“Mr. Printer”

Date

2-8-1812

Newspaper

Savannah Republican

Page and Column

Page 2, Column 3 and 4

Newspaper Location

Savannah. Georgia

Serial Number

703

Abstract

Detailed felt report for February 7. 1812 earthquake mentions previous earthquakes felt at Savannah in 1754 and 1799.

Transcript

MR. PRINTER-The repeated and severe Earthquakes, experienced by us lately, are so awfully distressing, so novel and interesting, as to render every information relative to the subject worth of being read. It may also afford some satisfaction to the readers of your paper to perceive, by what follows, that many earthquakes have been felt in North-America previously to the present, without any of those fatal circumstances having resulted therefrom, as have occurred in other countries subject to them-the bare recital of which fills the human mind with horror and consternation. Ramsay, in his History of South-Carolina, remarks-"as this state enjoys many of the comforts of tropical countries, it is, in like manner, subject to some of the violent convulsions of nature, which agitate these peculiar regions. From the fatal consequences of earthquakes, we are happily exempt. A momentary one, that did no damage, is recollected by some of our old citizens as having taken place on the 19th May 1754. Another, is remembered by many still living, as having taken place about 2 o'clock in the morning of April the 4th, 1799. Vol. 2, p. 305." Volney, in his view of the soil and climate of the United States of America, observes-"though North-America has only been known about two centuries, this period, so brief in the annals of nature, has supplied us with numerous proofs that earthquakes have been violent and frequent throughout this region, in former ages; and that they have occasioned those subversions, of which the maratine country affords continual and striking indications. If we revert to the year 1628, when the first English colonists arrived, and deduce events down to 1782, a course of 154 years, (says Mr. Williams) we shall find mention made of Forty-five earthquakes. His enquiries have established the following general facts:-- "That these earthquakes are denoted by a noise resembling that of a high wind, or that sound which is produced by a chimney on fire; that they thrown down the chimney tops, and sometimes even houses themselves; that they have made doors and windows rattle, and leave wells, and even many river dry, that they make the waters turbid, and give them a fetid smell of liver of sulphur; that they throw up sand from rents in the earth, which has the same odour; that their tremors appear to flow from internal fire, which pushes to earth upwards, in a line generally running from north-west to south-east, in the course of the Merrimack river, extending southward to the Potomac, and north to the St. Lawrence, particularly affecting the direction of Lake Ontario." Vide chap. 4, p. 98. Z.

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