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.
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.
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.