In May of 1929, a tornado spun through Rappahannock,

In May of 1929, a tornado spun through Rappahannock, twisting around Red Oak Mountain and touching down as well at Rock Mills, Laurel Mills and Ben Venue. Weather conditions causing the tornado orignated farther south in Virginia, where the tornado touched down at a place called “Rye Cove” demolishing a school house and killing most of the children in it. This terrible event was set to music in a song by A.P. Carter bearing the name of the disaster site, (see box).

As the tornado crashed northward into Rappahannock it retained its terrible fury, but by the odd circumstances peculiar to tornadoes, only four Rappahannock people were killed, and only one child, Marshall Hawkins, died in the rubble of the Woodville school house. Other children and teachers were thrown and flown across the fields, scattered on the rain-soaked ground in a scene of terror and desolation that must have gripped the hearts of all who rushed to their aid. Years later, scenes of the screaming, drenched children against the blackened landscape remain with all those who drove, rode or ran to Woodville to help, and the news dominated the local papers for days.

From the Madison Eagle: (May 10, 1929) “On the brow of the hill stood until that fateful afternoon the four-room schoolhouse, two rooms of which were being used. It is now scattered over the school lot, in an adjacent cornfield and orchard, even to the mountain side about a mile away. The schoolhouse, a frame structure placed on a stone foundation, was literally blown to bits. There were about 40 pupils in the building with the teachers, Mrs. Lewis Browning and Miss Mary Starke. When the darkness fell and the building began to rock like a boat the teachers dismissed their charges. As they were leaving the building the storm began to tear it to pieces and the children were picked up by the wind and scattered over the rear of the lot with pieces of timber falling on and about them.