New Madrid Eyewitness Accounts

Introduction

The New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812 were one of the most dramatic natural disasters to strike the North American continent.

Note: The links below lead to scanned images of the eyewitness accounts. Because of image size they may take a while to download. Also, some may be too wide for your monitor and you will have to scroll in order to view the entire document. This was necessary in order to provide sufficient quality to view online.

The Accounts

Eliza Bryan - Letter to Lorenzo Dow (1816)

Daniel Bedinger - Extract from the Journal of Daniel Bedinger (1812)

Dillard's Account in Foster (1869)

Dr. Foster - More of the Earthquakes (1812)

William Leigh Pierce - An Account of the Earthquakes (1812)

Mathias Speed - From the Bardstown Repository (1812)

William Shaler - Letter to Samuel L. Mitchell (1814)

James Fletcher - Letter to the Pittsburg Gazette (1812)

Anonymous - from the Lexington Reporter (1812)

John Bradbury - Travels in the Interior of America (1812)

John Shaw - Shaw's Narrative (1856)

Firmin LaRoche - A Sailors Record of the New Madrid Earthquake (1812)

Vincent Nolte - Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres (1854)

James McBride - Brief Account of Journies in the Western Country (1910)

Louis Bringier - Notes on the Geology and Minerology... (1821)

Godfrey LeSieur - Letters to the Missouri State Geologist (1872)

James Richie - Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution (1858)

John Weisman - Accounts of the Earthquakes (n. d.)

Walker The Navigator (1847)

The Eyewitnesses themselves

Eliza Bryan 1780-1866, One of the most important eyewitnesses to the New Madrid earthquakes related her experiences in 1816 to the prominent Methodist evangelist Lorenzo Dow in 1816. Bryan's letter was published in Dow's book Bryan was a long time resident of New Madrid who was born in Pennsylvania in 1780 and moved with her family to New Madrid in 1791. Her maiden name was Rees. Her father Azor Rees was a farmer and landowner in the New Madrid area. Her father died after 1796 and her mother briefly remarried to David Grey and then divorced in 1804. At the time of the earthquakes Eliza was 31 years old and living with her mother who was maintaining a boarding house at New Madrid. Eliza married a man by the name of Bryan who was possibly an army surgeon. They had one child Fredrick who died in 1870. Eliza died in 1866 at New Madrid.

John Bradbury was a British scientist who published his account in his book Travels in the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 1810 and 1811 that appeared in 1817. Bradbury was traveling down the Mississippi River at the time of the December 16, 1811 earthquake. He also publicized the discoveries of the Lewis and Clark expedition and gave Europe a description of America's western frontier and it's inhabitants.

Louis Bringier wrote his account in Notes on the Geology and Minerology Topography, Productions and Aboriginal Inhabitatants of the Regions Around the Mississippi and its Confluent Waters.(1821) It appeared in The American Journal of Science and Arts. Bringier was possibly the Surveyor General of Louisiana.

Center for Earthquake Research and Information
3890 Central Ave
Memphis TN 38152