Capturing the Anguish of Disaster

This is pretty wild. It so happened that in the midst of their 1906 California honeymoon, Cincinnatiians Robert Senior and Fanny Aub Senior found themselves right in the middle of the great San Francisco earthquake.

I have been thinking about how the kind of immediate and personal narrative that Fanny sent to her “dear ones,” as soon as she was out of the ring of seismic destruction would never be replicated today. Who, having undergone such a trauma would write such a detailed and emotive letter today? Anyone wanting to assure their family of their safety and to share the details of their experience would use the telephone rather than the written word (the closest equivalent might be blog accounts written for public, not private, consumption).

Fanny and Robert Senior telegraphed their safety as soon as it was possible, but to share their experience with those they loved, they had no choice but to write a long letter – each of them did so as soon as they could.

I don’t know enough about the history of the quake to know if there is anything unusual about Fanny’s moving and anguished account, assuring her family that the “newspaper accounts” of the disaster “are not one bit exaggerated.” I am, however, pretty sure that no one trying to tell the story of that horrific moment has used Fanny’s and Robert’s letters to help convey the story of those traumatic days, preserved but buried as they are in uncatalogued papers of a Cincinnati Jewish family active in communal affairs. What chance has there been for someone interested in San Francisco to come across these words? I hope there will be more of a chance in the future.

I’ve thought a lot about what is in this letter, but hard as it is for me to shut up, I am just going to present an abridged version of what Fanny wrote without adding my own comments. Her powerful anguished voice deserves to be heard on its own and speaks for itself … I’ve shortened it only because it was 8 pages long ….


Fanny Aub to “My Dear Ones” Salt Lake City, 1906 [American Jewish Archives, Senior Family Papers, Uncatalogued Box 1]

My dear ones,

Thank God! for many a time these last terrible days I thought I should never address you again. It has truly been one long dreadful nightmare which we shall never be able to efface from our memories as long as we live. …. Yes we have more than we can realize to be grateful for, for we escaped uninjured, and are far away from the city of misery. …. With fire, famine, draught [sic] and pestilence, can you conceive of such agony? Newspaper reports are not one bit exaggerated. The horror of it all could never be conveyed to anyone who has not experienced this most awful catastrophe of the age.
I never could describe the first sensation of the earthquake which woke us out of our sleep. It was a jar that sent us three feet into the air, oh: Heaven I’m feeling it all the time and shall wake up many a night with a recurrence of those worst seconds I have ever lived through. Darkness, lightning thunder building, falling, the hotel [?] shaking, pounding, God it was terrible. When it stopped everyone dashed for the streets to find waiting a different sight than we had left the night before. People came down with practically nothing on screaming etc. Well what is the use it only excites me more to talk of it. I’m trying so hard to crowd it all from my mind.
After some hours had passed Bob [her husband]insisted upon our going up to dress so as quickly as possible I tumbled into my clothes, my grey suit skirt, tan coat and hat, all I have left to my name at present. We ran down then, just in time to get another shock much milder than the first of course but still a warning that the gases had not subsided. Then and there I decided never to return to those rooms, the lower part of the hotel had been entirely demolished, that is the plaster had been broken off the walls …. I would not permit Bob to return, and so we did not save many things we might have carried although clothes trunks etc were out of the question. You could not have had them hauled away for any money. I really do not reproach myself though for nobody on earth could tell what the next moment would bring, and our few jewels were not worth the risk to my notion of thinking. So you see all I have left is a little underware [sic] one change for both Bob and myself which a bell-boy brought down to us later in the morning in one of our dress suit cases.
We stayed in the park all day with Rheinstroms, Rothschilds and .. what a day! … the dead lying covered in a heap and the fire in the distance I never want to see such sights again. By four oclock I could stand it no longer and made Bob get a carriage to take us out to Mayfields.”
[She was unable to let her family know they were safe because] “there was no communication anywhere in or out of the city as wiring was an impossibility. Well we started for the ferry with Fred Mayfield one of Bob’s Cousins who had come over looking for his wife, poor fellow, Heaven knows if will ever find her, she was visiting … in the city [ a friend] whose house was burned by the time he got there. It was a longer walk he told us than we had ever taken in our lives so I knew I could not carry more than my coat, it was burning hot. “
[After] a six mile walk up and down almost perpendicular hills …. discouraged all the way down by police who turned us back + people who told us we never could get across , [they reached the train station]… all we could get was 2 uppers for Salt Lake but we clutched them. I can assure you we decided to stand rather than remain in that country another second….
Much love to you all. Do send this such as it is to Clara + Edgar I never could write about it all again.”

Fondly , Fan