said that no sound came from the doomed

house. The building traveled a quarter of a mile before

crashing into some trees. The house collapsed and the lights

went out.


The water began to recede almost immediately and rescue

efforts were started just as fast but in the dark, the mud, and

the debris strewed across the valley, and little could be done

before daylight. Howard and C.W., despite being injured, wet,

and exhausted, were among the first to begin looking for

survivors.


Getting the news out and help in proved difficult as

roads had been washed away or were still submerged and Pickens

County's steel bridges had all collapsed. As bodies were found,

they were carried by hand to the ambulances at the nearest

passable roads. When the word of what had happened did reach the

outside world, the news was carried nationally, and thousands of

people came to the little valley to offer help, including 150

Works Progress and Civilian Conservation Corps workers from

Cartersville. Despite the morbid nature of what they were doing

and the terrible conditions under which they worked the searchers

from inside and outside of the county refused to give up.


All thirteen persons in the Conner house that night drowned.

Oleta Conner (age 6) and Claude Conner (age 8) were

found at 6 AM the next day, a mile from where the house had

stood, across the creek and the railroad track, caught in some

drifts. Eugene Conner (age 1) was found, shortly after, on his

hands and knees, a mile and a half from Whitestone. Forrest

Conner (age 41) was found next, hung in a tree. In the afternoon

of the same day, Mildred Conner (age 11) and Mrs. Martha Conner

(age 33) were found.


On April 10, the county convicts were put to tearing out drifts

and searching for bodies. On April 11, the CCC workers found Harold

Conner (age 9) in an old mill dam, a mile and a half from Whitestone

and Flora Sue Conner (age 4) in a drift five miles from Whitestone.

On April 15, at 9 AM, the body of Carl Lindsey (age 21) was found in

a trestle being repaired about two miles from Whitestone. Thelma

Abercrombie (age 9) was found buried in the mud a mile and a half

from Whitestone, almost immediately after. Bonnie Abercrombie

(age4), her sister, was found in a drift, next, and then James

Conner (age 14).


Every effort was made to find the last body, that of

Forrest Conner Jr. (age 16), in time for the family's mass

funeral. The search was unsuccessful. The other ten members of

the Conner family was placed in state at the Lawson and Poole

Funeral Home before being taken to what is now the auditorium of

the Jasper Elementary School for their funeral. The service was

conducted there by the American Legion Post of Ellijay (Forrest

Sr. was a Marine veteran of World War I) on April 17 before a crowd

estimated at ten thousand.


The funeral was preached by the Rev. A.W. Bussey and Rev. G.F.

Compton. State troopers handled the traffic, some 2,000 vehicles,

as the coffins were carried to nearby Philadelphia Church for burial

in a mass grave that was thirty-three feet long. (A photograph of the

burial soon after appeared in Life magazine.) They were buried by

the local Masonic chapters as Forrest Sr. had also been a mason.

Thelma and Bonnie Abercrombie, Will Ponder's stepdaughters,

were buried at Mt. Pisgah Cemetery in Gilmer County on the same day.

Praise was given then and since to J.G. Chapman, mortician of

Lawson and Poole Funeral Home, for working around the clock to

make all of the bodies presentable.





But what of Forrest Conner Jr.? Ed Chester, a house painter

in Talking Rock, had a hunch--what he later said was a dream--as

to where the body of the last victim would be found. With his

friend Zeb Haygood, Chester played his hunch on May 1 and found

the missing Conner, only half a mile from the site of the

tragedy. The body had fallen into a hole in the deepest part of

Talona Creek, almost completely buried under sand and gravel.

Forrest Conner Jr. was buried beside the rest of his family that

same day.


The heavy safe of Forrest Conner Sr.'s store, however,

was never located.




In the picture above, as with the main photo of this post, you see the foundational ruins of the Connor home. In this picture, Talona Creek is to the left of the home and south of the bridge.



In this picture we see the ruins again, but we are to the right of Talona Creek so the bridge is not visible. The railroad tracks are to the right of the Conner house. I believe the house in the background to be that of Will Ponder.


Both of these images, when compared to the 1916 topographic map, fall perfectly in relation to the scene. See below.



In the aerial shot below I show what I believe to be very close to the location of the Connor house.




Whitestone survivors C. Owensby and Howard Lindsey

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Convidado:
03 de mar.
Avaliado com 5 de 5 estrelas.

So sad I used to have something on this and lost it through the years. One thing I remember when reading it was that faithful night. Ended with something like you never know when your time will be up.

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