This entry is a part of a series of vignettes covering the “Great Flood of 1916,” which caused damage across five states in the southeast.
Biltmore Village.
July 16, 1916
Tired, trembling, and terrified, seventeen-year-old Katherine Lipe clung to a tree at the Biltmore Lodge Gate just outside of Asheville, North Carolina. She was fifty-feet from the higher ground they’d tried to reach.
People she trusted and loved joined her, all holding hands and trying to outrun the water. Her father James Cornelius, head carpenter for the Biltmore Estate, had risen early to prepare for escape. Two nurses, Vickie Foister and Charlotte Walker had helped. Charlotte’s little sister Marion tagged along—as little sisters often do.
The Swannanoa River, older than the mountains it flows through, swelled and thrashed, enshrouding the small community. Normally shallow, with occasional cascading shoals, the now murderous river pulsed with powerful surges, fueled by the rains from a tropical cyclone. It was the second storm of this strength that week. This morning it dislodged homes from their foundations. Its muddy water crept up the thighs of Katherine Lipe.
Sightseers poured in from the city. The same groups that gathered to see traveling street circuses came to witness a different, but similarly exciting, show. They saw the chocolate waters consume the iron bridge near the Lipes’ place that connected Biltmore to Asheville. And, by the end of the day, they would see more horror than ever before.
With her thighs raw from the bark of the tree, Katherine watched as one villager after another tried to rescue them. Her group clung to her. She held on to the tree using a sweater she’d wrapped around the trunk.
People floated past. Those alive grasped for safety.
After hours of failed rescue attempts, someone finally reached the tree. They chose to save Marion Walker first because, at fifteen, she was the youngest. She grabbed the man so tightly that he struggled to save her. He was a teenager, but strong and athletic; his whole family was known for their prowess in sport. Thrashing, she panicked. Worried that they’d drown, she started to kick, causing them to sink. Marion bawled. The man lost his grip. The child slipped and vanished into the rapids.
“Marion! Marion!” her sister Charlotte screamed.
As she wailed, Charlotte also slipped into the rapids. She cried, desperately trying to reach for something—anything—that could save her. But the waters were too strong and too deep. And there was nothing to grab.
Onlookers powerlessly watched.
At some point Katherine fell asleep. To comfort her, and to keep hold, J.C. held his daughter’s hand. Physically and mentally exhausted, he also nodded off. The tension in his hand eased. And as he relaxed, in that early stage of rest that brings a heavy feeling of relief, he let go.
The rapids wrapped around his body and pulled him from his daughter. He struggled and tried to grab another tree, but the waters were too strong.
“Shucks! Shucks!” he yelled, waking Katherine.
By then it was too late. Katherine closed her eyes and prayed as her father sank into the muddy swill.
She prayed for the strength to hold on. She begged God for mercy on her father and the others who drowned. She prayed so hard that she failed to notice Vickie Foister slipping away without a sound.
Down she went with the others. The river dragged her north, toward the shoals of the French Broad. She tumbled toward Asheville, where the Broad widened even further and swallowed the lives of many more.
Katherine’s strength waned and she knew it was only a matter of time before she, too, descended into the chilly, muddy abyss. Alone. She prayed again.
She opened her eyes. Through a haze she could see a man above her bending a branch her way. It was out of her reach. She called for him. She pleaded for him to carry her out. But as a father and husband, it was too much of a risk.
Others tried in boats that tipped with the push and pull of the Swannanoa. Nobody had a flatboat. Nothing, it seemed, would work.
After eight hours of clasping that tree, a man swam to her, carrying a rope. He wrapped his body around hers. He tied her to the trunk. Only then she knew she would live.
After several days in the hospital, she heard lifeguards had recovered the bodies of her father, the nurses, and little Marion. Their home stood until the waters receded then crumbled like so many others.
[1] Betty Carter Brock, “The Lipe Family in the 1916 Flood,” The Heritage of Old Buncombe County, North Carolina. Vol 2 (Old Buncombe Genealogical Society: Asheville, 1987).
Anthony Sadler 