Killed by Tornado: Thomas Benjamin Norris and Daughter Cora Lee

My husband's great-grandmother, Laura Norris McGhee, was living in Muskogee, Oklahoma on March 23, 1913 when a devastating tornado struck Omaha, Nebraska.

When she read the article in her local paper, The Muskogee Times Democrat, about the devastation, she saw her brother's name, and her niece's, in the list of those killed.

The Omaha World Herald printed an article, "Unusual Pathos in Death of T.B. Norris and Daughter." It said T.B. and his daughter, Corie Lee, had been playmates since her earliest childhood. At the time of the tornado she was recovering from a lingering illness, and the day it struck was the first day s
he was able to join the family in the living room. Suddenly a guest, George Pratt (who later married her sister, Edith), called out the trees were coming. T.B. Picked up his daughter and started with her to the cellar, She was clasped tight in his arms when rescuers pulled them from the wreckage, dead. Cornelia was 26 when she died.

Edith married George Pratt in 1915 and lived in Omaha until she died in 1977. Mrs. T.B. Norris lived with them until she died in 1938. Every year Mrs. Norris spent several months back in Virginia, visiting family. Both she and her husband are buried in Culpeper, Virginia near their daughter Corrie.

The whole story of T.B. Norris and the tornado can be found on the Cedar Tree Blog.
The Story of Thomas Norris and the Easter Tornado of 1913