Cambridge and the Flood of ‘35

Once again I have been digging into old newspapers. Several years ago, I expanded my Ancestry membership to include Fold 3 and Newspapers.Com. It was mostly a money saving move since I had three memberships and when Ancestry bought the other two they offered a deal I couldn’t resist. Newspapers.com has some newspapers on it that aren’t available through Chronicling America, one of which, The Cambridge Clarion, covers well past 1935.

If you’ve seen pictures of Cambridge after the flood of “35”, you know that they were particularly hard hit. It seems they had a convergence of the Republican River and Medicine Creek which wiped out a good portion of their town. Some of the stories in the Clarion covered people that weren’t in the McCook Tribune.

From the June 6, 1935 Cambridge Clarion comes this portion of the story told by Henry Kehr on how he and his wife survived the flood. “They were in their home alone when the water started whirling around the house. It was too late for them to try and run away from the place, so the couple climbed upon top of a table and the water still continued to rise. From the table, Mr. and Mrs. Kehr went to a davenport that had one side sticking out of the water. After being there a few minutes, Mr. Kehr decided that it would be the safest to try and get into the kitchen and sit on top of the stove because he knew that would be the last thing to leave. He waded water into the stove nearly up to his shoulders, then he went back to the door and Mrs. Kehr held onto one of his hands and he led her to the stove. In the meantime, a window had broken in the house making the water on the inside higher. They sat on the stove for quite a while, Mr. Kehr had a pocket knife and started to cut a hole in the ceiling to get into the attic. This was slow work and then he found a stove lid lifter. With this, he poked a hole in the ceiling that led up into the attic. The hole, Mr. Kehr says, is three feet by fifteen inches. Mrs. Kehr weighs 275 pounds and Henry says he does not know how he did it, but he shoved Mrs. Kehr through that small hole.” Most of the town believed they had perished in the flood, but on Saturday morning Mr. Kehr climbed down out of the attic and yelled to the Jake Kutz family that they were alive, and a rescue boat hauled both he and his wife to safety.

Heroics were the norm during this tragedy, but one young woman stands out, Rebecca Page. From the June 13, 1935 Cambridge Clarion comes her story: “Claude Page and son Bob sat at the water’s edge and called encouragement thru a megaphone to his family. His family proved one of the outstanding characters of the flood. Rebecca, the fifteen-year-old daughter, when the family was trapped in the house, broke the window with her fist and was badly cut. She crawled thru the window and held on to the porch post while the other six children and her mother crawled over her back to the roof. Her hands were badly lacerated. One daughter fell off and was swept away but she was caught in the back current and swam back to the garage roof. The house started to float away but lodged against a giant tree. The garage followed and lodged against the house. Mrs. Page fought all night to keep the flock awake.” All of the Page family survived Mrs. Page and the children no doubt due to Rebecca’s quick thinking.

Weather is not co-operating with our reopening of the library or holding our February meeting. Please watch for postings on Facebook before venturing out to do research and remember you can always search for free on www.swngs.org.