{"id":913,"date":"2011-08-24T10:53:22","date_gmt":"2011-08-24T14:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=913"},"modified":"2011-08-24T11:08:34","modified_gmt":"2011-08-24T15:08:34","slug":"words-not-pictures-tell-philadelphias-earthquake-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2011\/08\/words-not-pictures-tell-philadelphias-earthquake-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Words, Not Pictures, Tell Philadelphia’s Earthquake History"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
\n\"Purchase <\/a> \"View <\/a>
\n“View of the ruins caused by the great fire northeast corner of Sixth and Market st. which began on the night
\nof Weds. April 30, 1856 – From the northwest.”<\/span><\/div>\n

In case you were wondering (and many in the wake of the recent earthquake that shook the East Coast are) PhillyHistory.org<\/a> holds no images of earthquake damage. Sure, the city has a long history of shocks and tremors, but earthquakes around here have been little more than curious.<\/p>\n

If it’s pictures of devastation you are after, you\u2019ll have to change your search term from \u201cearthquake\u201d to \u201cfire.\u201d Now, there\u2019s<\/em> a search term with teeth.<\/p>\n

Just a few weeks after the city installed a fire-alarm telegraph system in 1856, a fire broke out at the Jessup & Moore rag and paper warehouse. It spread to destroy 44 buildings near Sixth and Market Streets. The conflagration killed two firefighters and threatened Independence Hall, the tower of which can be seen through the smoke in this photograph by James E. McClees. <\/p>\n

Philadelphia fires have an iconography all their own; earthquakes do not. But earthquakes passing through Philadelphia did <\/em>produce a steady trail of tweet-length comments that predate the many online observations and comments of August 23, 2011.<\/p>\n

\u201cClocks ran down and china shaken from shelves,\u201d marks the first time Philadelphians noticed the earth shake on October 17th 1727. (We have Joseph Jackson to thank for his \u201cEarthquake Shocks in Philadelphia\u201d entry in Volume II of his Encyclopedia of Philadelphia<\/em>, published in 1931).<\/p>\n

A local printer recorded a \u201csmart shock\u201d after \u201ca soughing noise was heard\u201d December 1, 1737. A few Philadelphians even claimed the shock threw them to the ground. Aiming to capitalize on this new market of interested readers; Franklin attempted to explain the phenomenon in the subsequent issue of his Pennsylvania Gazette<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Philadelphia\u2019s only earthquake described as \u201cominous\u201d struck on October 30, 1763, just as the ship carrying John Penn, grandson of William, landed at the Market Street Wharf. As it turned out, the \u201cvery loud roaring noise<\/a>\u201d accompanying a \u201ctrembling of the ground\u201d was only that.<\/p>\n

The shocks kept coming and so did the descriptors. On December 8, 1811 folks felt \u201ca sensible undulation\u201d and in the November 1840 earthquake was \u201caccompanied by a great and unusual swell on the Delaware River.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cBuildings shook perceptibly, sashes rattled and bells rang\u201d from tremors on August 10, 1884. Two years later, on August 31, an earthquake produced \u201cundulations in houses\u201d and more bell ringing. An early morning earthquake on September 1, 1895 shook buildings, broke crockery, damaged walls of houses under construction, but not much survives that\u2019s Twitterworthy.<\/p>\n

Although Philadelphia seemed to be spared for much of the 20th century, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) \u201cHistory of Earthquakes in Pennsylvania<\/a>\u201d tells of December 27, 1961, when residents in neighborhoods of the Northeast experienced rattling dishes and \u201cloud rumbling sounds.\u201d On December 10, 1968 toll booths on the Benjamin Franklin and Walt Whitman Bridges in Philadelphia \u201ctrembled.\u201d<\/p>\n

The moral of this story, of course, is that some stories can be told with pictures; others can\u2019t. We work with what history leaves us. And when we\u2019re lucky, we encounter descriptive gems as \u201csoughing.\u201d For that vintage word alone <\/em>(soughing, by the way, means murmuring or, in this case, moaning) we are grateful. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“View of the ruins caused by the great fire northeast corner of Sixth and Market st. which began on the night of Weds. April 30, 1856 – From the northwest.” In case you were wondering (and many in the wake of the recent earthquake that shook the East Coast are) PhillyHistory.org holds no images of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}