On September 24, 2019, Michael Gowen and I rode in his boat to Quarantine Island. I’ve known Gowen about 36 years. He’s the caretaker of Quarantine Island and I’ve made various trips to Quarantine, an old infirmary where sick sailors (mostly yellow fever) stayed before they entered the port of Brunswick, GA. Ruins of a hospital still exist on Quarantine Island. Quarantine Station, operated by the Marine Hospital Service from 1893 to 1938, remains idyllic.
Archibald C. McKinley, born in Lexington, Georgia, during 1842, served as a Confederate officer during the Civil War. McKinley operated in the “Western Army” and was “captured at Vicksburg, MS., by the Union on July 4, 1863.” Just after the war, McKinley farmed near Milledgeville, Georgia, and within a year married Sarah Spalding, a granddaughter of Thomas Spalding. Spaulding built his plantation on Sapelo Island.
How McKinley’s pages made it to Quarantine Island remain unknown. On my first few visits to the remote small island, Gowen showed me the house, tool barn, kitchen, guest house/office, ruins, beach and the surrounding virgin environs. It’s private land. No one is allowed on the island besides guests. A perfect view of the Sidney Lanier Bridge can be seen from Quarantine.
In a small building near the main house, I discovered the original inscriptions of McKinley’s account of an earthquake that hit the Georgia coast in August-September of 1886 when he lived on Sapelo Island. The earthquake shook from the Georgia barrier islands to Charleston. I’ve never read such a detailed account of the earthquake as McKinley’s. The Georgia coast is not known for earthquakes.
These pages eventually became the book The Journal of Archibald C. McKinley. Photographed pages–original University of Georgia 1969 transcripts– preserve what McKinley wrote a century before: “Having (nearly) 230 pages of my journal and my life being very uncertain I request the following disposition be made of it in case of my death…”
The account begins: “Tonight at about twenty minutes after 9 (9:20) o’clock I was in my bed, which stands with head to southeast and foot to N.W., lying down when suddenly the foot of the bed rose up–then sinking back, the head rose and sank the same way. It was an earthquake, and the heaviest I ever felt…”
McKinley wrote he evacuated his family from the house, which was “swaying to and fro, and cracking and creaking like a ship in a storm at sea…”
Quake shocks continued and modified in severity for 26 days. McKinley documented every tremor on each day and time. 133 years later–almost to the day–I’m reading McKinley’s pages.
On September 3, he wrote: “A very heavy shock tonight at ten o’clock and forty minutes–rolling me side to side in my bed. It is hardly necessary to say I did not stay in the bed long.” The following day he reported: “Only one shock of any severity tonight–but the ever-present tremor is still with us: For six consecutive days and nights of shock and tremble–causing loss of sleep, is wearing us out.”
The September 6 entry reveals: “The earthquake shocks still continues–though with much less violence. They are regular as clockwork.”
Tremors continued until September 25, when McKinley documented ordinary details of day-to-day life. It’s almost incomprehensible to think of earthquakes striking the Georgia coast, but McKinley’s documentation ranks as Georgia history of the highest order. He died in 1917.
(Photographs by James Calemine)