Savoy, Texas -- In Savoy, they have a saying: "Twas in the year of 1880 on the 28th of May, that a tornado hit Savoy and blowed it all away."

It was 10 minutes past 10:00 p.m. on Friday, May 28, 1880 when a tornado brought death and devastation to Savoy, Texas.

It happened so quickly that the hotel keeper in Savoy said he reached for his pantaloons when he heard the cyclone approaching, but in what he described as five seconds of terror, the town was almost completely destroyed before he could even get them on.

Telegraph lines were down in Savoy. Word of the disaster reached Bonham three hours later when a train that passed through Savoy shortly after the tornado pulled into the Bonham depot at 1:00 a.m. Saturday; by daylight, the livery stables in Bonham were empty as people rushed to aid their neighbors in Savoy.

The Bonham News had this description:

Savoy, a beautiful little town of about three or four hundred inhabitants, eleven miles west of this place on the Transcontinental Railroad, was literally swept from the earth by a cyclone at 10 minutes past 10 o'clock last Friday night.

The cyclone was about 178 yards wide, striking the town a short distance southwest of where the post office used to be and passing centrally through the place, demolishing 40 houses, including every business house except one, killing nine persons and wounding 50 or 60 more.

Map courtesy of Malinda Allison, Fannin County Historical Commission

In today's digitally connected world, it is hard to comprehend just how important trains and telegraph lines were for transportation and communication in 1880. The Bonham News article goes on to say:

The first news of the catastrophe was brought by Maj. Hays and Charlie Blaire, passengers on the eastbound train that came through Savoy a few minutes after the cyclone was over. This train reached Bonham at about 1 o'clock, in a blinding rain, and, after getting telegraphic orders from Marshall, went on to Dodd City, 9 miles east, for an extra engine to go to the relief of Savoy. This engine, belonging to the dirt train, under Geo. B. Lee, waited some time at Dodd for orders, but getting none, pulled out anyhow. [A heroic action on the part of the conductor and deserving all praise, when we consider that it might have lost him his situation.]

Physicians, nurses, etc., from Bonham were waiting at the depot for the extra, the rain being too heavy for them to get through by other conveyance.

Finally, about 4 o'clock, the first extra carried the following physicians and nurses from this place to the relief of Savoy: Doctors Dabney, Martin, and Bacon Saunders, Mayor Lyday, J.P. Holmes, Emmett Peeler, John Agnew, B.S. Burton, W.G. Pierce, W.T. Hightower, White Ragsdale, F. Heunsch, Wirt Saunders, Ben Dyer, Jim Noble, Will Martin, Tom Kennedy, Everett Duncan, G.L. Anthony; also Dr. Wells and F. Caldwell of Dodd City.

This party reached Savoy about 5 o'clock. They were preceded possibly 15 minutes by Dr. Briggs and Dr. Foute of Bells.

By this time, doctors King, Steagall and Matthews, resident physicians of Savoy, with the assistance of the uninjured inhabitants, had found and extracated all the wounded except little Rilla Kerns, whom the wind had dropped 40 or 50 yards from any debris, so that she was not found till after daylight that morning. She was taken to the schoolhouse, with the other wounded, where she was attended to by doctors Bacon Saunders and J.S. Dorset.

The engine was sent back to Bonham at once for ice, medicines, provisions, clothing, etc., and had made two trips before anybody arrived from Sherman or Denison. We give these two cities credit for acting as promptly as possible but by the time their trains got in, there was little left to be done in the way of immediate relief -- Bonham already having sent a sufficient number of nurses and physicians, and a carload of supplies. 

The seminary was quickly transformed into a hospital with makeshift beds. Guards were placed at the doors and a rope barrier encircled the building to keep the crowd of sightseers -- estimated at 2,000 -- at bay. Inside, as life slipped away, little Rilla Kerns lay silent.

According to the Bonham News article, Dr. Stell, of Paris, Texas, sat beside Rilla all Saturday night. The little girl was covered with wounds and bruises. When she drew her last breath, Dr. Stell cried as if he had lost his own child. The newspaper article said Sam Gill's head was split open and his brains were scattered out on the ground until a freedman scooped them up and placed them in Gill's coffin.

The Bonham News reported how witnesses described the moments before the tornado approached Savoy.

From all accounts, the cyclone at Savoy was not immediately accompanied by a drop of rain. It had been raining shortly before, but as the destroying whirl approached, with a roar like a railroad train, all else was still. When it struck the town, the roar was a thousand times intensified, and mingling with the crash of falling houses and the noise of timbers snapping and breaking into kindling wood, produced a chaos of deafening sounds. In a second or two the cyclone was gone, the air clear of flying timbers, and the ruins of McKnight's Drugstore had taken fire -- threatening a most horrible death to a number of wounded imprisoned under that and adjoining wrecks. Fortunately at this juncture the rain poured down in torrents, aiding materially to put out the fire, and filling the streets so full of water that it could be dipped up by the bucketful anywhere. A number of buckets were soon obtained and the fire extinguished. But for the very heavy rain immediately following the cyclone we have no doubt the wreck would have taken fire in various places, burned several of the wounded, and presented a calamity even more heart-rendering and appalling than the one it has been our painful duty to record.

Dr. Sam McKee says that when he came to himself after the cyclone, it was pitch dark and perfectly still -- no rain falling. Almost immediately he heard his little girl cry -- not as if she was hurt, but as if she was under something. Feeling around in the darkness for his child, he found Mrs. McKee, with the child under her. Asking his wife is she was hurt, she replied that her arm was broken. The doctor felt and found this to be the case -- also that she was bleeding profusely. Taking the little girl across the street to the nearest remaining house, he returned for his wife, about which time the rain commenced pouring down in torrents. Help now arrived to get out the balance of the family, and they were all soon rescued and carried under shelter.  

Word got around that the Savoy blacksmith, Mr. Brooks, had acted on a premonition of an approaching disaster, and removed his family from their residence. The house was destroyed by the cyclone.

Josie Kerns had a piece of white pine, two inches long and half an inch thick, removed from her back. Eva Horne was found in shock with a piece of pine driven through her forearm. Mrs. Finnis Horne's fractured femur was stabilized by plaster of Paris applied by Drs. Saunders, Hoy, Dorset, Wells and others.

Newspapers across the nation reported on the disaster at Savoy. Here is the June 10, 1888 edition of the Holton Recorder-Tribute newspaper published in Holton, Kansas.

The tiny village of Savoy, Fannin Co. Texas, on the Transcontinental Railroad was almost literally wiped away by a tornado on the night of the 28th of May, 1880. Nine persons were killed and over sixty were injured, some ten or twelve of the latter having died within a few hours afterward.  The village contained a population of about 400.  The only buildings of any account left standing are the Houston Methodist Church and the Academy, the latter of which was transformed into a hospital for the wounded.  Some nineteen business buildings, including  the Railroad Depot was almost totally demolished. 

The list of the killed is as follows:  Dr. Joseph Kearns, William Sudduth, E. L. Andrews and child, Sam Gill, Ellie Gallagher, T. J. Cox, Miss Mattie Best, Miss Pantha Johnson.  The more seriously wounded are Mrs. McKee, Edna, Robert and Sam McKee, Ema John, Ollord Horn, Mrs. Dr. Kearns, F. W. Foster, Prof. Holland's daughter, Hattie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Robert Gallagher and wife, Mrs. William Sudduth, Mrs. Dennis Horn, Mrs. M. I. Taylor.  A number of these have since died.

Mr. and Mrs. William Sudduth are both buried at Sunnyside Cemetery in Savoy.

And now you know why, about this time of the year, the folks around Savoy remember an old saying:

Twas in the year of 1880 on the 28th of May,
that a tornado hit Savoy and blowed it all away.