Family finds century-old letter as floods repeat history

By Karen Zatkulak

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    BAT CAVE, North Carolina (WLOS) — As a local family deals with the loss of a home and heartbreaking destruction in the small town of Bat Cave, they have a firsthand reminder of a similar tragedy more than a century ago.

It’s all because of a letter found years earlier.

This week, sisters Jennifer Rhodes and Nikki Barnett waded back and forth through the creek in front of their grandmother’s home in Bat Cave.

Their friend, Yasmin Prince, was renting the home that flooded on the basement level after Tropical Storm Helene dumped historic amounts of rain.

The three girls are now trying to salvage what they can from the home since Prince will be forced to live elsewhere until the town recovers.

“I love that house, and it’s really been a piece of peace for me and now that I can’t be there, it’s just kind of devastating,” Prince said.

However, she said she was grateful she was OK and able to evacuate before the storm hit.

“All I can do is try to stay strong and positive, just doing my best, honestly,” Prince said.

Barnett is also glad her friend and her grandmother’s home is somehow still standing.

“Honestly, I’m overcome with thankfulness because Yasmin is OK, and it’s just a home,” Barnett said.

But the realization is slowly setting in that this town lost a lot more than buildings and bridges. Officials confirm there were several storm-related deaths in Bat Cave.

But for Barnett, her grandmother’s home carries a much deeper connection to this community. A letter found by her mother, Shirley Rhodes, gives handwritten insight into what the town went through 108 years ago.

The letter reads, in part, “We have had a distressing time, such rain and floods. The slides were something terrible… The water came in our house, it tumbled down while we were in it, we made our escape through the kitchen, all ran out through the rain.”

Rhodes believes her grandmother’s friend wrote the letter amid the flood of 1916.

The letter goes on to say, “We waited and scrambled until we got up on the ridge. We sat in the rain from 11 p.m. until light the next morning. It rained all night. We couldn’t get to anyone’s house.”

The letter said the terrifying storm brought 22 inches of rain to Bat Cave in one day, ruining buildings and killing 50 people. It also talked about the difficulties in the days and weeks that followed.

“We can’t get out our houses and wagons out of here. We had to carry everything we brought to eat from Edneyville,” it read.

Rhodes said the letter now feels like history repeating itself.

“So, heart-wrenching to hear what they went through, and the damage, and then to see it replay here in 2024,” Rhodes said.

“You always want to learn from other peoples’ experiences and history and what they’ve gone through, but nothing teaches you like your own circumstances and experiences, and you see so much that’s similar with houses destroyed, and people having to evacuate and some people made it, and some didn’t,” she added.

Her mother, Clover Dodson, lived in the house her whole life but has since passed away. Rhodes said she is glad she’s not here to see the home now. It was a place she cared for so meticulously that it was once featured in a magazine.

“I just look at it and think it’s a miracle that home is still standing,” Rhodes said.

The other miracle is the letter. It’s a rare glimpse back at a place destroyed more than a century ago by conditions similar to Helene’s.

“It’s unreal, it’s hard to realize that this has really happened, and it’s just heart-wrenching to think of people who have lived in this area and have lost everything,” said Rhodes.

Now, families in the community are repeating another part of history: Joining together to get through the unimaginable.

“This community is amazing, God is amazing and he is going to get us through this,” said Barnett.

Rhodes said she’s most grateful for the Bat Cave Fire Department.

She said they helped evacuate families before Helene, along with volunteers. She believes more lives would have been lost in that area without them.

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