Editor’s note: This is another in an ongoing series of articles we call “Marking History” looking at the stories behind the hundreds of historic markers scattered about the Crossroads.
On a mid-May day in 1902, a massive tornado tore across the San Antonio River near Goliad — “The water of the river was sucked up into the clouds, so that the river was dry,” according to one witness.
The cyclone then roared into Goliad within mere moments, killing 114 people, including 50 churchgoers attending Sunday service at a Black Methodist church. All 50 were crushed and instantly killed.
They are buried in a mass grave on the eastern edge of Lott Cemetery, a Black cemetery outside Goliad, on Sunrise Road. A simple marker — “In Remembrance of the May 18, 1902, Tornado Victims” — marks the burial site.
Henry Wolff Jr., writing for the Victoria Advocate in an article marking the 100-year anniversary of the 1902 tornado, noted, “There are conflicting reports as to how many were buried in the mass grave, one account indicating ’34 victims plus one leg.’”
The F4 tornado, listed as the second most deadly in Texas’ history by the National Weather Service, killed 114 people in Goliad and injured over 200 more.
A historic marker designating the remarkable storm rests on Goliad’s Courthouse Square. The marker leads the reader to another outside the Fannin Street United Methodist Church a few blocks away, on the corner of Mount Auburn and Fannin streets. Finally, the curious can follow through to the marker at Lott Cemetery.
Immediately after the tornado, no one was certain how many people had been killed.
The day after the tornado, May 19, 1902, the Victoria Advocate, reported on the killer storm in an article titled “Terrific Cyclone at Goliad: Death and Destruction in its Wake—132 people dead Many Wounded—Victoria Sends Aid.”
“Yesterday afternoon, at about 4 o’clock the appalling news flashed over the wires: ‘Terrible Cyclone at Goliad,’” reported the Advocate. “The intelligence quickly spread over the city, causing general consternation and apprehension for the safety of relatives and friends. Soon followed an appeal for help from the stricken town.”
In the text of “The History and Heritage of Goliad County,” on hand at the Victoria Regional History Center, the Goliad Historical Commission compiled a few eyewitness accounts from that terrible May day.
It includes the story of a farmer named Mr. Johnson, who had made several cattle drives to Kansas during the golden age of the Chisholm Trail.
The storm was brewing and Mr. Johnson “looked up from his barnyard chores, then studied the clouds.” He noticed black cones reaching down from the dark sky “into long, twisting streamers.”
The story continues with Mr. Johnson’s account of what he said upon seeing the angry sky:
“Them things keep acomin’ down and keep on acomin’ thisaway,” he remarked, “somebody ‘round here’s gonna get plumb blowed away.”
Another storm survivor, Kate Chilton Talbot was just 10 years old when the twister struck.
“I was taken up into the air for a few minutes. I just remember rolling in the water when I came down,” she recalled. She had a scar on her head from an injury she’d suffered on her wild ride.
Wolff’s personal research file about the 1902 cyclone is also on hand at the Regional History Center. It contains a remarkable letter sent to Wolff by a Victoria resident with roots in Goliad.
The man related what his father and grandfather recalled about the storm.
His grandfather had owned slaves who were emancipated by Gen. Gordon Granger’s June 19, 1865, General Order No. 3, proclaiming the end of legalized slavery in Texas: “Juneteenth.”
The man wrote that the freeing of the slaves upset his grandfather. Three of the slaves decided to stay on with the family.
One, he said, was a big man with very large feet. He had gone into town the day the tornado struck. (The tornado hit a mere 36 years after slavery ended.)
His father and grandfather grew concerned after the storm and went to search for the former slave. They found him dead and were only able to identify him by his large feet, the man wrote to Wolff. He did not name the former slave.
Many of the people killed in the Fannin Street church were former slaves as well, according to historic documents.
When the dead were first listed, as recorded in documents at the history center, each white person killed was listed on a single line with a title, such as Mr. or Mrs., or “mother of.” They were listed separately with any of their children who were killed.
The list of African Americans killed was a block of names, one after the other, no designations of any sort.
Mexican Americans killed were not named, only numbered.
One final note: At the Lott Cemetery, there is a gravestone with a single word etched into it: “Bingo.” Bingo was an orphaned Black boy raised by prominent cattleman Ed Lott’s wife. Bingo died around 1916, according to the historical marker at the cemetery.
Conversation with history often brings with it uncomfortable talking points. The 1902 Goliad tornado is no exception. It brings segregated cemeteries, slavery and numbered and unnamed Mexican American victims into the story.
“History is, to say the least, complicated,” historian and Texas native Annette Gordon-Reed wrote in her book, “On Juneteenth.”
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