About 2 o'clock on the morning of December 16, 1811, the ground under New Madrid began to roll like the sea, and it did not settle for more than a year. Three old histories tell the story through the people who lived it: Eliza Bryan's letter from the town, Godfrey LeSieur at Little Prairie, the botanist John Bradbury on a keel boat, and Col. John Shaw on the road north with the refugees. The main source is the 1912 History of Southeast Missouri, with Houck's History of Missouri and Switzler's illustrated history adding detail.
Written from 3 old histories, all free to read on the Internet Archive: History of Southeast Missouri, Vol. 1 (1912); A History of Missouri, Vol. 3 (1908); Switzler's Illustrated History of Missouri (1879). Everything below comes from those books, and where they give an opinion, we say so.
New Madrid and Little Prairie before the shocks
The 1912 history dates the first settlement to 1783, when Francois and Joseph LeSieur, two Canadian trappers and traders, set up at a temporary trading post the traders called L'Anse a la Graise, the "cove of grease." Switzler's history calls the place one of the old Spanish forts and says it was settled as early as 1780 and laid out seven years later by General George Morgan of New Jersey.
The river was eating the town long before the earthquake. Cumings, passing in 1809, counted one hundred houses and wrote that the bank now stood half a mile behind the old bounds. Judge Watson, whose life sketch the 1912 history prints, was in the Indian trade at New Madrid. He later wrote that the first town the Spanish laid off had all fallen in, and that he was living in the third. The 1912 history says New Madrid was incorporated in 1808 and in 1811 had only two stores and a few houses. The botanist John Bradbury stopped there on December 14, 1811 and saw only a few straggling houses around a plain. Houck notes that the earthquake came not quite two days after Bradbury's boat pulled away.
Downriver, Francois LeSieur had founded Little Prairie in 1794. Its early residents included Jean Baptiste Barsaloux, George and John Ruddell, Joseph Payne, Lewis St. Aubin, Charles Guibeault, Charles Loignon, Francis Langlois and Peter Noblesse. It had seventy-eight people in 1799 and one hundred and three in 1803. Just before the earthquake, the 1912 history says, a Creek war party under a chief called Captain George crossed the Mississippi four miles below the village. Word reached Francois LeSieur and Captain George Ruddell, who each commanded a militia company. The two sides were facing each other when the first shock hit, and the Creek party, alarmed, went back across the river.
The night of December 16, 1811
The 1912 history pieces the night together from many witnesses. About 2 o'clock in the morning of December 16 the earth shook with terrific force. Most houses were log, and some were thrown into instant ruin. The ground moved in waves so violent that nobody could stand or walk; one man was thrown down five or six times trying to cross a short distance.
Eliza Bryan was in New Madrid. Her letter, written in 1816 and printed in the 1912 history, describes "a very awful noise resembling loud, distant thiuider, but more hoarse and vibrating," then a sulphurous vapor that brought total darkness. She heard the screams of people running with nowhere to go, the cries of fowls and animals, and the roar of the Mississippi, whose current ran backward for a few minutes. People fled inland, thinking it safer away from the river.
John Bradbury was on a keel boat a few miles below New Madrid. The 1912 retelling has him wakened "about 10 o'clock in the night" by a tremendous noise, an hour that does not match the other witnesses. Houck quotes his French boatmen crying out to him, and Bradbury answering, "c'est un tremblement de terre." At daylight the bank where the boat was tied was cut off from the rest of the island by a chasm four feet wide, and the crew had counted twenty-seven shocks. They watched two canoes float past, one holding Indian corn and clothes; the men in them had drowned. Later a shock nearly threw Bradbury's companion Mr. Bridge into the river.
“The screams of the affrighted inhabitants running to and fro, not knowing where to go or what to do; the cries of the fowls and beasts of every species…”
January and February 1812: the hard shocks
The first night was not the worst. Eliza Bryan wrote that lighter shocks came several times a day until January 23, 1812, when one hit as hard as any before it. From then until February 4 the earth was "visibly waving as a gentle sea." Then on the 7th, about 4 o'clock in the morning, came a shock so much worse that people called it "the hard shock." The 1912 history also treats February 7, 1812 as the last severe shock of the series.
The books do not agree on the dates. Houck, and Godfrey LeSieur in an 1871 letter printed by Switzler, put the great second shock on January 7, 1812. An unnamed correspondent of the Louisiana Gazette wrote from Cape Girardeau on February 15, 1812. The 1912 history prints his letter as speaking of the 23rd of last month and the 7th of this one; Houck reads the same letter as describing the 7th of January. The 1912 version quotes him saying the worst shock lasted 10 to 15 minutes.
The ground kept moving for years. In 1816 Eliza Bryan said a week seldom passed without a shock. When Long stopped at Cape Girardeau in 1819, he found people there called the tremors "shakes" and treated them as everyday business. One housewife told frightened visitors, "it is nothing but an earthquake." LeSieur added that old men of the Shawnees, Delawares and Cherokees told him they had no tradition of any earthquake before.
What happened to the river and the land
Eliza Bryan watched the Mississippi pull back from its banks and heap up "like a mountain," leaving boats on bare sand. Then it rose fifteen or twenty feet. The 1912 history describes falls of six to eight feet across the river. Godfrey LeSieur told of a man named Culberson who lived on Terre Rouge, a branch of Pemiscot bayou. After a hard shock Mrs. Culberson started for the well and the smokehouse and found them on the opposite side of the water, because the shock had opened a new channel between the house and the well. Myron L. Fuller of the United States Geological Survey, whose 1912 bulletin the book leans on, traced the center of the disturbance from just east of Parma in New Madrid County.
The witnesses give different figures for how far the town sank. Eliza Bryan wrote that the site settled fifteen feet. An account by Flint, written on an 1818 visit and quoted in the 1912 history, says about eight feet. Col. John Shaw said the timber land around New Madrid sank five or six feet, and Nuttall was told at Little Prairie that the land there had sunk ten.
Fissures opened everywhere. LeSieur saw some four or five miles long and about ten feet wide. Flint wrote of cracks wide enough to swallow horses or cattle, and of settlers who felled trees across them and sheltered on the trunks. Water, sand and a coal-like black substance shot out of the ground; one witness, Bringier, said the black liquid rose to the saddle-girths of his horse. The sand piled into sand blows, round patches 8 to 15 feet across, still common in 1912 around New Madrid, Campbell, Lilbourn and Portageville. Near the house of a Mr. Savors, Lyell's guide showed him a sink 28 feet deep to the water. More sinks lay east of Caruth in Dunklin County.
Whole districts dropped. Lyell, who came in 1846, described what people called the "sunk country," said to run 70 to 80 miles north and south along the Little River and busy with a trade in muskrat, mink and otter skins. A trapper named Dillard said he had trapped the St. Francois country for thirty years and had paddled a canoe among the branches of drowned cypresses. Old residents said the Little River swamps had once been a level, timbered plain, and the 1912 author remembered seeing the stumps of hundreds of trees in the riverbed east of Hornersville at low water.
“Plantations, stock of all kinds, cribs of corn, smoke houses full of meat, were offered for horses to live on.”
The dead, the refugees and the empty villages
Few people died, mostly because few lived there. The 1912 history counts one person killed by falling walls and one woman who died of fright, along with men drowned when their boats overturned. LeSieur's 1871 letter names the two deaths among the citizens, both women: Mrs. Lafont, who died of fright, and Mrs. Jarvis, hurt by a falling cabin log, who died a few days later. Houck adds that many flatboat men were thought to have died, judging by the barrels of flour, whiskey and pork floating on the river.
Col. John Shaw was in New Madrid for the shock of February 7, 1812. He wrote that nearly two thousand people fled their falling homes and went about thirty miles north to Tywappity Hill. There, Catholic and Protestant alike knelt together and prayed. Twelve miles back, a seventeen-year-old named Betsy Masters had been left behind with a leg broken by a falling roof pole. Shaw was the only one willing to go back for her. He found her in bed with water and corn bread within reach. She recovered. Shaw says most of the refugees were home within three months. Eliza Bryan wrote that her neighbors lived twelve or eighteen months in little board camps for fear of their houses.
Judge Watson remembered that plantations, livestock, cribs of corn and full smokehouses were offered for horses to get away on. Nearly everyone who could leave did, many still owing him money. After talking it over with his wife, he stayed.
The 1912 history says most who could afford to move left at once, and that those who stayed were the most determined or the poorest. Little Prairie was nearly emptied. Col. John Hardeman Walker was the one prominent settler who stayed, and Houck writes that by 1818 Walker's big plantation had taken the village's place. Nuttall found a single house left at Little Prairie, and the 1912 history says many of New Madrid's own people moved away and business stood still for several years, until the town became the county seat in 1822.
The New Madrid claims
On February 17, 1815, Congress passed an act for people who had lost real property. Anyone who owned land in New Madrid County on November 10, 1812, and whose land was materially injured by the earthquake, could locate the same amount on public land elsewhere in the territory, up to 640 acres. Locations were made on some of the best land in Boone, Howard, Saline and other counties. The 1912 history says August Chouteau built the first distillery in St. Louis from the proceeds of his New Madrid land.
Houck says the actual sufferers were nearly always cheated. Before word of the law reached them, speculators from St. Louis bought claims for forty to sixty dollars each. The St. Louis land office issued certificates to the buyers, some sellers sold the same claim several times, and the certificates were laid on valuable land in the Boonslick country and near St. Louis. One Francois Langlois tried to claim the Hot Springs of Arkansas with one. The 1912 history says the claims located under the act covered more than the whole area of the county, and Switzler writes that many claims were manufactured by fraud and perjury.
One claim led to a famous lawsuit. Eustache and John Baptiste De Lisle came to New Madrid from Detroit in 1795; their sister was Francois LeSieur's third wife. John Baptiste left in 1808 to visit another sister in Vincennes, joined the army, and later lost his whole family to cholera in 1839. Back in Vincennes in 1841 he learned his relatives were alive. They had thought him dead and sold his 160 arpens for a small sum. The buyers' claim had been located on the Missouri River where Jefferson City now stands, capitol grounds included. De Lisle sued the state. The case sat in the United States Supreme Court from 1844 to 1862, when the court ruled against him.
Finding earthquake-era families in these books
The 1912 history prints several name lists from the years around the earthquake. Little Prairie's early residents are listed with the 1799 and 1803 population counts. Settlers elsewhere in the county included Benjamin Meyers, Hardy Rawls, Lewis Van Denbenden and Joseph Story. The LeSieur family section records Francois LeSieur's 1791 marriage to Cecile Guilbequet of Vincennes and the book says many Watsons, Fontaines, La Valles and Hunters of the county descend from Robert G. Watson. Houck names the Ruddle settlement at Ruddle's Point, after Abram Ruddle, son of Isaac.
For the town after the quake, the 1912 history lists New Madrid's 1834 trustees, William Pierrepont, Geo. G. Alford, Dr. Robert D. Dawson, Ashael Smith and Alphonse Delaroderie, and the early merchants Robert G. Watson, Robert McCoy, Matteo Bogliolo and Geo. G. Alford.
The eyewitness accounts point to older sources: Eliza Bryan's letter dated March 22, 1816; Godfrey LeSieur's 1893 articles in the Weekly Record of New Madrid and his 1871 letter to State Geologist A. D. Hagar; and Col. John Shaw's narrative in the 1855 report of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. On land, remember Houck's warning that the certificates went through the St. Louis land office mostly to buyers, not sufferers. A New Madrid name on a Boone or Howard County title may be a speculator rather than a family that lived through the shocks.
The county in this history
Where to look next on this site for families from New Madrid County.
- New Madrid County: Biographies from the county histories
Finding your ancestor in New Madrid County
- Census records (free through 1950) list each person's occupation and town, so a work family shows up decade by decade.
- Death records: search our Missouri database by surname.
- The county histories themselves: the biographical sections of History of Southeast Missouri, Vol. 1 and A History of Missouri, Vol. 3 hold hundreds of family sketches.
- Newspapers on the Library of Congress's Chronicling America carried obituaries, accidents, and local news.
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Ask about my family →Frequently asked questions
When did the New Madrid earthquakes happen?
The first shock struck about 2 o'clock in the morning on December 16, 1811. Eliza Bryan, writing from New Madrid in 1816, reported another very hard shock on January 23, 1812, and the worst, the "hard shock," on February 7. Houck's history and Godfrey LeSieur instead put the second great shock on January 7, 1812. Lighter shocks went on for more than a year, and Bryan said they were still felt almost weekly in 1816.
How many people died in the New Madrid earthquakes?
Very few, because only a few hundred people lived in the region and most houses were built of logs. The 1912 History of Southeast Missouri counts one death from falling walls and one woman who died of fright, plus men drowned when their boats overturned. Godfrey LeSieur named the two women who died: Mrs. Lafont, from fright, and Mrs. Jarvis, from the fall of a cabin log.
What were the New Madrid land claims or certificates?
An act of Congress of February 17, 1815 let anyone who owned earthquake-damaged land in New Madrid County on November 10, 1812 claim the same amount of public land elsewhere in the territory, up to 640 acres. Houck's history says St. Louis speculators bought most claims cheaply before owners knew of the law, and the 1912 history says the claims located covered more than the whole county.
Did people leave New Madrid and Little Prairie after the earthquakes?
Yes. Col. John Shaw saw nearly two thousand people flee to Tywappity Hill after the February 7, 1812 shock, though he says most were home within three months. Others stayed away. The 1912 history says many of New Madrid's people moved away and business stood still for several years, and Houck writes that only two families out of two hundred remained at Little Prairie.