- The Owosso Tornado -
November 11, 1911
On November 8th, in Morrice, Mrs. John Cook picked a handful of
English violets from her garden. The weather had been so fair that these dainty flowers, which normally bloom in the spring, were blooming again. Three days later cities across the midwest would have both
record high and low temperatures in the same day as the historic Blue Norther of 1911 raced through.
It was 11:11 p.m. and many of Owosso's residents, like 29 year old Harry Corwin and his wife, had
already gone to bed. There were no sirens to warn them of imminent danger. A ban on the issuance of tornado warnings had been in effect
since 1887 and wouldn't be lifted until 1938. Wrapped in rain and cloaked by darkness the tornado slammed into the southwest corner
of Owosso and slashed a half mile wide path through the heart of the city. The Corwin's, who lived on Chipman street, were killed in their bed. On Cass street Mr. & Mrs. George Posthumus got out of bed when a window was blown out, vacating just in time to avoid a heavy timber that was driven
through the side of the house and landed where they had been moments before.
The three story factory
of D. M. Estey Furniture was no match for the horrific onslaught and was quickly reduced to a pile of rubble. The destruction continued as portions of the Owosso Casket factory, Monroe Implement Company, Owosso Manufacturing and the brick-built factory of Woodard Furniture were smashed. Buckled walls and
a caved-in roof were all that remained of the City Steam Laundry on West Main, which fared better than next door Headley's photography studio. At the corner of Williams and Washington streets the 150 foot steeple of Salems Lutheran church was sent crashing to the ground. Utility poles snapped like toothpicks leaving hopeless tangles of telephone
and electrical wires to join the jagged remains of numerous plate glass windows.
