The Inside Story of Jared Brooks

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One of the better eyewitnesses of the New Madrid earthquakes was Jared Brooks.  Brooks was an engineer living at Louisville.  Brooks compiled a list of the earthquakes, as they were experienced at Louisville and constructed primitive seismic instruments to measure their effects.  He tabulated his results and noted the weather conditions that were occurring when the earthquakes happened. His was one of the more extensive records of the earthquakes and is still referred to by researchers today. 

Brooks also made a map of Louisville that is contemporary with the earthquakes.  It shows the town and the falls of the Ohio.  The falls made it difficult for boats to navigate up and down the Ohio River and Brooks had been part of the effort to build a canal to bypass the hazard and make the river a highway of commerce.  Brooks also had another job and that was that of editor of the Louisville Western Courier, the local newspaper.  Unfortunately little is known of the newspaper outside of scattered issues and as a source of New Madrid earthquake information its value is unknown. 

The notes that Brooks took on the earthquake were published in 1819 as part of a book entitled Sketches of Louisville and its Environs… published by Henry McMurtrie.  This book was a compendium of information about Louisville and its political and natural history.   The interesting story is the publisher; McMurtrie was a scientist and lecturer of some renown in the 19^th century.  After his work on Louisville he would publish a dictionary of scientific terms  and become a lecturer at a school in Philadelphia until dying in 1865.