One death, a score injured, and an incalculable destruction of property and crops was the toll of a hail storm that “broke” a short distance on the other side of Princeton about 1:30 yesterday and raged cross county-wide to Kinston with a fury that caused, in addition to actual damage, a brief panic through the stricken area.
Striking for a mile and a half to two miles on either side of the Central highway, the hail storm pelted the life out of hundreds and hundreds of acres of cotton and tobacco and up to the Goldsboro limits made a clean sweep of the fruit crop.
From Henderson to Norlina, along the Seaboard, was reported another hail storm that did a great crop damage, but which, according to what meagre reports had been collected in Raleigh last night, was by no means as far reaching as the Princeton-Goldsboro-Kinston storm. There were no casualties and only a barn here and there damaged.
A survey of the stricken ground yesterday afternoon indicated that the storm fell with greatest violence within a two-mile radius of Princeton. On the edge of the town it tore through the side of and demolished a negro church were services were being held and pinned a score of worshippers under a shower of icy balls. One communicant was pounded to death, another was thought to be fatally injured and 18 or 20 were regarded as in a serious condition from the hail storm that caught them and struck its blows before they could flee to shelter.
Residences and Tobacco Barns
The only damage to a residence was that reported from Whitley, two miles this side of Princeton, where the roof of a house occupied by Cicero Gurley was swept off and a part of one side of the house wrecked. Any number of tobacco barns, ranging from a reported destruction of 10 to a probable wreckage of a hundred, were caught in the rush of the storm.
In Princeton proper, a small office building of probably two rooms was lifted from its foundation and hurled by the hail and wind into the middle of one of the principal streets. Trees that appeared to have been standing for generations were rent from their rootings and pitched by the invading elements into the streets. Sign boards, with their flaming advertisements, fell with the preliminary waves and beats.
Reached Beyond La Grange
The damage to tobacco barns and to standing crops reached so farm east as La Grange, travelers reported, doing damage over the same four mile track that passed through the northern edge of town and the Greenleaf community and left a pro rata damage to plant life.
After the fashion of hail storms, the one yesterday invaded Wayne with practically no warning, being preceded by a tumultuous downpour of rain. Beginning, most folks said, at 1:30, it continued the passing of a given point for 15 or 20 minutes and pellets described as large as bird-egg, hen-egg and even goose-egg size fell over the wide swatch with the fury of bullets belched form a million machine guns.
Sends Folks to Bed
After the storm had passed and left in its wake a damage it will require weeks to accurately estimate, spectators passing on the Central highway were informed by residents that the violence of the storm sent numbers of people scampering to prayer and to bed. Fear of a reckoning greater than a hail storm is said to have filled the negro worshippers at Princeton.
“I haven’t seen any such a storm in all my 20 years,” one farmer, coming back across a vast stretch of devastated cotton fields, said.
“We may be able to replant and make 50 per cent of a crop,” another farmer explained, while others feared that the late replanting would not amount to more than one-fourth of a normal yield. Tobacco is proportionately damaged, but corn can, for the most part, be replanted with little loss. All fruit is, of course, a total loss. This in itself, will amount to thousands of dollars.
Most Destructive of Years
While it will take some time to appraise the actual total damage of yesterday’s storm, there is universal agreement that it was the most destructive hail visitation of years. The nearest one, in point of damage, to yesterday’s was the storm that wiped out 300 acres of cotton on the State farm near Caledonia four years ago.
Admittedly a paralytic stroke to the farmers living and cultivating in the range of the stretch cut by the storm, it is impossible to arrive at any satisfactory estimate of the probable effect in the farmers as whole. Many of them were heart broken yesterday as they gazed upon the storm-swept fields and viewed the remains of promising young crops.
Telephone communication with nearby towns was partially suspended last night, but had been resumed to most points by midnight.
From front page of the Goldsboro News, May 15, 1922
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