'Fatal Tornado' — Charleston Daily Courier, 19 May 1866 (death of Dr. Christopher Fitzsimons)
Book 4, Page 11 ·1866
Transcription
Fatal Tornado.
Fatal Tornado.—On Thursday morning last, during the visit of several gentlemen from the city to their plantations in St. John’s Berkley, a terrible tornado swept over the Moss Grove Plantation and vicinity, on Cooper River, sweeping away both trees and houses. In one of these buildings Mr. A. Milliken and Dr. Christopher Fitzsimons had taken refuge from the storm of both wind and rain. The storm increasing in violence, and the building showing signs of falling, they attempted to retreat, Mr. Milliken passing out one door and Dr. Fitzsimons attempting to escape by another. The latter, however, being lame, in his hurry was thrown down, and the building at that moment crumbling in, he was struck on the head by a cross beam and instantly killed.
Another building, into which several negroes had entered and sought shelter, was also thrown down, one negro woman killed and several negro men wounded. The funeral of Dr. Fitzsimons took place in this city yesterday afternoon.
Source: The Charleston Daily Courier (Charleston, S.C.), Saturday, 19 May 1866, page 2, column 2. Image from newspapers.com, image 605426025. Public-domain newspaper (pre-1929). The source PDF — which preserves the publication metadata — is archived in this repository under additionalDocumentation/The_Charleston_Daily_Courier_1866_05_19_2.pdf.
AI Notes
The Charleston Daily Courier’s news brief on the 17 May 1866 tornado that killed Dr. Christopher Fitzsimons at his Moss Grove plantation on the Cooper River. This is the primary printed source for the family hand-copy in the bound album at book-001/p279 — the writer there (Kit FitzSimons, the deceased’s eldest son, then aged ten) introduces the same text as ‘taken from the Courier May 19th 1866’ and reproduces it with minor abridgements. Comparison points: the Courier prints the deceased’s surname as FITZSIMONS in caps and gives his title as Dr.; the family hand-copy renders him as ‘Mr. Christopher FitzSimons,’ demoting the medical title (Kit was writing decades later, when the title may have faded from family usage). The Courier also preserves the geographic anchor ‘and vicinity, on Cooper River’ which the family copy abbreviates away. The funeral is recorded as having taken place ‘in this city yesterday afternoon’ — Friday 18 May 1866 — fixing the burial date within 24 hours of death.
The Daily Courier prints St. John’s Berkley (now usually spelled “Berkeley”) and the surname in small-caps Fitzsimons (one word, double-s, no second m). The witness A. Milliken is almost certainly a member of the Milliken family of nearby Mulberry / Cooper-River plantations — possibly the elder of the same generation as the deceased’s wife Susan Milliken Barker FitzSimons (a Milliken connection that would explain why he was present at Moss Grove that morning). The “Thursday morning last” relative to a Saturday 19 May printing places the tornado on 17 May 1866; the family memorandum on book-001/p279 narrows the time to “about 1 P. M.” (per the rival Charleston Daily News brief on the same event, see document 12). The “several gentlemen from the city” visiting their plantations that morning indicates that Moss Grove and its neighbours were operated as country seats with proprietors who maintained Charleston town houses — consistent with the deceased’s Hasell Street residence in Charleston referenced in the album.
The two-paragraph item — a news brief, not an obituary in the proper sense — is followed in the same column by an unrelated ‘FAVORS.’ notice thanking the purser of the steamer Dictator for exchanges. There is no death notice of Dr. Fitzsimons elsewhere on this Courier page; the longer obituary the family preserves at book-001/p279 is in fact a family hand-copy of the news brief shown here, not a separate published obit.