74 THK FLOOD OF 1 843. 



desperate, he leaped from a window in the mill, and with 

 jj;reat exertion succeeded in reaching the shore, about one 

 hundreti yards below. He saw the mill no more. If Mr. 

 Dutton had remained in the mill a moment longer, he inevi- 

 tably would have perished. 



We now come to narrate one of the most tragical scenes 

 which the flood has given rise to. John Rhoads, an English- 

 man by birth, but for many years a resident of the vicinity of 

 Pennsgrove, a man past the prime of life, with his daughters 

 Hannah and Jane, both respectable young women, together 

 with Mary Ann Collingsworth, the grand daughter of John 

 Rhoads, were swept off in their little dwelling, and all 

 drowned. Mary Ann, the grand-child, was a highly interest- 

 ing little girl of seven or eight years of age, and had just 

 arrived from Manayunk, the residence of her parents, on a 

 visit to relatives in the vicinity of Rockdale. Her afflicted 

 mother was not only left to mourn the loss of her child, but 

 her two sisters and aged father. Hannah and Jane Rhoads 

 were aged about twenty-five or thirty years. The old gentle- 

 man had been advised to seek a place of more safety than his 

 dwelling afforded, but he felt secure and remained until all 

 chance of escape had gone. In giving a detail of the loss of 

 property by the flood at Pennsgrove, it will be remembered 

 that one of the houses belonging to John Rhoads, which was 

 carried off, was in the occupancy of Thomas McGuigan and 

 Mrs. Morton. The only portion of the family at home in this 

 house, at the time of the sudden rise in the water was Mary 

 Jane Mc(iuigan, the wife of Thomas McGuigan, a young 

 married woman with her only child, a babe at the breast. 

 These also perished. 



The bod\- of John Rhoads was found two and a half miles 

 below, and that of one of the daughters, at the mouth of 

 Baldwin's run, still two miles lower down the creek. The 

 body of the other daughter was carried down into the Dela- 

 ware, and was found near the mouth of Xaaman's creek, 

 below Marcus Ho»jk. The bodies of Mary Jane McGuigan 



