Transcribed from "Mrs. Sam Brown Tells of Flood Devastation," News and Observer, 12 September 1916.

"If you want to help the needy, I feel like I am one that needs help," Mrs. Sam L. Brown, of Ashford, McDowell county, writes Governor Locke Craig, describing her condition following the recent destructive flood.

"I will write and tell you how bad the flood treated me," she began. "It took everything I had but two dresses, one parasol, one coverlet, four hens, one rooster and five ducks. I had a nice six-room house, well furnished. I cooked and milked and made butter and raised chickens to buy what was in my house. All my work for thirty-three years was in that house. Now it is gone and I am fifty years old. Can I work and build another? No. If I was young I could. You sent help to the sufferers but I did not get anything. They put it on the road. I can't work the road. Sam Brown has a little bank account but not half enough to put back our buildings so I must say I think the women ought to have a portion of that money. Mrs. Lizzie Hennessee lost her home, too, and she is seventy years old. You don't know how dear our old homes were and we had to give them up. If you want to help the needy, I feel like I am one that needs help."