Charles M. Watson helped attempt to save Simon and Jennie Gregg and their three children from drowning, Pittbridge, Texas, December 7, 1913. Watson, 32, hatter, and two other men volunteered to cross the Brazos River, which was flooding, to give assistance to the Greggs, who were stranded. Starting out in darkness, the men entered a 16-foot flat-bottomed boat and paddled across the channel of the river to a break in a levee through which water was rushing at a speed of 20 m.p.h. As their boat was about to pass through the break, the current swung it around, and the men could not manage it. In a moment the boat struck a tree and broke apart. Watson grasped the tree and clung to it, but the two other men were carried away by the current. Watson climbed into the tree and spent the night there, catching a raccoon that was in the tree and holding it to his face and neck to keep warm. The water fell enough to expose the top of the levee by afternoon, and he tried to swim to it. The swift current pulled him away from the levee, but he caught hold of a barbed wire that extended to the levee and pulled himself to it. Watson was so weak that he fell face down in the mud. He lay there 30 minutes, or until two men in a motor boat picked him up. His feet were frozen, and his body was scratched. He was disabled 12 days. The two men who had been carried away by the current were also rescued that day. 14006-1057
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