1771 — May 27, Flooding, esp. James, Rappahannock Riv., Richmond & Henrico Co., VA–~150

—  150  Blanton, et al. in Historical Climate Variability and Impacts in North America. 2009, 16.

–~150  Griggs. Historic Disasters of Richmond. 2016, p. 15.

–~150  Henrico County Historical Society.

–~150  Historical Marker Database, The Flood of 1771.

 

Narrative Information

 

Blanton, Chenoweth and Mock: “This chapter describes the causes and effects of a catastrophic flood on the south Atlantic seaboard early in US history…In Virginia it has been referred to as the Great Fresh of 1771, regarded as perhaps the most catastrophic flood in the region’s history. Our purpose is to offer a more complete account and analytical explanation of the flood itself, and to explore it social, economic, and political implications. The historical sources we draw on are collected not only from Virginia where prior attention has been focused, but from wherever relevant observations were recorded, extending as far southward as Florida and as far northward as Massachusetts. We also bring to bear the perspective of synoptic climatology to reconstruct the weather pattern that accounts for this unusual late spring event. Finally, we attempt to digest existing historical perspectives from colonial Virginia to offer a fuller interpretation of the flood’s meaning at this formative stage in colonial history. The larger goal is to use this case as a means of exploring the place of natural climatic events in human affairs…

 

“A variety of sources allow us to establish the basic facts surrounding the May 1771 flood including personal correspondence and journal entries, official records and correspondence, and newspaper accounts. The great weight of the material is attributed to observers in eastern Virginia, either in the vicinity of towns like Richmond at the falls of rivers, or toward the coast in Tidewater…The same is true of the information from South Carolina, where most reports come from the more populous Low Country districts…. [p. 4]

 

“Based on several reports that put the first visible rise of the water at Richmond on May 25, the deluge in the Virginia mountains would have occurred between about May 14-26. The peak flood stage at all of Virginia’s fall line towns was on May 27…)Virginia Gazette, 1771a, 1771b; Van Horne, 1975; The Farmer’s Register, 1836). Geographically the extent of flooding appears to have been vast, extending at least through the Carolinas and over Virginia… Rivers specifically noted at flood stage in late May were the Savannah, Pee Dee, Wateree, Congaree, Yadkin, Roanoke, Rivanna, James, Pamunkey, Mattaponi, Rappahannock, and Shenandoah, ordered from south to north respectively…. [p. 6]

 

“Reported maximum flood levels in 1771 are impressive and at least in Virginia are not matched in official records (Camp and Miller, 1970; [1]  Bailey et al., 1975[2]). At Richmond the James River floodwater maximum was marked at 40 ft (12.9 m) above normal level (Bland, 1771;[3] The Virginia Gazette, 1771b). At Osborne’s about 10 miles (16.09 km) below Richmond the water level reached ‘five or six lengths of shingles upon the roofs’ (The Maryland Gazette, 1771). Given in relative terms, the peak level at the Fall Line was most commonly noted as 20-25 ft…above the previously observed ‘old record’, probably set in May 1766 (The Virginia Gazette, 1771a). A single account measures the relative height as 10 ft…above the flood levels recalled uncertainly from August ‘1720 or 1724’ (The Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, 1771.)…. [p. 7]

 

“On the Roanoke River, the 1771 flood is cited as 9 ft…above the previous all-time high mark (The New London Gazette, 1771a)…. [p. 8]

 

“Of all states affected, Virginia sustained the greatest losses from the 1771 flood, and the physical damage compounded already-existing economic and political strains….at the time of the great flood a significant portion of the colony’s wealth was collected at riverside warehouses, and each of the…facilities was affected….. [p. 15]

 

“….An estimated 150 persons drowned in Virginia and regionally economic losses were great. Along with prized floodplain soils, crops and facilities of every description were washed away or damaged. Richard Bland wrote in a letter that, ‘Promiscuous heaps of houses, trees, men, horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, merchandize, corn, tobacco and every other thing…were seen floating upon the water’ (Bland, 1771)….” [p. 16]  (Blanton, Chenoweth and Mock. “The Great Flood of 1771: An Explanation of Natural Causes and Social Effects.” Pages 3-22 in Historical Climate Variability and Impacts in North America. (Dupigny-Giroux and Mock, editors). 2009.)

 

Dupigny-Giroux and Mock: “The regional case studies open with ‘The Great Flood of 1771: An Explanation of Natural Causes and Social Effects’ by Blanton et al. that uses synoptic reanalysis and historical sources to explore the human and societal ramifications of a catastrophic flood along the eastern Atlantic seaboard in May 1771 on the eve of the American Revolution. The study serves to highlight the disproportionate toll of natural hazards on lower income populations as a result of mobility, housing locations and access to resources, a finding that is as true today as it was three centuries ago.” (Dupigny-Giroux and Mock, eds. Historical Climate Variability and Impacts in North America. 2009, p. xii.

 

Griggs: “….By most accounts, the worst flood in Richmond’s history came as a surprise on May 27, 1771. It was not raining in Richmond when the flood surged down the James River and inundated the River City. Unbeknownst to most Richmonders, it had been raining for ten or twelve days in the mountains, and the water was flooding the rivers. Soon, Richmonders saw that the James River had risen above all previous flood levels and was overflowing its banks…the water rose to a height of forty feet above flood stage….It swept through Richmond, destroying buildings and boats and killed about 150 people.

 

Henrico County Historical Society. “On May, 27, 1771, a wall of water came roaring down the James River valley following ten to twelve days of intensive rain.  As water swept through Richmond, buildings, boats, animals and vegetation were lost.  About one hundred fifty people were killed as the river reached a flood state of forty-five feet above normal.  A monument to the flood was inscribed by Ryland Randolph, of Curles, in 1771-71:

 

“…all the great rivers of this country were swept by inundations never before experienced

which changed the face of nature and left traces of violence that will remain for ages.”

 

“The marker recalls the events of the Great Fresh of 1771, the biggest flood to affect the James River valley in our recorded history. The marker suggests a flood stage of 45 feet. The level upriver at Richmond was 40 feet above normal, a level not even approached by the flood caused by Hurricane Camille in 1972.  That “fresh” reached a level of 36.5 feet above normal at Richmond.

 

“The marker also refers to the eighteen-foot-tall obelisk on a six-foot square base, constructed of brick and faced with cement. The eighteenth century monument at Turkey Island purportedly marks the high-water mark of the flood.

 

“Contemporary accounts confirm that it was quite a flood. A letter to the Virginia Gazette of May 30, 1771, said:

 

There is now the greatest Fresh in James River even known, it being at least twenty Feet higher than that in May 1766. The Warehouses at Westham are entirely gone, with three Hundred Hogsheads of Tobacco. At Byrd’s Warehouses, the Water is now Half Way up the Lower Tier of Hogsheads; the other Warehouses of Shocko are almost under Water, and the Tobacco drifting away by thirty and forty Hogsheads at a Time. It is imagined there might have been about three Thousand Hogsheads in the different Warehouses at Shocko. Almost every Lumber House is gone, and destroyed, on each Side of the River, many of them full of Good.

 

“The magazine account continues:

 

Some People who left Richmond the same Day, in the Afternoon, say that the River was then rising at the Rate of two Inches an Hour, but we since learn, that it began to abate about Sunset.

 

All the low Ground have been overflowed, by which inconceivable Damage has been done. Every Thing was carried off to Farrar’s Island, belonging to Colonel Thomas Mann Randolph, and at Elk Island, John Wayles, Esquire, is said to have suffered to the Amount of four thousand Pounds. Nothing being saved but the People and five Horses…

 

The Ships in the River were in most imminent Danger, from the vast Number of huge Trees driving down the Rapidity of the Current, and many of them have sustained great Damage. The Ships at Shirley Hundred were driven from their Mooring over to City Point, and those at City Point down as low as Jordan’s.

 

“The estimate was a bit off, and the river was really rising on May 26 at a rate of 19 inches per hour. On June 6, 1771, John Howard of Botetourt wrote to Dr. William Cabell in Amherst:

 

I received last night by my Fellow Cato accounts of the dismal Destruction made in  James River by the late Fresh, in which I share very deeply, and I understand all my Crop of Tobacco that was growing is ruined as well as all that was in the Tobacco Houses about 6 Hogsheads, together with all my Tobacco Houses except one, are swept away, and 13 Hogsheads that were sent to the Warehouse, or Westham, I suppose are gone, as I hear the water was over both places, my Corn House with the Corn swept away, & some of my stock, and it is owing to the great goodness of God that my People are all alive.

 

“On August 1, 1771, Richard Bland wrote to Thomas Adams:

 

Upon the 27th of May a most dreadful Inundation happened in James, Rappahannock and

Roanoke Rivers occasioned by very heavy and incessant Rains upon the mountains for ten or twelve days…Promiscous Heaps of Houses, Trees, Men, Horses, Cattle, Sheep, Hogs, Merchandise, Corn, Tobacco & every other Thing that was unfortunately within the dreadful sweep were see [sic] Floating upon the Waters, without a possibility of their being saved.

 

“Obviously, the flood was devastating, and it prompted the Assembly to issue 30,000 pounds in Treasurer notes for the tobacco lost at public warehouses.”[4]

 

Historical Marker Database, Inscription:  “On May 27, 1771, a wall of water came roaring down the James River valley following ten to twelve days of intensive rain. As water swept through Richmond, buildings, boats, animals, and vegetation were lost. About one hundred fifty people were killed as the river reached a flood stage of forty-five feet above normal. A monument to the flood was inscribed by Ryland Randolph…in 1771-72: ‘… all the great rivers of this country were swept by inundations never before experienced which changed the face of nature and left traces of violence that will remain for ages’.”  (Historical Marker Database, The Flood of 1771.)

 

Sources

 

Blanton, Dennis B., Michael Chenoweth and Cary J. Mock. “The Great Flood of 1771: An Explanation of Natural Causes and Social Effects.” Pages 3-22 in Historical Climate Variability and Impacts in North America. (Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux and Cary J. Mock, editors). Springer, 2009. Google preview accessed 9-4-2018 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=fNuOhA8SKjsC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=1771&f=false

 

Griggs, Walter S. Jr. “Chapter 1: Two Floods Two Hundred Years Apart, 1771 and 1972.” Historic Disasters of Richmond. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2016. Google preview accessed 9-3-2018 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=KjSACwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Henrico County Historical Society, Henrico, VA. News 2011, First Quarter. “Forty Foot High (And Rising?) Flood levels of the Great Fresh of 1771 still stand as a record…” Accessed 9-4-2018 at: http://www.henricohistoricalsociety.org/news2011.firstquarter.html

 

Historical Marker Database. The Flood of 1771. (Contribued by Kathy Walker, Stafford, VA, July 17, 2008). Accessed at: http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=9248

 

[1] J. D. Camp and E. M. Miller. Flood of August 1969 in Virginia. Water Resources Division, Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior, Richmond, Virginia, 1970.

[2] J. F. Bailey, J. L. Patterson, and J. L. H. Paulhus. Hurricane Agnes Rainfall and Floods, June-July 1972. Geological Survey Professional Paper 924. US Geological Survey and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Washington, DC, 1975.

[3] R. Bland. Letter from Richard Bland to Thomas Adams, August 1, 18771. Adams Family Papers, Mss 1, Ad98a12-167, Sec 6 (B) Folder 2 of 7, The Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, 1771.

[4] Cites:  Williams and Mary Quarterly, vol. 5, 1897; Dupigny-Giroux, Lesley-Ann and Gary J. Mock, eds. Historical Climate Variability and Impacts in North America; Virginia Gazette, May 30, 1771; Tyler’s Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine, vol. 2, no 4, April 1921.