This transcript has been slightly edited for clarity.

My mother was a Raffield and she married a Pruden from Chuckatuck, Virginia. She met him during the ’16 Flood. He came here as a commissary clerk for Sands & Company, which was a railroad store. But Mama said that there were two creeks there. They called one Big Branch and one Mill Creek and they met right above the house. They lived right on the creek bank and they met and just washed right down in the house. It didn’t wash it away but Mama said they went to the barn, I don’t remember where the barn was, way up in the bank somewhere, and stayed all night. The next morning, the flood had washed everything away but the ties were hanging on the rails and some men, railroad men, were carrying her, I think she was about 16, across that railroad on the ties. And that’s how they got back over here. It washed the railroad and everything out. All these cuts were filled up with water and back then they didn’t have machines like they got now. I think they used wheelbarrows and shovels and stuff like that to get. . . Well they had little steam engines. But Mama said it changed the whole place because she said it was beautiful here but that flood brought so many rocks and washed so much stuff away.