Left - The family of Rev. Abraham Jacobson seated in front of the parsonage of the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church at Perry, circa 1875. Stereoview by Andrew L Dahl. (MHAHS stereo collection)
by Brian J. Bigler
Having informed his congregation two months earlier that he would be returning to his boyhood home near Decora, Iowa, Rev. Abraham Jacobson of the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church at Perry was busy packing for the move. Her pupils having left for the day, Miss Campbell was closing down the school. Neither they nor area farmers finishing up in the fields on the pleasant afternoon of May 23, 1878, knew that at 3 p.m. a killer tornado had touched down 10 miles west of Mineral Point and was heading northeast, with Perry, Primrose and Madison in its path.
As the storm neared Perry, eyewitnesses recalled, the sky turned into "inky blackness" and "its appearance from a distance could be compared to a powerful smoke pouring out from a locomotive on a moving train only in volume and roaring noise it would be hundreds of times more intense."
The approaching storm snaked to the north and east, accompanied with torrents of rain and large hail. Miss Campbell, now on her way home from the school, was the storm's first Perry fatality. Sweeping through Mr. and Mrs. Ole Swenson's farm, the storm destroyed all buildings, broke their son George's thigh bone, deeply gashed daughter Julia's forehead, and killed the kids' grandparents instantly. The twister destroyed all or part of the buildings of Peder Bratbakken, Anne P. Levang, George Paulson, Edward Peterson, Lars O. Haaverud, Halvor Hoiby, Mary J. Dalby, August Goebel, Lewis Lewis, and two sets of buildings on the Dalby and Huser farms. Mrs. Lewis's arm broke that afternoon, and to the east of the Daleyville Lutheran Church the twister carried a young man named Jylland bodily through the air to his death.
Approaching the Jacobsons, who were busy packing, the cyclone destroyed the barn and granary and tore the roof off the parsonage, breaking every window, demolishing the lean-to kitchen, and hurling Rev. Jacobson some distance, cutting and bruising him. It injured Mrs. Evenson, who had been helping pack, but largely spared other members of the family and the baby, still in its cradle and lying - "smiling" - amongst broken glass and debris. Arriving rescuers carried Charles Anderson on a mattress to a neighbor's home. An inmate of the county farm whom Rev. Jacobson had invited for an extended stay at the parsonage, Mr. Anderson, broken bones protruding through the remnants of his clothing, suffered great agony until passing away six hours later.
Observing the storm from several miles away at the school where he taught, Gulbran Jensvold did not realize that the cyclone was destroying all his own farm buildings, some live stock, and his home's roof. Mrs. Jensvold recalled: "I was alone with our small children and a young niece, when that awful moment of the stom's furious approach swept upon us. The last look out of the window saw a giant oak lying flat to the ground, then all was complete darkness. I had gathered the children around me - thinking only of that final Judgment when 'Heaven and earth shall perish,' and tried to pray, while my little girl began 'Fader vor Du som er I Himmelen.' We were hurled around like feathers among splintered glass and crashing stone. When day light again appeared one of my children was removed uninjured from underneath the rocks which I had been unable to lift after the storm. My niece was carried out unconscious but came to again when the rain beat down upon her. Some of my children carry marks yet [1914] from the bruises received, but no bones were broken. When the one was carried out who had started 'Fader Vor,' she clasped her tiny arms around my neck and finished her prayer from where she had left off, ..."
Four storm victims were buried the following day in the cemetery of the Perry Lutheran Church, which sustained considerable damage to its interior and lost most of its roof. Miss Campbell's funeral was held the following Sunday at Middlebury Methodist Church west of Perry.
The storm entered the town of Primrose at approximately four o'clock on both sides of the line separati sections 7 and 18, sweeping away the house and outbuildings of M. Oberemt. The cyclone threw him and seven children out into the yard with the flying fragments of their house. Though the storm carried a 15-year-old boy south into a ravine and left the ground thickly covered with ruins for one-hundred yards south, none of the eight at the farm was seriously injured.
The fast-moving storm tore up huge oaks by the roots, tossed houses and strewed countless fragments of everything in its path over the surrounding Primrose countryside. Residents recalled the night of "blackness in which lightning, rain and immense falling hailstones added to the horror of the deafening crash, and the savage fury of the wind."
To the east of the Oberemts, John Osmonson observed the storm approaching and left his work in the field to avoid getting wet. Moments later, alarmed at the roar, continuous lightning and thunder and very threatening sky, he took only enough time to unharness one of the horses in the stable before rushing to the house to warn his family to take cover. Carrying his four- and six-year-olds in each arm, John paused at the cellar door for his wife, with their three-month-old, to catch up. A boy of 14 and a girl of 8 made it into the cellar. A twelve-year-old girl did not. Mrs. Osmonson and the infant were partially down the cellar steps when the storm took the house.
The cyclone carried the house, with John and the two children still held firmly in his grasp, north over a 20- to 40-foot tall oak and poplar border, into a large field. While in the air over the timber border the house went to pieces, the largest portion falling north of the starting point, two portions of the roof deposited further on. Though the cast-iron stove was in pieces along the route, John and the two children fell about twenty feet north of the main ruins of the house; the children were entirely unhurt, the youngest one did not even cry. John's face was scratched and one rib broken when he fell through the top of a tree. Pelted by large hail, John placed his children under the ruins of the house and went off to find the other family members.
He discovered the stable destroyed and resting southwest of the house. The storm had blown one horse into the cellar where he lay upon his back. The other was in the distant timber stand, hind hooves resting upon the ground and forelegs hung upon a bent sapling, a position only possible if dropped from above over the tops of the trees. He was uninjured. The storm ripped an iron pump with forty-six feet of zinc pipe from the well and carried it a distance. A half-inch thick steel wagon wheel rim had been broken twice and hung in a tree ten feet off the ground, with the rest of the wagon scattered in various directions.
The 12-year-old lay thirty yards from the home, senseless, nearly buried in mud, with two severe scalp wounds and her right arm broken three times between the shoulder and elbow. Something had struck and injured Mrs. Osmonson in the back when the house lifted.
Northeast of the Osmonson farm the storm took Mrs. Ketchum's house before turning north to the center of Section 9, where it did lesser damage to G. Gullikson's, then killed N. Byrge and his son and totally destroyed their house in Section 10. Their bodies were found in a ravine northeast of the house, near their stove and the larger part of the house ruins. Mrs. Byrge was slightly injured and one man escaped injury by jumping into the cellar. The storm continued north taking the Hobbs barn, granary and haystacks, strewing debris into the marsh between the two farms.
Next destroyed were the farms of J. T. and R. B. Chandler, where "the broken foundation walls, the debris of the buildings, fragments of tables, bedsteads, bureaus and chairs, shreds of bedding and clothing, hanging upon bushes and trees or lying upon the ground in a state which rendered it difficult to distinguish the garment from the mud, gave the scene an indescribably saddening air of ruin and desolation." The deed of J. T. Chandler's farm turned up nearly ten miles east. A portion of an organ from the R. B. Chandler farm was found four and one fourth miles directly north, while the boiler and some cooking utensils were carried east one mile. J.T.'s family escaped injury by fleeing to the cellar.
Living in R.B.'s house, the W. Osborne family was less fortunate. Mr. Osborne was slightly injured. Bruised all over by the hail, Mrs. Osborne's leg was broken twice and the knee of the other seriously injured; a daughter's severe injuries left her unable to walk for two months. Their son Alex had drowned in the Mt. Vernon Mill pond just sixteen days before (see related story). Seventeen pans of milk settling in the cellar were not disturbed.
A mile east of the Chandler farms, the storm blew part of R. Shepard's house and granary off the north bank and into the Sugar River; "a lady schoolteacher, boarding at the house, was saved from the same fate by a log falling on her and holding her down." Falling hail slightly injured Mrs. Shepard. A hundred rods to the south, it unroofed O.S. Olson's house on the opposite bank.
Near the center of Section 12 the storm leveled a log home, and falling timber killed Mrs. Galena. Leaving four dead in Primrose, for the next four and one-half miles the storm damage was limited to timber and fences as it headed through Oregon to Madison. All total the storm traveled 150 miles, not stopping until Milwaukee, leaving 19 dead and more than 45 injured.
Notes of interest regarding the cyclone of 1878:
The 1878 tornado was Dane County's deadliest on record since 1865. Four other lethal storms are recorded traveling through the county: August 19, 1921, near Madison with two dead; July 29, 1948, near Springfield Corner with one dead; August 2, 1967, Westport, north of Madison with two dead, and June 8, 1984, Barneveld to near Marxville with nine killed.
The 1878 cyclone ranks the sixth deadliest in the state since 1865, in a tie with the June 4, 1958 storm which struck St. Croix and Dunn Counties. Wisconsin's deadliest tornado, on June 12, 1899, affected St. Croix, Polk, and Barron Counties and devastated New Richmond, killing 117 and injuring 125.
Mt. Vernon's doctor at the time of the 1878 cyclone, William J. Donald was kept busy tending the injured. His own crutches, patent models and literature are on exhibit at the Mt. Horeb Area Museum
Information gleaned from the following resources housed in the Archives and Library of the
Mt. Horeb Area Historical Society:
Sixty Years of Perry Congregation - C.O. Ruste, 1914-1915
Wisconsin Magazine of History Vol. 73 No. 4, Summer 1990
The Story of Primrose 1831 - 1895 - Albert Barton, 1895
Stories of Mt. Vernon and The Forest of Fame - Centennial
1846-1946 - Mrs. Robert Pope (Amelia Erfurth)
The Historic Perry Norwegian Settlement - Perry Historical Center, Daleyville, 1994