History of the Johnstown Flood
by Willis Fletcher Johnson · English · Gutenberg #41271 · 546,780 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: History of the Johnstown Flood
Author: Willis Fletcher Johnson
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[Illustration: MAP OF THE DELUGED CONEMAUGH DISTRICT.]
HISTORY
OF
THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD.
INCLUDING
ALL THE FEARFUL RECORD; THE BREAKING OF THE SOUTH FORK DAM;
THE SWEEPING OUT OF THE CONEMAUGH VALLEY; THE OVER-THROW
OF JOHNSTOWN; THE MASSING OF THE WRECK AT
THE RAILROAD BRIDGE; ESCAPES, RESCUES, SEARCHES
FOR SURVIVORS AND THE DEAD; RELIEF
ORGANIZATIONS, STUPENDOUS CHARITIES,
ETC., ETC.
WITH FULL ACCOUNTS ALSO OF THE
DESTRUCTION ON THE SUSQUEHANNA AND JUNIATA RIVERS, AND THE
BALD EAGLE CREEK.
BY
WILLIS FLETCHER JOHNSON.
_ILLUSTRATED._
EDGEWOOD PUBLISHING CO.,
1889.
Copyright, 1889, by
WILLIS FLETCHER JOHNSON.
PREFACE.
The summer of 1889 will ever be memorable for its appalling disasters by
flood and flame. In that period fell the heaviest blow of the nineteenth
century--a blow scarcely paralleled in the histories of civilized lands.
Central Pennsylvania, a centre of industry, thrift and comfort, was
desolated by floods unprecedented in the records of the great waters. On
both sides of the Alleghenies these ravages were felt in terrific power,
but on the western slope their terrors were infinitely multiplied by the
bursting of the South Fork Reservoir, letting out millions of tons of
water, which, rushing madly down the rapid descent of the Conemaugh
Valley, washed out all its busy villages and hurled itself in a deadly
torrent on the happy borough of Johnstown. The frightful aggravations
which followed the coming of this torrent have waked the deepest
sympathies of this nation and of the world, and the history is demanded
in permanent form, for those of the present day, and for the generation
to come.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
The Conemaugh Valley in Springtime--Johnstown and its
Suburbs--Founded a Hundred Years ago--The Cambria Iron
Works--History of a Famous Industry--American Manufacturing
Enterprise Exemplified--Making Bessemer Steel--Social and
Educational Features--The Busiest City of its Size in the
State, 15
CHAPTER II.
Conemaugh Lake--Remains of an Old-time Canal System--Used for
the Pleasure of Sportsmen--The Hunting and Fishing
Club--Popular Distrust Growing into Indifference--The Old
Cry of "Wolf!"--Building a Dam of Straw and Mud--Neglect
Ripening into Fitness for a Catastrophe, 31
CHAPTER III.
Dawning of the Fatal Day--Darkness and Rain--Rumors of
Evil--The Warning Voice Unheeded--A Whirlwind of Watery
Death--Fate of a Faithful Telegrapher--What an Eye-Witness
Saw--A Solid Wall of Water Rushing Down the Valley, 42
CHAPTER IV.
The Pathway of the Torrent--Human Beings Swept away like
Chaff--The Twilight of Terror--The Wreck of East
Conemaugh--Annihilation of Woodvale--Locomotives Tossed
about like Cockle-shells by the mighty Maelstrom, 51
CHAPTER V.
"Johnstown is Annihilated"--Appearance of the Wreck--An Awful
Sabbath Spectacle--A Sea of Mud and Corpses--The City in a
Gigantic Whirlpool--Strange Tokens of the Fury of the
Flood--Scene from the Bridge--Sixty Acres of Débris--A
Carnival of Slaughter, 66
CHAPTER VI.
Pictures of the Flood Drawn by Eye-witnesses--A Score of
Locomotives Swallowed up--Railroad Cars Swept
away--Engineers who would not Abandon their Posts--Awful
Scenes from a Car Window--A Race for Life--Victims of the
Flood, 81
CHAPTER VII.
Some Heroes of the Flood--The Ride of Collins Graves at
Williamsburg Recalled--John G. Parke's Heroic
Warning--Gallant Self-Sacrifice of Daniel Peyton--Mrs. Ogle,
the Intrepid Telegraph Operator--Wholesale Life Saving by
Miss Nina Speck, 97
CHAPTER VIII.
Stories of Suffering--A Family Swept away at a Stroke--Beside
a Sister's Corpse--A Bride Driven Mad--The Unidentified
Dead--Courage in the Face of Death--Thanking God his Child
had not Suffered--One Saved out of a Household of
Thirteen--Five Saved out of Fifty-Five, 108
CHAPTER IX.
Stories of Railroad Men and Travelers who were in the Midst of
the Catastrophe--A Train's Race with the Wave--Houses
Crushed like Eggshells--Relics of the Dead in the Tree
tops--A Night of Horrors--Fire and Flood Commingled--Lives
Lost for the Sake of a Pair of Shoes, 119
CHAPTER X.
Scenes in a House of Refuge--Stealing from the Dead--A
Thousand Bodies seen Passing over the Bridge--"Kill us or
Rescue us!"--Thrilling Escapes and Agonizing
Losses--Children Born amid the Flood--A Night in Alma
Hall--Saved through Fear, 137
CHAPTER XI.
The Flight to the Mountains--Saving a Mother and her Babe--The
Hillsides Black with Refugees--An Engineer's Story--How the
Dam gave away--Great Trees Snapped off like Pipe-stems by
the Torrent, 147
CHAPTER XII.
A Desperate Voyage--Scenes like those after a Great
Battle--Mother and Babe Dead together--Praying as they
Drifted to Destruction--Children Telling the Story of
Death--Significant Greetings between Friends--Prepared for
any News, 154
CHAPTER XIII.
Salutations in the City of the Dead--Crowds at the
Morgues--Endless Trains of Wagons with Ghastly
Freight--Registering the Survivors--Minds Unsettled by the
Tragedy--Horrible Fragments of Humanity Scattered through
Piles of Rubbish, 161
CHAPTER XIV.
Recognizing the Dead--Food and Clothing for Destitute
Survivors--Looking for the Lost--The Bereaved Burying their
Dead--Drowned Close by a Place of Safety--A Heroic
Editor--One who would not be Comforted, 171
CHAPTER XV.
A Bird'seye View of the Ruined City--Conspicuous Features of
the Disaster--The Railroad Lines--Stones and Iron Tossed
about like Driftwood--An Army Officer's Valuable Services in
Restoring and Maintaining Order, 179
CHAPTER XVI.
Clearing a Road up the Creek--Fantastic Forms of Ruin--An
Abandoned Locomotive with no Rail to Run on--Iron Beams Bent
like Willow Twigs--Night in the Valley--Scenes and Sounds of
an Inferno, 188
CHAPTER XVII.
Sights that Greeted Visitors--Wreckage Along the Valley--Ruins
of the Cambria Iron Works--A Carnival of Drink--Violence and
Robbery--Camping on the Hillsides--Rich and Poor alike
Benefit, 198
CHAPTER XVIII.
The First Train Load of Anxious Seekers--Hoping against
Hope--Many Instances of Heroism--Victims Seen Drifting down
beyond the Reach of Help--Unavailing Efforts to Rescue the
Prey of the Flood, 207
CHAPTER XIX.
Newspaper Correspondents Making their Way in--The Railroads
Helpless--Hiring a Special Train--Making Desperate
Speed--First faces of the Flood--Through to Johnstown at
Last, 216
CHAPTER XX.
The Work of the Reporters--Strange Chronicles of Heroism and
of Woe--Deadly Work of the Telegraph Wires--A Baby's Strange
Voyage--Prayer wonderfully Answered--Steam against Torrent,
228
CHAPTER XXI.
Human Ghouls and Vampires on the Scene--A Short Shrift for
Marauders--Vigilance Committees Enforcing Order--Plunderers
of the Dead Relentlessly Dispatched--Outbursts of Righteous
Indignation, 238
CHAPTER XXII
The Cry for Help and the Nation's Answer--President Harrison's
Eloquent and Effective Appeal--Governor Beaver's Message--A
Proclamation by the Governor of New York--Action of the
Commissioner of Pensions--Help from over the Sea, 249
CHAPTER XXIII.
The American Heart and Purse Opened Wide--A Flood of Gold
against the Flood of Water--Contributions from every Part
of the Country, in Sums Large and Small, 265
CHAPTER XXIV.
Benefactions of Philadelphia--Organization of Charity--Train
loads of Food and Clothing--Generous spirit of Convicts in
the Penitentiary--Contributions from over the Sea--Queen
Victoria's sympathy--Letter from Florence Nightingale, 281
CHAPTER XXV.
Raising a Great Relief Fund in New York--Where the Money
came from--Churches, Theatres and Prisons join in the good
work--More than One Hundred Thousand Dollars a Day--A few
Names from the Great Roll of Honor, 292
CHAPTER XXVI.
Breaking up the Ruins and Burying the Dead--Innumerable
Funerals--The Use of Dynamite--The Holocaust at the
Bridge--The Cambria Iron Works--Pulling out Trees with
Locomotives, 299
CHAPTER XXVII.
Caring for the Sufferers--Noble Work of Miss Clara Barton
and the Red Cross Society--A Peep into a Hospital--Finding
Homes for the Orphans--Johnstown Generous in its Woe--A
Benevolent Eating House, 309
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Recovering from the Blow--The Voice of the Locomotive Heard
again--Scenes Day by Day amid the Ruins and at the
Morgue--Strange Salvage from the Flood--A Family of
Little Children, 319
CHAPTER XXIX.
The City Filled with Life Again--Work and Bustle on Every
Hand--Railroad Trains Coming In--Pathetic Meetings of
Friends--Persistent Use of Dynamite to Break Up the
Masses of Wreckage--The Daily Record of Work Amid the
Dead, 341
CHAPTER XXX.
Scenes at the Relief Stations--The Grand Army of the
Republic in Command--Imposing Scenes at the Railroad
Station--Cars Loaded with Goods for the Relief of the
Destitute, 353
CHAPTER XXXI.
General Hastings' Headquarters--Duties of the Military
Staff--A Flood of Telegrams of Inquiry Pouring In--Getting
the Post-office to Work Again--Wholesale Embalming--The
Morgue in the Presbyterian Church--The Record of the
Unknown Dead--A Commemorative Newspaper Club, 358
CHAPTER XXXII.
A Cross between a Military and a Mining Camp--Work of the
Army Engineers--Equipping Constables--Pressure on the
Telegraph Lines--Photographers not Encouraged--Sight-seers
Turned Away--Strange Uses for Coffins, 370
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Sunday Amid the Ruins--Services in One Church and in the
Open Air--The Miracle at the Church of the Immaculate
Conception--Few Women and Children Seen--Disastrous
Work of Dynamite--A Happy Family in the Wreck, 378
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Plans for the Future of Johnstown--The City to be Rebuilt
on a Finer Scale than Ever Before--A Real Estate Boom
Looked For--Enlarging the Conemaugh--Views of
Capitalists, 387
CHAPTER XXXV.
Well-known People who Narrowly Escaped the Flood--Mrs.
Halford's Experience--Mrs. Childs Storm bound--Tales
Related by Travelers--A Theatrical Company's Plight, 393
CHAPTER XXXVI.
The Ubiquitous Reporter Getting There--Desperate Traveling
through a Storm-swept Country--Special Trains and Special
Teams--Climbing Across the Mountains--Rest for the Weary
in a Hay Mow, 402
CHAPTER XXXVII.
The Reporter's Life at Johnstown--Nothing to Eat, but Much
to Do--Kindly Remembrances of a Kindly Friend--Driven
from Bed by Rats--Three Hours of Sleep in Seventy-two--A
Picturesque Group, 410
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Williamsport's Great Losses--Flooded with Thirty-four Feet
of Water--Hundreds of Millions of Feet of Lumber Swept
Away--Loss of Life--Incidents of Rescue and of Death--The
Story of Garret Crouse and his Gray Horse, 421
CHAPTER XXXIX.
The Juniata Valley Ravaged by the Storm--Losses at Tyrone,
Huntingdon and Lewistown--Destruction at Lock Haven--A
Baby's Voyage Down Stream--Romantic Story of a Wedding, 435
CHAPTER XL.
The Floods along the Potomac--The National Capital
Submerged--A Terrible Record in Maryland--Gettysburg
a Sufferer--Tidings of Devastation from Many Points in
Several States, 444
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
MAP OF THE DELUGED CONEMAUGH DISTRICT, 1
JOHNSTOWN AS LEFT BY THE FLOOD, 19
RUINS OF JOHNSTOWN VIEWED FROM PROSPECT HILL, 37
GENERAL VIEW OF THE RUINS, LOOKING UP STONY CREEK, 55
RUINS, SHOWING THE PATH OF THE FLOOD, 73
TYPICAL SCENE IN JOHNSTOWN, 91
JOHNSTOWN--VIEW CORNER OF MAIN AND CLINTON STREETS, 109
VIEW ON CLINTON STREET, JOHNSTOWN, 127
MAIN AND CLINTON STREETS, LOOKING SOUTHWEST, 145
RUINS, CORNER OF CLINTON AND MAIN STREETS, 163
RUINS, FROM SITE OF THE HULBURT HOUSE, 181
THE DÉBRIS ABOVE THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD BRIDGE, 199
RUINS OF THE CAMBRIA IRON WORKS, 217
RUINS OF THE CAMBRIA IRON COMPANY'S STORE, 235
THIRD STREET, WILLIAMSPORT, PA., DURING THE FLOOD, 253
WRECK OF THE IRON BRIDGE AT WILLIAMSPORT, PA., 271
WRECK OF THE LUMBER YARDS AT WILLIAMSPORT, PA., 289
250,000,000 FEET OF LOGS AFLOAT IN THE SUSQUEHANNA, 307
LAST TRAINS IN AND OUT OF HARRISBURG, 325
COLUMBIA, PA., UNDER THE FLOOD, 343
PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE AT SIXTH STREET, WASHINGTON, D. C., 361
SEVENTH STREET, WASHINGTON, D. C., IN THE FLOOD, 379
FOURTEENTH STREET, WASHINGTON, D. C., IN THE FLOOD, 397
THE FLOOD IN WASHINGTON, D. C., OPPOSITE HARRIS'S THEATRE, 415
CHAPTER I.
Springtime in the mountains. Graceful slopes and frowning precipices
robed in darkest green of hemlock and spruce. Open fields here and there
verdant with young grass and springing grain, or moist and brown beneath
the plow for the planting time. Hedgerow and underwood fragrant with
honeysuckle and wild blackberry bloom; violets and geraniums purpling
the forest floor. Conemaugh creek and Stony creek dash and plunge and
foam along their rocky channels to where they unite their waters and
form the Conemaugh river, hastening down to the Ohio, to the
Mississippi, to the Mexican Gulf. Trout and pickerel and bass flash
their bronze and silver armor in the sparkling shallows of the streams
and in the sombre and placid depths of the lake up yonder behind the old
mud dam. Along the valley of the Conemaugh are ranged villages, towns,
cities: Conemaugh, Johnstown, Cambria, Sang Hollow, Nineveh, and others,
happy and prosperous. Conemaugh nestles at the very foot of the
Alleghenies; all railroad trains eastward bound stop there to catch
their breath before beginning the long climb up to Altoona. Sang Hollow
nestles by the river amid almost tropical luxuriance of vegetation; yon
little wooded islet in mid-stream a favorite haunt of fishermen. Nineveh
is rich in bog iron and coal, and the whirr of the mill-wheel is heard.
Johnstown, between the two creeks at their junction, is the queen city
of the valley. On either side the creek, and beyond, the steep mountain
sides; behind, the narrow valley reaching twenty miles back to the lake;
before, the Conemaugh river just beginning its romantic course. Broken
hillsides streaked with torrents encompass it. Just a century ago was
Johnstown founded by one Joseph Johns, a German settler. Before then its
beauteous site was occupied by an Indian village, Kickenapawling. Below
this was the head of navigation on the Conemaugh. Hither came the
wagoners of the Alleghenies, with huge wains piled high with merchandise
from seaboard cities, and placed it on flat-bottomed boats and started
it down the river-way to the western markets. The merchandise came up
from Philadelphia and Baltimore by river, too; up the Susquehanna and
Juniata, to the eastern foot-hills, and there was a great portage from
the Juniata to the Conemaugh; the Kittanning Trail, then the Frankstown
Turnpike. Later came the great trunk railroad whose express trains now
go roaring down the valley.
Johnstown is--nay, Johnstown was!--a busy and industrious place. The
people of the town were the employees of the Cambria Iron and Steel
Company, their families, and small storekeepers. There was not one rich
man in the town. Three-quarters of the 28,000 people lived in small
frame tenement houses on the flats by the river around the works of the
Cambria Company. The Cambria Company owns almost all the land, and the
business and professional men and the superintendents of the company
live on the hills away up from the creeks. The creeks become the
Conemaugh river right at the end of the town, near where the big stone
Pennsylvania Railroad bridge crosses the river.
The borough of Johnstown was on the south bank of Conemaugh creek, and
the east bank of Stony creek, right in the fork. It had only about a
third of the population of the place. It had never been incorporated
with the surrounding villages, as the Cambria Company, which owned most
of the villages and only part of Johnstown, did not wish to have them
consolidated into one city.
Conemaugh was the largest village on the creek between the lake and
Johnstown. It is often spoken of as part of Johnstown, though its
railroad station is two or three miles up the creek from the Johnstown
station. The streets of the two towns run into each other, and the space
between the two stations is well built up along the creek. Part of the
Cambria Iron and Steel Company's works are at Conemaugh, and five or six
thousand of the workingmen and their families lived there. The business
was done in Johnstown borough, where almost all the stores of Johnstown
city were.
The works of the Cambria Company were strung along from here down into
Johnstown proper. They were slightly isolated to prevent a fire in one
spreading to the others, and because there was not much flat land to
build on. The Pennsylvania road runs along the river, and the works were
built beside it.
[Illustration: JOHNSTOWN AS LEFT BY THE FLOOD.]
Between Conemaugh and Johnstown borough was a string of tenements along
the river which was called Woodvale. Possibly 3000 workmen lived in
them. They were slightly built of wood, many of them without cellars or
stone foundations. There were some substantially built houses in the
borough at the fork. Here the flats widen out somewhat, and they had
been still further increased in extent by the Cambria Company, which
filled up part of the creek beds with refuse and the ashes from their
works. This narrowed the beds of the creeks. The made land was not
far above the water at ordinary times. Even during the ordinary spring
floods the waters rose so high that it flowed into the cellars of the
tenements, and at times into the works. The natural land was occupied by
the business part of the town, where the stores were and the
storekeepers had their residences. The borough had a population of about
9000. On the north bank of the river were a third as many more people
living in tenements built and owned by the Cambria Company. Further
down, below the junction of the two creeks, along both banks of the
Conemaugh river, were about 4000 employees of the Cambria Company and
their families. The place where they lived was called Cambria or Cambria
City. All these villages and boroughs made up what is known as the city
of Johnstown.
The Cambria Company employed about 4000 men in its works and mines.
Besides these were some railroad shops, planing mills, flour mills,
several banks and newspapers. Only the men employed by the Cambria
Company and their families lived on the flats and made ground. The
Cambria Company owned all this land, and made it a rule not to sell it,
but to lease it. The company put rows of two-story frame tenements close
together, on their land close to the works, the cheaper class of
tenements in solid blocks, to cheapen their construction. The better
tenements were separate buildings, with two families to the house. The
tenements rented for from $5 to $15 a month, and cost possibly, on the
average, $500 to build. They were all of wood, many of them without
cellars, and were built as cheaply as possible. The timbers were mostly
pine, light and inflammable. It was not an uncommon thing for a fire to
break out and to burn one or two rows of tenements. But the different
rows were not closely bunched, but were sprinkled around in patches near
the separate works, and it was cheaper for the company to rebuild
occasionally than to put up brick houses.
Besides owning the flats, the Cambria Company owned the surrounding
hills. In one of the hills is limestone, in another coal, and there is
iron ore not far away. The company has narrow-gauge roads running from
its mines down to the works. The city was at the foot of these three
hills, which meet in a double V shape. Conemaugh creek flowing down one
and Stony creek flowing down the other. The hills are not so far distant
that a man with a rifle on any one could not shoot to either of the
others. They are several hundred feet high and so steep that roads run
up them by a series of zigzag grades. Few people live on these hills
except on a small rise of ground across the river from Johnstown. In
some places the company has leased the land for dwelling houses, but it
retains the ownership of the land and of the coal, iron and limestone in
it. The flats having all been occupied, the company in recent years had
put up some tenements of a better class on the north bank of the river,
higher up than the flood reached. The business part of the town also was
higher up than the works and the tenements of the company.
In normal times the river is but a few hundred feet wide. The bottom is
stony. The current is so fast that there is little deposit along the
bank. It is navigable at no time, though in the spring a good canoeist
might go down it if he could steer clear of the rocks. In the summer the
volume of water diminishes so much that a boy with a pair of rubber
boots on can wade across without getting his feet wet, and there have
been times when a good jumper could cross the river on the dry stones.
Below Johnstown, after Stony creek has joined the Conemaugh creek, the
volume of water increases, but the Conemaugh throughout its whole length
is nothing but a mountain stream, dry in the summer and roaring in the
spring. It runs down into the Kiskiminitas river and into the Allegheny
river, and then on to Pittsburgh. It is over 100 miles from Johnstown to
Pittsburgh following the windings of the river, twice as far as the
straight line.
Johnstown was one of the busiest towns of its size in the State. Its
tonnage over the Pennsylvania and Baltimore and Ohio roads was larger
than the tonnage of many cities three times its size. The Iron and Steel
Company is one of the largest iron and steel corporations in the world.
It had its main rolling mills, Bessemer steel works, and wire works at
Johnstown, though it also has works in other places, and owns ore and
coal mines and leases in the South, in Michigan, and in Spain, besides
its Pennsylvania works. It had in Johnstown and the surrounding villages
4000 or 5000 men usually at work. In flush times it has employed more
than 6000. So important was the town from a railroad point of view that
the Baltimore and Ohio ran a branch from Rockwood, on its main line to
Pittsburgh, up to Johnstown, forty-five miles. It was one of the main
freight stations on the Pennsylvania road, though the passenger business
was so small in proportion that some express trains do not stop there.
The Pennsylvania road recently put up a large brick station, which was
one of the few brick buildings on the flats. Some of the Cambria
Company's offices were also of brick, and there was a brick lodging
house for young men in the employ of the company. The Pennsylvania road
had repair shops there, which employed a few hundred men, and the
Baltimore and Ohio branch had some smaller shops. Johnstown had several
Catholic and Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, and Lutheran churches. It
had several daily and weekly papers. The chief were the _Tribune_, the
_Democrat_, and the _Freie Presse_.
The Cambria Iron Works, the great industry of Johnstown, originated in a
few widely separated charcoal furnaces built by pioneer iron workers in
the early years of the century. As early as 1803 General Arthur St.
Clair engaged in the iron business, and erected the Hermitage furnace
about sixteen miles from the present site of Johnstown. In 1809 the
working of ores was begun near Johnstown. These were primitive furnaces,
where charcoal was the only fuel employed, and the raw material and
product were transported entirely on wagons, but they marked the
beginning of the manufacture of iron in this country.
The Cambria Iron Company was chartered under the general law in 1852,
for the operation of four old-fashioned charcoal furnaces in and near
Johnstown, which was then a village of 1300 inhabitants, to which the
Pennsylvania railroad had just been extended. In 1853 the construction
of four coke furnaces was begun, but it was two years before the first
was finished. England was then shipping rails into this country under a
low duty, and the iron industry here was struggling for existence. The
company at Johnstown was aided by a number of Philadelphia merchants,
but was unable to continue in business, and suspended in 1854. At a
meeting of the creditors in Philadelphia soon afterward a committee was
appointed, with Daniel J. Morrell as Chairman, to visit the works at
Johnstown and recommend the best means, if any, to save themselves from
loss. In his report, Mr. Morrell strongly urged the Philadelphia
creditors to invest more money and continue the business. They did so,
and Matthew Newkirk was made President of the company. The company again
failed in 1855, and Mr. Morrell then associated a number of gentlemen
with him, and formed the firm of Wood, Morrell & Co., leasing the works
for seven years. The year 1856 was one of great financial depression,
and 1857 was worse, and, as a further discouragement, the large furnace
was destroyed by fire in June, 1857. In one week, however, the works
were in operation again, and a brick building was soon constructed. When
the war came, and with it the Morrill tariff of 1861, a broader field
was opened up, and in 1862 the present company was formed.
The years following the close of the war brought about an unprecedented
revival in railroad building. In 1864 there were but 33,908 miles of
railroad in the United States, while in 1874 there were 72,741 miles, or
more than double. There was a great demand for English steel rails,
which advanced to $170 per ton. Congress imposed a duty of $28 a ton on
foreign rails, and encouraged American manufacturers to go into the
business. The Cambria Company began the erection of Bessemer steel works
in 1869, and sold the first steel rails in 1871, at $104 a ton.
The company had 700 dwelling-houses, rented to employees. The works and
rolling mills of the company were situated upon what was originally a
river flat, where the valley of the Conemaugh expanded somewhat, just
below Johnstown, and now part of Millville. The Johnstown furnaces, Nos.
1, 2, 3 and 4, formed one complete plant, with stacks 75 feet high and
16 feet in diameter at the base. Steam was generated in forty boilers
fired by furnace gas, for eight vertical, direct-acting blowing engines.
Nos. 5 and 6 blast furnaces formed together a second plant, with stacks
75 feet high and 19 feet in diameter. The Bessemer plant was the sixth
started in the United States (July, 1871). The main building was 102
feet in width by 165 feet in length. The cupolas were six in number.
Blast was supplied from eight Baker rotary pressure blowers, driven by
engines 16 x 24 inches at 110 revolutions per minute. The Bessemer works
were supplied with steam by a battery of twenty-one tubular boilers. The
best average, although not the very highest work done in the Bessemer
department, was 103 heats of 8-1/2 tons each for each twenty-four
hours. The best weekly record reached 4847 tons of ingots, and the best
monthly record 20,304 tons. The best daily output was 900 tons of
ingots. All grades of steel were made in the converters, from the
softest wire and bridge stock to spring stock. The open-hearth building,
120 x 155 feet, containing three Pernot revolving hearth furnaces of
fifteen tons capacity each, supplied with natural gas. The rolling mill
was 100 feet in width by 1900 feet in length, and contained a 24-inch
train of two stands of three-high rolls, and a ten-ton traveling crane
for changing rolls. The product of the mill was 80,000 pounds per turn.
The bolt and nut works produced 1000 kegs of finished track bolts per
month, besides machine bolts. The capacity of the axle shop was 100
finished steel axles per day. The "Gautier steel department" consisted
of a brick building 200 x 50 feet, where the wire was annealed, drawn
and finished; a brick warehouse 373 x 43 feet, many shops, offices,
etc.; the barb-wire mill, 50 x 250 feet, where the celebrated Cambria
link barb wire was made, and the main merchant mill, 725 x 250 feet.
These mills produced wire, shafting, springs, plough-shares, rake and
harrow teeth, and other kinds of agricultural implement steel. In 1887
they produced 50,000 tons of this material, which was marketed mainly in
the Western States. Grouped with the principal mills thus described
were the foundries, pattern and other shops, draughting offices and time
offices, etc., all structures of a firm and substantial character.
The company operated about thirty-five miles of railroad tracks,
employing in this service twenty-four locomotives, and owned 1500 cars.
To the large bodies of mountain land connected with the old charcoal
furnaces additions have been made of ores and coking coals, and the
company now owns in fee simple 54,423 acres of mineral lands. It has 600
beehive coke ovens in the Connellsville district, and the coal producing
capacity of the mines in Pennsylvania owned by the company is 815,000
tons per year.
In continuation of the policy of Daniel J. Morrell, the Cambria Iron
Company has done a great deal for its employees. The Cambria Library was
erected by the Iron Company and presented to the town. The building was
43 x 68-1/2 feet, and contained a library of 6914 volumes. It contained
a large and valuable collection of reports of the United States and the
State, and it is feared that they have been greatly damaged. The Cambria
Mutual Benefit Association is composed of employees of the company, and
is supported by it. The employees receive benefits when sick or injured,
and in case of death their families are provided for. The Board of
Directors of this association also controls the Cambria Hospital, which
was erected by the Iron Company in 1866, on Prospect Hill, in the
northern part of the town. The company also maintained a club house, and
a store which was patronized by others, as well as by its employees.
CHAPTER II.
Twenty miles up Conemaugh creek, beyond the workingmen's villages of
South Fork and Mineral Point, was Conemaugh lake. It was a part of the
old and long disused Pennsylvania Canal system. At the head of Conemaugh
creek, back among the hills, three hundred feet or more above the level
of Johnstown streets, was a small, natural lake. When the canal was
building, the engineers took this lake to supply the western division of
the canal which ran from there to Pittsburgh. The Eastern division ended
at Hollidaysburgh east of the summit of the Alleghanies, where there was
a similar reservoir. Between the two was the old Portage road, one of
the first railroads constructed in the State. The canal was abandoned
some years ago, as the Pennsylvania road destroyed its traffic. The
Pennsylvania Company got a grant of the canal from the State. Some years
after the canal was abandoned the Hollidaysburgh reservoir was torn
down, the water gradually escaping into the Frankstown branch of the
Juniata river. The people of the neighborhood objected to the existence
of the reservoir after the canal was abandoned, as little attention was
paid to the structure, and the farmers in the valley below feared that
the dam would break and drown them. The water was all let out of that
reservoir about three years ago.
The dam above Johnstown greatly increased the small natural lake there.
It was a pleasant drive from Johnstown to the reservoir. Boating and
fishing parties often went out there. Near the reservoir is Cresson, a
summer resort owned by the Pennsylvania road. Excursion parties are made
up in the summer time by the Pennsylvania Company, and special trains
are run for them from various points to Cresson. A club called the South
Fork Fishing and Hunting Club was organized some years ago, and got the
use of the lake from the Pennsylvania Company. Most of the members of
the club live in Pittsburgh, and are prominent iron and coal men.
Besides them there are some of the officials of the Pennsylvania road
among the members. They increased the size of the dam until it was not
far from a hundred feet in height, and its entire length, from side to
side at the top, was not far from nine hundred feet. This increased the
size of the lake to three miles in length and a mile and a quarter in
width. It was an irregular oval in shape. The volume of water in it
depended on the time of the year.
Some of the people of Johnstown had thought for years that the dam might
break, but they did not think that its breaking would do more than flood
the flats and damage the works of the Cambria Company.
When the Hunting and Fishing Club bought the site of the old reservoir a
section of 150 feet had been washed out of the middle. This was rebuilt
at an expense of $17,000 and the work was thought to be very strong. At
the base it was 380 feet thick and gradually tapered until at the top it
was about 35 feet thick. It was considered amply secure, and such faith
had the members of the club in its stability that the top of the dam was
utilized as a driveway. It took two years to complete the work, men
being engaged from '79 to '81. While it was under process of
construction the residents of Johnstown expressed some fears as to the
solidity of the work, and requested that it be examined by experts. An
engineer of the Cambria Iron Works, secured through Mr. Morrell, of that
institution, one provided by Mr. Pitcairn, of the Pennsylvania Railroad,
and Nathan McDowell, chosen by the club itself, made a thorough
examination. They pronounced the structure perfectly safe, but suggested
some precautionary measures as to the stopping of leaks, that were
faithfully carried out. The members of the club themselves discovered
that the sewer that carried away the surplus or overflow from the lake
was not large enough in times of storm. So five feet of solid rock were
cut away in order to increase the mouth of the lake. Usually the surface
of the water was 15 feet below the top of the dam, and never in recent
years did it rise to more than eight feet. In 1881, when work was going
on, a sudden rise occurred, and then the water threatened to do what it
did on this occasion. The workmen hastened to the scene and piled débris
of all sorts on the top and thus prevented a washout.
For more than a year there had been fears of a disaster. The foundations
of the dam at South Fork were considered shaky early in 1888, and many
increasing leakages were reported from time to time.
"We were afraid of that lake," said a gentleman who had lived in
Johnstown for years; "We were afraid of that lake seven years ago. No
one could see the immense height to which that artificial dam had been
built without fearing the tremendous power of the water behind it. The
dam must have had a sheer height of 100 feet, thus forcing the water
that high above its natural bed, and making a lake at least three miles
long and a mile wide, out of what could scarcely be called a pond. I
doubt if there is a man or woman in Johnstown who at some time or other
had not feared and spoken of the terrible disaster that has now come.
"People wondered, and asked why the dam was not strengthened, as it
certainly had become weak; but nothing was done, and by and by they
talked less and less about it, as nothing happened, though now and then
some would shake their heads as if conscious the fearful day would come
some time when their worst fears would be transcended by the horror of
the actual occurrence."
There is not a shadow of doubt but that the citizens of Cambria County
frequently complained, and that at the time the dam was constructed a
vigorous effort was made to put a stop to the work. It is true that the
leader in this movement was not a citizen of Johnstown, but he was and
is a large mine owner in Cambria County. His mine adjoins the reservoir
property. He was frequently on the spot, and his own engineer inspected
the work. He says the embankment was principally of shale and clay, and
that straw was used to stop the leaking of water while the work was
going on. He called on the sheriff of Cambria County and told him it was
his duty to apply to the court for an injunction. The sheriff promised
to give the matter his attention, but, instead of going before court,
went to the Cambria Company for consultation. An employee was sent up
to make an inspection, and as his report was favorable to the reservoir
work the sheriff went no further. But the gentleman referred to said
that he had not failed to make public his protest at the time and to
renew it frequently. This recommendation for an injunction and protest
were spoken of by citizens of Altoona as a hackneyed subject.
Confirmation has certainly been had at South Fork, Conemaugh, Millvale
and Johnstown. The rumor of an expected break was prevalent at these
places, but citizens remarked that the rumor was a familiar incident of
the annual freshets. It was the old classic story of "Wolf, wolf." They
gave up the first floors to the water and retired upstairs to wait until
the river should recede, as they had done often before, scouting the
oft-told story of the breaking of the reservoir.
[Illustration: RUINS OF JOHNSTOWN, VIEWED FROM PROSPECT HILL.]
An interesting story, involving the construction and history of the
Conemaugh lake dam, was related by J. B. Montgomery, who formerly lived
in Western Pennsylvania, and is now well known in the West as a railroad
contractor. "The dam," said he, "was built about thirty-five years ago
by the State of Pennsylvania, as a feeder for the western division of
the Pennsylvania Canal. The plans and specifications for the dam were
furnished by the Chief Engineer of the State. I am not sure, but it is
my impression, that Colonel William Milnor Roberts held the office at
the time. Colonel Roberts was one of the most famous engineers in the
country. He died several years ago in Chili. The contractors for the
construction of the dam were General J. K. Moorhead and Judge H. B.
Packer, of Williamsport, a brother of Governor Packer. General Moorhead
had built many dams before this on the rivers of Pennsylvania, and his
work was always known to be of the very best. In this case, however, all
that he had to do was to build the dam according to the specifications
furnished by the State. The dam was built of stone and wood throughout,
and was of particularly solid construction. There is no significance in
the discovery of straw and dirt among the ruins of the dam. Both are
freely used when dams are being built, to stop the numerous leaks.
"The dam had three waste-gates at the bottom, so arranged that they
could be raised when there was too much water in the lake, and permit
the escape of the surplus. These gates were in big stone arches, through
which the water passed to the canal when the lake was used as a feeder.
"In 1859 the Pennsylvania Railroad Company purchased the canal from the
State, and the dam and lake went into the possession of that company.
Shortly afterward the Pennsylvania Company abandoned the western
division of the canal, and the dam became useless as a feeder. For
twenty-five years the lake was used only as a fish-pond, and the dam
and the gates were forgotten. Five years ago the lake was leased to a
number of Pittsburgh men, who stocked it with bass, trout, and other
game fish. I have heard it said that the waste-gates had not been opened
for a great many years. If this is so, no wonder the dam broke.
Naturally the fishermen did not want to open the gates after the lake
was stocked, for the fish would have run out. A sluiceway should have
been built on the side of the dam, so that when the water reached a
certain height the surplus could escape. The dam was not built with the
intention that the water should flow over the top of it under any
circumstances, and if allowed to escape in that way the water was bound
to undermine it in a short time. With a dam the height of this the
pressure of a quantity of water great enough to overflow it must be
something tremendous.
"If it is true that the waste-gates were never opened after the
Pittsburgh men had leased the lake, the explanation of the bursting of
the dam is to be found right there. It may be that the dam had not been
looked after and strengthened of late years, and it was undoubtedly
weakened in the period of twenty-five years during which the lake was
not used. After the construction of the dam the lake was called the
Western Reservoir. The south fork of the Conemaugh, which fed the lake,
is a little stream not over ten feet wide, but even when there were no
unusual storms it carried enough water to fill the lake full within a
year, showing how important it was that the gates should be opened
occasionally to run off the surplus."
Mr. Montgomery was one of a party of engineers who inspected the dam
when it was leased by the Pennsylvania Company, five years ago. It then
needed repairs, but was in a perfectly safe condition if the water was
not allowed to flow over it.
CHAPTER III.
Friday, May 31st, 1889. The day before had been a solemn holiday. In
every village veterans of the War for the Union had gathered; in every
cemetery flowers had been strewn upon the grave-mounds of the heroic
dead. Now the people were resuming the every-day toil. The weather was
rainy. It had been wet for some days. Stony Creek and Conemaugh were
turbid and noisy. The little South Fork, which ran into the upper end of
the lake, was swollen into a raging torrent. The lake was higher than
usual; higher than ever. But the valley below lay in fancied security,
and all the varied activities of life pursued their wonted round.
Friday, May 31st, 1889. Record that awful date in characters of funereal
hue. It was a dark and stormy day, and amid the darkness and the storm
the angel of death spread his wings over the fated valley, unseen,
unknown. Midday comes. Disquieting rumors rush down the valley. There is
a roar of an approaching storm--approaching doom! The water swiftly
rises. A horseman thunders down the valley: "To the hills, for God's
sake! To the hills, for your lives!" They stare at him as at a madman,
and their hesitating feet linger in the valley of the shadow of death,
and the shadow swiftly darkens, and the everlasting hills veil their
faces with rain and mist before the scene that greets them.
This is what happened:--
The heavy rainfall raised the lake until its water began to pour over
the top of the dam. The dam itself--wretchedly built of mud and
boulders--saturated through and through, began to leak copiously here
and there. Each watery sapper and miner burrowed on, followers swiftly
enlarging the murderous tunnels. The whole mass became honeycombed. And
still the rain poured down, and still the South Fork and a hundred minor
streams sent in their swelling floods, until, with a roar like that of
the opening gates of the Inferno belching forth the legions of the
damned, the wall gave way, and with the rush of a famished tiger into a
sheepfold, the whirlwind of water swept down the valley on its errand of
destruction--
"And like a horse unbroken,
When first he feels the rein,
The furious river struggled hard,
And tossed his tawny mane,
And burst the curb, and bounded,
Rejoicing to be free,
And, whirling down in mad career,
Battlement and plank and pier,
Rushed headlong to the sea!"
According to the statements of people who lived in Johnstown and other
towns on the line of the river, ample time was given to the inhabitants
of Johnstown by the railroad officials and by other gentlemen of
standing and reputation. In hundreds of cases this warning was utterly
disregarded, and those who heeded it early in the day were looked upon
as cowards, and many jeers were uttered by lips that now are cold. The
people of Johnstown also had a special warning in the fact that the dam
in Stony Creek, just above the town, broke about noon, and thousands of
feet of lumber passed down the river. Yet they hesitated, and even when
the wall of water, almost forty feet high, was at their doors, one man
is said by a survivor to have told his family that the stream would not
rise very high.
How sudden the calamity is illustrated by an incident which Mr. Bender,
the night chief operator of the Western Union in Pittsburgh, relates:
"At 3 o'clock that Friday afternoon," said he, "the girl operator at
Johnstown was cheerfully ticking away that she had to abandon the office
on the first floor, because the water was three feet deep there. She
said she was telegraphing from the second story and the water was
gaining steadily. She was frightened, and said many houses were flooded.
This was evidently before the dam broke, for our man here said something
encouraging to her, and she was talking back as only a cheerful girl
operator can, when the receiver's skilled ear caught a sound on the wire
made by no human hand, which told him that the wires had grounded, or
that the house had been swept away in the flood from the lake, no one
knows which now. At 3 o'clock the girl was there, and at 3.07 we might
as well have asked the grave to answer us."
The water passed over the dam about a foot above its top, beginning at
about half-past 2. Whatever happened in the way of a cloud-burst took
place in the night. There had been little rain up to dark. When the
workmen woke in the morning the lake was full, and rising at the rate of
a foot an hour. It kept on rising until 2 P. M., when it began breaking
over the dam and undermining it. Men were sent three or four times
during the day to warn people below of their danger. When the final
break came at 3 o'clock, there was a sound like tremendous and continued
peals of thunder. Trees, rocks and earth shot up into mid-air in great
columns and then started down the ravine. A farmer who escaped said that
the water did not come down like a wave, but jumped on his house and
beat it to fragments in an instant. He was safe on the hillside, but his
wife and two children were killed.
Herbert Webber, who was employed by the Sportsmen's Club at the lake,
tells that for three days previous to the final outburst, the water of
the lake forced itself out through the interstices of the masonry, so
that the front of the dam resembled a large watering pot. The force of
the water was so great that one of these jets squirted full thirty feet
horizontally from the stone wall. All this time, too, the feeders of the
lake, particularly three of them, more nearly resembled torrents than
mountain streams, and were supplying the dammed up body of water with
quite 3,000,000 gallons of water hourly.
At 11 o'clock that Friday morning, Webber says he was attending to a
camp about a mile back from the dam, when he noticed that the surface of
the lake seemed to be lowering. He doubted his eyes, and made a mark on
the shore, and then found that his suspicions were undoubtedly well
founded. He ran across the country to the dam, and there saw, he
declares, the water of the lake welling out from beneath the foundation
stones of the dam. Absolutely helpless, he was compelled to stand there
and watch the gradual development of what was to be the most disastrous
flood of this continent.
According to his reckoning it was 2.45 when the stones in the centre of
the dam began to sink because of the undermining, and within eight
minutes a gap of twenty feet was made in the lower half of the wall
face, through which the water poured as though forced by machinery of
stupendous power. By 3 o'clock the toppling masonry, which before had
partaken somewhat of the form of an arch, fell in, and then the
remainder of the wall opened outward like twin gates, and the great
storage lake was foaming and thundering down the valley of the
Conemaugh.
Webber became so awestruck at the catastrophe that he declares he was
unable to leave the spot until the lake had fallen so low that it showed
bottom fifty feet below him. How long a time elapsed he says he does not
know before he recovered sufficient power of observation to notice this,
but he does not think that more than five minutes passed. Webber says
that had the dam been repaired after the spring freshet of 1888 the
disaster would not have occurred. Had it been given ordinary attention
in the spring of 1887 the probabilities are that thousands of lives
would have been saved.
Imagine, if you can, a solid piece of ground, thirty-five feet wide and
over one hundred feet high, and then, again, that a space of two hundred
feet is cut out of it, through which is rushing over seven hundred
acres of water, and you can have only a faint conception of the terrible
force of the blow that came upon the people of this vicinity like a clap
of thunder out of a clear sky. It was irresistible in its power and
carried everything before it. After seeing the lake and the opening
through the dam it can be readily understood how that out-break came to
be so destructive in its character.
The lake had been leaking, and a couple of Italians were at work just
over the point where the break occurred, and in an instant, without
warning, it gave way and they went down in the whirling mass of water,
and were swept into eternity.
Mr. Crouse, proprietor of the South Fork Fishing Club Hotel, says: "When
the dam of Conemaugh lake broke the water seemed to leap, scarcely
touching the ground. It bounded down the valley, crashing and roaring,
carrying everything before it. For a mile its front seemed like a solid
wall twenty feet high." The only warning given to Johnstown was sent
from South Fork village by Freight Agent Dechert. _When the great wall
that held the body of water began to crumble at the top he sent a
message begging the people of Johnstown for God's sake to take to the
hills._ He reports no serious accidents at South Fork.
Richard Davis ran to Prospect Hill when the water raised. As to Mr.
Dechert's message, he says just such have been sent down at each flood
since the lake was made. _The warning so often proved useless that
little attention was paid to it this time._ "I cannot describe the mad
rush," he said. "At first it looked like dust. That must have been the
spray. I could see houses going down before it like a child's play
blocks set on edge in a row. As it came nearer I could see houses totter
for a moment, then rise and the next moment be crushed like egg shells,
against each other."
Mr. John G. Parke, of Philadelphia, a civil engineer, was at the dam
superintending some improvements in the drainage system at the lake. He
did all he could with the help of a gang of laborers to avert the
catastrophe and to warn those in danger. His story of the calamity is
this:--
"For several days prior to the breaking of the dam, storm after storm
swept over the mountains and flooded every creek and rivulet. The waters
from these varied sources flowed into the lake, which finally was not
able to stand the pressure forced upon it. Friday morning I realized the
danger that was threatened, and although from that time until three
o'clock every human effort was made to prevent a flood, they were of no
avail. When I at last found that the dam was bound to go, I started out
to tell the people, and by twelve o'clock everybody in the Conemaugh
region did or should have known of their danger. Three hours later my
gravest fears were more than realized. It is an erroneous idea, however,
that the dam burst. It simply moved away. The water gradually ate into
the embankment until there was nothing left but a frail bulwark of wood.
This finally split asunder and sent the waters howling down the
mountains."
CHAPTER IV.
The course of the torrent from the broken dam at the foot of the lake to
Johnstown is almost eighteen miles, and with the exception of one point,
the water passed through a narrow V-shaped valley. Four miles below the
dam lay the town of South Fork, where the South Fork itself empties into
the Conemaugh river. The town contained about 2000 inhabitants. About
four-fifths of it has been swept away. Four miles further down on the
Conemaugh river, which runs parallel with the main line of the
Pennsylvania Railroad, was the town of Mineral Point. It had 800
inhabitants, 90 per cent. of the houses being on a flat and close to the
river. Terrible as it may seem, very few of them have escaped. Six miles
further down was the town of Conemaugh, and here alone there was a
topographical possibility--the spreading of the flood and the breaking
of its force. It contained 2500 inhabitants, and has been almost wholly
devastated. Woodvale, with 2000 people, lay a mile below Conemaugh in
the flat, and one mile further down were Johnstown and its
suburbs--Cambria City and Conemaugh borough, with a population of
30,000. On made ground, and stretched along right at the river's verge,
were the immense iron works of the Cambria Iron and Steel Company, who
have $5,000,000 invested in their plant. Besides this there are many
other large industrial establishments on the bank of the river.
The stream of human beings that was swept before the angry floods was
something most pitiful to behold. Men, women and children were carried
along frantically shrieking for help, but their cries availed them
nothing. Rescue was impossible. Husbands were swept past their wives,
and children were borne along, at a terrible speed, to certain death,
before the eyes of their terrorized and frantic parents. Houses,
out-buildings, trees and barns were carried on the angry flood of waters
as so much chaff. Cattle standing in the fields were overwhelmed, and
their carcasses strewed the tide. The railroad tracks converging on the
town were washed out, and wires in all directions were prostrated.
Down through the Packsaddle came the rushing waters. Clinging to
improvised rafts, constructed in the death battle from floating boards
and timbers, were agonized men, women and children, their heart-rending
shrieks for help striking horror to the breasts of the onlookers. Their
cries were of no avail. Carried along at a railway speed on the breast
of this rushing torrent, no human ingenuity could devise a means of
rescue.
It is impossible to describe briefly the suddenness with which the
disaster came. A warning sound was heard at Conemaugh a few minutes
before the rush of water came, but it was attributed to some
meteorological disturbance, and no trouble was borrowed because of the
thing unseen. As the low, rumbling noise increased in volume, however,
and came nearer, a suspicion of danger began to force itself even upon
the bravest, which was increased to a certainty a few minutes later,
when, with a rush, the mighty stream spread out in width, and when there
was no time to do anything to save themselves. Many of the unfortunates
were whirled into the middle of the stream before they could turn
around; men, women and children were struggling in the streets, and it
is thought that many of them never reached Johnstown, only a mile or two
below.
At Johnstown a similar scene was enacted, only on a much larger scale.
The population is greater and the sweeping whirlpool rushed into a
denser mass of humanity. The imagination of the reader can better depict
the spectacle than the pen of the writer can give it. It was a twilight
of terror, and the gathering shades of evening closed in on a panorama
of horrors that has few parallels in the history of casualties.
When the great wave from Conemaugh lake, behind the dam, came down the
Conemaugh Valley, the first obstacle it struck was the great viaduct
over the South Fork. This viaduct was a State work, built to carry the
old Portage road across the Fork. The Pennsylvania Railroad parallels
the Portage road for a long distance, and runs over the Fork. Besides
sweeping the viaduct down, the bore, or smaller bores on its wings,
washed out the Portage road for miles. One of the small bores went down
the bed of a brook which comes into the Conemaugh at the village of
South Fork, which is some distance above the viaduct. The big bore
backed the river above the village. The small bore was thus checked in
its course and flowed into the village.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF THE RUINS, LOOKING UP STONY CREEK.]
The obstruction below being removed, the backed-up water swept the
village of South Fork away. The flood came down. It moved steadily, but
with a velocity never yet attained by an engine moved by power
controllable by man. It accommodated itself to the character of the
breaks in the hill. It filled every one, whether narrow or broad. Its
thrust was sideways and downward as well as forward. By side thrusts it
scoured every cave and bend in the line of the mountains, lessening
its direct force to exert power laterally, but at the same time moving
its centre straight on Johnstown. It is well to state that the Conemaugh
river is tortuous, like most streams of its kind. Wherever the mountains
retreat, flats make out from them to the channel of the stream. It was
on such flats that South Fork and Mineral Point villages and the
boroughs of Conemaugh, Franklin, Woodvale, East Conemaugh and Johnstown
were built.
After emerging from the South Fork, with the ruins of the great viaduct
in its maw, it swept down a narrow valley until just above the village
of Mineral Point. There it widened, and, thrusting its right wing into
the hollow where the village nestled, it swept away every house on the
flat. These were soon welded into a compact mass, with trees and logs
and general drift stuff. This mass followed the bore. What the bore
could not budge, its follower took up and carried.
The first great feat at carrying and lifting was done at East Conemaugh.
It tore up every building in the yard of the Pennsylvania Railroad. It
took locomotives and carried them down and dug holes for their burials.
It has been said that the flood had a downward thrust. There was proof
of this on the banks of the river, where there was a sort of breakwater
of concreted cinders, slag, and other things, making a combination
harder than stone. Unable to get a grip directly on these banks, the
flood jumped over them, threw the whole weight of the mass of logs and
broken buildings down on the sand behind them, scooped this sand out,
and then, by backward blows, knocked the concrete to pieces. In this it
displayed almost the uttermost skill of human malice.
After crossing the flat of East Conemaugh and scooping out of their
situations sixty-five houses in two streets, as well as tearing
passenger trains to pieces, drowning an unknown number of persons, and
picking up others to dash against whatever obstacles it encountered, it
sent a force to the left, which cut across the flat of Franklin borough,
ripped thirty-two houses to pieces, and cut a second channel for the
Conemaugh river, leaving an island to mark the place of division of the
forces of the flood. The strength of the eastern wing can be estimated
from the fact that the iron bars piled in heaps in the stock yard of the
Cambria Iron Company were swept away, and that some of them may be found
all along the river as far as Johnstown.
After this came the utter wiping out of the borough of Woodvale, on the
flat to the northeast of Johnstown and diagonally opposite it. Woodvale
had a population of nearly 3000 people. It requires a large number of
houses to shelter so many. Estimating 10 to a family, which is a big
estimate, there were 300 houses in Woodvale. There were also a woolen
mill, a flour mill, the Gautier Barb Wire Mills of the Cambria Iron
Company, and the tannery of W. H. Rosenthal & Co. Only the flour mill
and the middle section of the bridge remain. The flat is bare otherwise.
The stables of the Woodvale Horse Railroad Company went out with the
water; every horse and car in them went also.
The change was wrought in five minutes. Robert Miller, who lost two of
his children and his mother-in-law, thus describes the scene: "I was
standing near the Woodvale Bridge, between Maple avenue and Portage
street, in Johnstown. The river was high, and David Lucas and I were
speculating about the bridges, whether they would go down or not. Lucas
said, 'I guess this bridge will stand; it does not seem to be weakened.'
Just then we saw a dark object up the river. Over it was a white mist.
It was high and somehow dreadful, though we could not make it out. Dark
smoke seemed to form a background for the mist. We did not wait for
more. By instinct we knew the big dam had burst and its water was coming
upon us. Lucas jumped on a car horse, rode across the bridge, and went
yelling into Johnstown. The flood overtook him, and he had to abandon
his horse and climb a high hill.
"I went straight to my house in Woodvale, warning everybody as I ran. My
wife and mother-in-law were ready to move, with my five children, so we
went for the hillside, but we were not speedy enough. The water had come
over the flat at its base and cut us off. I and my wife climbed into a
coal car with one of the children, to get out of the water. I put two
more children into the car and looked around for my other children and
my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law was a stout woman, weighing about two
hundred and twelve pounds. She could not climb into a car. The train was
too long for her to go around it, so she tried to crawl under, leading
the children.
"The train was suddenly pushed forward by the flood, and she was knocked
down and crushed, so were my children, by the same shock. My wife and
children in the car were thrown down and covered with coal. I was taken
off by the water, but I swam to the car and pulled them from under a lot
of coal. A second blow to the train threw our car against the hillside
and us out of it to firm earth. I never saw my two children and
mother-in-law after the flood first struck the train of coal cars. I
have often heard it said that the dam might break, but I never paid any
attention to it before. It was common talk whenever there was a freshet
or a big pack of ice."
The principal street of Woodvale was Maple avenue. The Conemaugh river
now rushes through it from one side of the flat to the other. Its
pavement is beautifully clean. It is doubtful that it will ever be
cleared by mortal agency again.
Breaking down the barbed steel wire mill and the tannery at the bridge,
the flood went across the regular channel of the river and struck the
Gautier Steel Works, made up of numerous stanch brick buildings and one
immense structure of iron, filled with enormous boilers, fly wheels, and
machinery generally. The buildings are strewn through Johnstown. Near
their sites are some bricks, twisted iron beams, boilers, wheels, and
engine bodies, bound together with logs, driftwood, tree branches, and
various other things, woven in and out of one another marvelously. These
aggregations are of enormous size and weight. They were not too strong
for the immense power of the destroying agent, for a twenty-ton
locomotive, taken from the Gautier Works, now lies in Main street,
three-quarters of a mile away. It did not simply take a good grip upon
them; it was spreading out its line for a force by its left wing, and
hit simultaneously upon Johnstown flat, its people and houses, while its
right wing did whatever it could in the way of helping the destructive
work. The left wing scoured the flat to the base of the mountain. With a
portion of the centre it then rushed across Stony creek. The remainder
of the central force cleared several paths in diverging directions
through the town.
While the left and centre were tearing houses to pieces and drowning
untold lives, the right had been hurrying along the base of the northern
hills, in the channel of the Conemaugh river, carrying down the houses,
bridges, human beings and other drift that had been picked up on the way
from South Fork.
Thus far the destruction at Johnstown had not been one-quarter what it
is now. But the bed of the Conemaugh beyond Johnstown is between high
hills that come close together. The cut is bridged by a viaduct. The
right wing, with its plunder, was stopped by the bridge and the bend.
The left and centre came tearing down Stony creek. There was a collision
of forces. The men, women, children, horses, other domestic animals,
houses, bridges, railroad cars, logs and tree branches were jammed
together in a solid mass, which only dynamite can break up. The outlet
of Stony creek was almost completely closed and the channel of the
Conemaugh was also choked. The water in both surged back. In Stony creek
it went along the curve of the base of the hill in front of which
Kernville is built. Dividing its strength, one part of the flood went up
Stony creek a short distance and moved around again into Johnstown. It
swept before it many more houses than before and carried them around in
a circle, until they met and crashed against other houses, torn from the
point of Johnstown flat by a similar wave moving in a circle from the
Conemaugh.
The two waves and their burdens went around and around in
slowly-diminishing circles, until most of the houses had been ground to
pieces. There are living men, women and children who circled in these
frightful vortices for an hour. Lawyer Rose, his wife, his two brothers
and his two sisters are among those. They were drawn out of their house
by the suction of the retreating water, and thus were started on a
frightful journey. Three times they went from the Kernville side of the
creek to the centre of the Johnstown flat and past their own dwelling.
They were dropped at last on the Kernville shore. Mr. Rose had his
collar bone broken, but the others were hurt only by fright, wetting and
some bruises.
Some of the back water went up the creek and did damage at Grubtown and
Hornerstown. More of it, following the line of the mountain, rushed in
at the back of Kernville. It cut a clear path for itself from the lower
end of the village to the upper end, diagonally opposite, passing
through the centre. It sent little streams to topple homes over in side
places and went on a round trip into the higher part of Johnstown,
between the creek and the hill. It carried houses from Kernville to the
Johnstown bank of the creek, and left them there. Then it coursed down
the bank, overturning trains of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, and
also houses, and keeping on until it had made the journey several times.
How so marvelous a force was exerted is illustrated in the following
statement from Jacob Reese, of Pittsburg, the inventor of the basic
process for manufacturing steel. Mr. Reese says:--
"When the South Fork dam gave way, 16,000,000 tons of water rushed down
the mountain side, carrying thousands of tons of rocks, logs and trees
with it. When the flood reached the Conemaugh Valley it struck the
Pennsylvania Railroad at a point where they make up the trains for
ascending the Allegheny Mountains. Several trains with their locomotives
and loaded cars were swept down the valley before the flood wave, which
is said to have been fifty feet high. Cars loaded with iron, cattle, and
freight of all kinds, with those mighty locomotives, weighing from
seventy to one hundred tons each, were pushed ahead of the flood, trucks
and engines rolling over and over like mere toys.
"Sixteen million tons of water gathering fences, barns, houses, mills
and shops into its maw. Down the valley for three miles or more rushed
this mighty avalanche of death, sweeping everything before it, and
leaving nothing but death and destruction behind it. When it struck the
railroad bridge at Johnstown, and not being able to force its way
through that stone structure, the débris was gorged and the water dammed
up fifty feet in ten minutes.
"This avalanche was composed of more than 100,000 tons of rocks,
locomotives, freight cars, car trucks, iron, logs, trees and other
material pushed forward by 16,000,000 tons of water falling 500 feet,
and it was this that, sliding over the ground, mowed down the houses,
mills and factories as a mowing machine does a field of grain. It swept
down with a roaring, crushing sound, at the rate of a mile a minute, and
hurled 10,000 people into the jaws of death in less than half an hour.
And so the people called it the avalanche of death."
CHAPTER V.
"Johnstown is annihilated," telegraphed Superintendent Pitcairn to
Pittsburg on Friday night. "He came," says one who visited the place on
Sunday, "very close to the facts of the case. Nothing like it was ever
seen in this country. Where long rows of dwelling-houses and business
blocks stood forty-eight hours ago, ruin and desolation now reign
supreme. Probably 1500 houses have been swept from the face of the earth
as completely as if they had never been erected. Main street, from end
to end, is piled fifteen and twenty feet high with débris, and in some
instances it is as high as the roofs of the houses. This great mass of
wreckage fills the street from curb to curb, and frequently has crushed
the buildings in and filled the space with reminders of the terrible
calamity. There is not a man in the place who can give any reliable
estimate of the number of houses that have been swept away. City
Solicitor Kuehn, who should be very good authority in this matter,
places the number at 1500. From the woolen mill above the island to the
bridge, a distance of probably two miles, a strip of territory nearly a
half mile in width has been swept clean, not a stick of timber or one
brick on top of another being left to tell the story. It is the most
complete wreck that imagination could portray.
"All day long men, women, and children were plodding about the desolate
waste looking in vain to locate the boundaries of their former homes.
Nothing but a wide expanse of mud, ornamented here and there with heaps
of driftwood, remained, however, for their contemplation. It is
perfectly safe to say that every house in the city that was not located
well up on the hillside was either swept completely away or wrecked so
badly that rebuilding will be absolutely necessary. These losses,
however, are nothing compared to the frightful sacrifice of precious
human lives to be seen on every hand.
"During all this solemn Sunday Johnstown has been drenched with the
tears of stricken mortals, and the air is filled with sobs and sighs
that come from breaking hearts. There are scenes enacted here every hour
and every minute that affect all beholders profoundly. When homes are
thus torn asunder in an instant, and the loved ones hurled from the arms
of loving and devoted mothers, there is an element of sadness in the
tragedy that overwhelms every heart.
"A slide, a series of frightful tosses from side to side, a run, and you
have crossed the narrow rope bridge which spanned the chasm dug by the
waters between the stone bridge and Johnstown. Crossing the bridge is an
exciting task, yet many women accomplished it rather than remain in
Johnstown. The bridge pitched like a ship in a storm. Within two inches
of your feet rushed the muddy waters of the Conemaugh. There were no
ropes to easily guide, and creeping was more convenient than walking.
One had to cross the Conemaugh at a second point in order to reach
Johnstown proper. This was accomplished by a skiff ferry. The ferryman
clung to a rope and pulled the boat over.
"After landing one walks across a desolate sea of mud, in which there
are interred many human bodies. It was once the handsome portion of the
town. The cellars are filled up with mud, so that a person who has never
seen the city can hardly imagine that houses ever stood where they did.
Four streets solidly built up with houses have been swept away. Nothing
but a small, two-story frame house remains. It was near the edge of the
wave and thus escaped, although one side was torn off. The walk up to
wrecks of houses was interrupted in many places by small branch streams.
Occasionally across the flats could be seen the remains of a victim.
The stench arising from the mud is sickening. Along the route were
strewn tin utensils, pieces of machinery, iron pipes, and wares of every
conceivable kind. In the midst of the wreck a clothing store dummy, with
a hand in the position of beckoning to a person, stands erect and
uninjured.
"It is impossible to describe the appearance of Main street. Whole
houses have been swept down this one street and become lodged. The wreck
is piled as high as the second-story windows. The reporter could step
from the wreck into the auditorium of the opera house. The ruins consist
of parts of houses, trees, saw logs and reels from the wire factory.
Many houses have their side walls and roofs torn up, and one can walk
directly into what had been second-story bed-rooms, or go in by way of
the top. Further up town a raft of logs lodged in the street, and did
great damage. At the beginning of the wreckage, which is at the opening
of the valley of the Conemaugh, one can look up the valley for miles and
not see a house. Nothing stands but an old woolen mill.
"Charles Luther is the name of the boy who stood on an adjacent
elevation and saw the whole flood. He said he heard a grinding noise far
up the valley, and looking up he could see a dark line moving slowly
toward him. He saw that it was houses. On they came, like the hand of a
giant clearing off his table. High in the air would be tossed a log or
beam, which fell back with a crash. Down the valley it moved and across
the little mountain city. For ten minutes nothing but moving houses were
seen, and then the waters came with a roar and a rush. This lasted for
two hours, and then it began to flow more steadily."
Seen from the high hill across the river from Johnstown, the Conemaugh
Valley gives an easy explanation of the terrible destruction which it
has suffered. This valley, stretching back almost in a straight line for
miles, suddenly narrows near Johnstown. The wall of water which came
tearing down toward the town, picking up all the houses and mills in the
villages along its way, suddenly rose in height as it came to the narrow
pass. It swept over the nearest part of the town and met the waters of
Stony creek, swollen by rains, rushing along with the speed of a
torrent. The two forces coming together, each turned aside and started
away again in a half-circle, seeking an outlet in the lower Conemaugh
Valley. The massive stone bridge of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company,
at the lower base of the triangle, was almost instantly choked up with
the great mass of wreckage dashed against it, and became a dam that
could not be swept away, and proved to be the ruin of the town and the
villages above. The waters checked here, formed a vast whirlpool, which
destroyed everything within its circle. It backed up on the other side
of the triangle, and devastated the village of Kernville, across the
river from Johnstown.
The force of the current was truly appalling. The best evidence of its
force is exhibited in the mass of débris south of the Pennsylvania
bridge. Persons on the hillsides declare that houses, solid from their
foundation stones, were rushed on to destruction at the rate of thirty
miles an hour. On one house forty persons were counted; their cries for
help were heard far above the roaring waters. At the railroad bridge the
house parted in the middle, and the cries of the unfortunate people were
smothered in the engulfing waters.
At the Cambria Iron Works a huge hickory struck the south brick wall of
the rolling mill at an angle, went through it and the west wall, where
it remains. A still more extraordinary incident is seen at the
foot-bridge of the Pennsylvania station, on the freight track built for
the Cambria Iron Works. The sunken track and bridge are built in a
curve. In clearing out the track the Cambria workmen discovered two huge
bridge trusses intact, the larger one 30 feet long and 10 feet high. It
lay close to the top of the bridge and had been driven into the cut at
least fifty feet.
It was with an impulse to the right side of the mountain that the great
mass of water came down the Conemaugh river. It was a mass of water with
a front forty feet high, and an eighth of a mile wide. Its velocity was
so great that its first sweep did little damage on either side. It had
no time to spread. Where it burst from the gap it swept south until it
struck the bridge, and, although it was ten feet or more deep over the
top of the bridge, the obstruction of the mass of masonry was so great
that the head of the rush of water was turned back along the
Pennsylvania Railroad bluff on the left, and, sweeping up to where it
met the first stream again, licked up the portion of the town on the
left side of the triangular plain. A great eddy was thus formed. Through
the Stony Creek Gap to the right there was a rush of surplus water. In
two minutes after the current first burst through, forty feet deep, with
a solid mass of water whirling around with a current of tremendous
velocity, it was a whirlpool vastly greater than that of ten Niagaras.
The only outlet was under and over the railroad bridge, and the
continuing rush of the waters into the valley from the gap was greater
for some time than the means of escape at the bridge.
[Illustration: RUINS SHOWING THE PATH OF THE FLOOD.]
"Standing now at the bridge," says a visitor on Monday, "where this vast
whirlpool struggled for exit, the air is heavy with smoke and foul with
nameless odors from a mass of wreckage. The area of the triangular
space where the awful whirlpool revolved is said to be about four square
miles. The area of the space covered by this smoking mass is sixty
acres. The surface of this mass is now fifteen feet below the top of the
bridge and about thirty below the point on the bluff where the surface
of the whirlpool lashed the banks. One ragged mass some distance above
the bridge rises several feet above the general level, but with that
exception the surface of the débris is level. It has burned off until it
reached the water, and is smouldering on as the water gradually lowers.
On the right bank, at about where was the highest water level, a
detachment of the Pittsburg Fire Department is throwing two fitful
streams of water down into the smoke, with the idea of gradually
extinguishing the fire. In the immensity of the disaster with which they
combat their feeble efforts seem like those of boys with squirt guns
dampening a bonfire. About the sixty acres of burning débris, and to the
left of it from where it begins to narrow toward Stony Creek Gap, there
is a large area of level mud, with muddy streams wandering about in it.
This tract of mud comprises all of the triangle except a thin fringe of
buildings along the bluff on the Pennsylvania Railroad. A considerable
number of houses stand on the high ground on the lower face of the
central mountain and off to the right into Stony Creek Gap. The fringe
along the Pennsylvania Railroad is mostly of stores and other large
brick buildings that are completely wrecked, though not swept away. The
houses on the higher ground are unharmed; but down toward the edge they
fade away by degrees of completeness in their wreckage into the yellow
level of the huge tract over which the mighty whirlpool swept. Off out
of sight, in Stony Creek Gap, are fringes of houses on either side of
the muddy flat.
"This flat is a peculiar thing. It is level and uninteresting as a piece
of waste ground. Too poor to grow grass, there is nothing to indicate
that it had ever been anything else than what it is. It is as clean of
débris and wreckage as though there had never been a building on it. In
reality it was the central and busiest part of Johnstown. Buildings,
both dwellings and stores, covered it thickly. Its streets were paved,
and its sidewalks of substantial stone. It had street-car lines, gas and
electric lights, and all the other improvements of a substantial city of
15,000 or 20,000 inhabitants. Iron bridges spanned the streams, and the
buildings were of substantial character. Not a brick remains, not a
stone nor a stick of timber in all this territory. There are not even
hummocks and mounds to show where wreckage might be covered with a layer
of mud. They are not there, they are gone--every building, every
street, every sidewalk and pavement, the street railways, and everything
else that covered the surface of the earth has vanished as utterly as
though it had never been there. The ground was swept as clean as though
some mighty scraper had been dragged over it again and again. Not even
the lines of the streets can be remotely traced.
"'I have visited Johnstown a dozen times a year for a long time,' said a
business man to-day, 'and I know it thoroughly, but I haven't the least
idea now of what part of it this is. I can't even tell the direction the
streets used to run.'
"His bewilderment is hardly greater than that of the citizens
themselves. They wander about in the mud for hours trying to find the
spot where the house of some friend or relative used to stand. It takes
a whole family to locate the site of their friend's house with any
reasonable certainty.
"Wandering over this muddy plain one can realize something of what must
have been the gigantic force of that vast whirlpool. It pressed upon the
town like some huge millstone, weighing tens of thousands of tons and
revolving with awful velocity, pounding to powder everything beneath.
But the conception of the power of that horrible eddy of the flood must
remain feeble until that sixty acres of burning débris is inspected. It
seems from a little distance like any other mass of wreckage, though
vastly longer than any ever before seen in this country. It must have
been many times more tremendous when it was heaped up twenty feet higher
over its whole area and before the fire leveled it off. But neither then
nor now can the full terror of the flood that piled it there be
adequately realized until a trip across parts where the fire has been
extinguished shows the manner in which the stuff composing it is packed
together. It is not a heap of broken timbers lying loosely thrown
together in all directions. It is a solid mass. The boards and timbers
which made up the frame buildings are laid together as closely as sticks
of wood in a pile--more closely, for they are welded into one another
until each stick is as solidly fixed in place as though all were one. A
curious thing is that wherever there are a few boards together they are
edge up, and never standing on end or flat. The terrible force of the
whirlpool that ground four square miles of buildings into this sixty
acres of wreckage left no opportunity for gaps or holes between pieces
in the river. Everything was packed together as solidly as though by
sledge-hammer blows.
"But the boards and timber of four square miles of buildings are not all
that is in that sixty-acre mass. An immense amount of débris from
further up the valley lies there. Twenty-seven locomotives, several
Pullman cars and probably a hundred other cars, or all that is left of
them, are in that mass. Fragments of iron bridges can be seen sticking
out occasionally above the wreckage. They are about the only things the
fire has not leveled, except the curious hillock spoken of, which is an
eighth of a mile back from the bridge, where the flames apparently raged
less fiercely. Scattered over the area, also, are many blackened logs
that were too big to be entirely burned, and that stick up now like spar
buoys in a sea of ruin. Little jets of flame, almost unseen by daylight,
but appearing as evening falls, are scattered thickly over the surface
of the wreckage.
"Of the rest of Johnstown, and the collection of towns within sight of
the bridge, not much is to be said. They are, to a greater or less
extent, gone, as Johnstown is gone. Far up the gap through which came
the flood a large brick building remains standing, but ruined. It is all
that is left of one of the biggest wire mills and steel works in the
country. Turning around below the bridge are the works of the Cambria
Iron Company. The buildings are still standing, but they are pretty well
ruined, and the machinery with which they were filled is either totally
destroyed or damaged almost beyond repair. High up on the hill at the
left and scattered up on other hills in sight are many dwellings, neat,
well kept, and attractive places apparently, and looking as bright and
fresh now as before the awful torrent wiped out of existence everything
in the valley below.
"This is Johnstown and its immediate vicinity as nearly as words can
paint it. It is a single feature, one section out of fifteen miles of
horror that stretches through this once lovely valley of the Allegheny.
What is true of Johnstown is true of every town for miles up and down.
The desolation of one town may differ from the desolation in others as
one death may differ from another; but it is desolation and death
everywhere--desolation so complete, so relentless, so dreadful that it
is absolutely beyond the power of language fairly to tell the tale."
CHAPTER VI.
Mr. William Henry Smith, General Manager of the Associated Press, was a
passenger on a railroad train which reached the Conemaugh Valley on the
very day of the disaster. He writes as follows of what he saw:
"The fast line trains that leave Chicago at quarter past three and
Cincinnati at seven P.M. constitute the day-express eastward from
Pittsburg, which runs in two sections. This train left Pittsburg on time
Friday morning, but was stopped for an hour at Johnstown by reports of a
wash-out ahead. It had been raining hard for over sixteen hours, and the
sides of the mountains were covered with water descending into the
valleys. The Conemaugh River, whose bank is followed by the Pennsylvania
Railroad for many miles, looked an angry flood nearly bankfull.
Passengers were interested in seeing hundreds of saw-logs and an
enormous amount of driftwood shoot rapidly by, and the train pursued its
way eastward. At Johnstown there was a long wait, as before stated. The
lower stories of many houses were submerged by the slack-water, and the
inhabitants were looking out of the second-story windows. Horses were
standing up to their knees in water in the streets; a side-track of the
railroad had been washed out; loaded cars were on the bridge to keep it
steady, and the huge poles of the Western Union Telegraph Company,
carrying fifteen wires, swayed badly, and several soon went down. The
two sections ran to Conemaugh, about two miles eastward of Johnstown,
and lay there about three hours, when they were moved on to the highest
ground and placed side by side. The mail train was placed in the rear of
the first section, and a freight train was run onto a side track on the
bank of the Conemaugh. The report was that a bridge had been washed out,
carrying away one track and that the other track was unsafe. There was a
rumor also that the reservoir at South Fork might break. This made most
of the passengers uneasy, and they kept a pretty good look-out for
information. The porters of the Pullman cars remained at their posts,
and comforted the passengers with the assurance that the Pennsylvania
Railroad Company always took care of its patrons. A few gentlemen and
some ladies and children quietly seated themselves, apparently
contented. One gentleman, who was ill, had his berth made up and
retired, although advised not to do so.
"Soon the cry came that the water in the reservoir had broken down the
barrier and was sweeping down the valley. Instantly there was a panic
and a rush for the mountain side. Children were carried and women
assisted by a few who kept cool heads. It was a race for life. There was
seen the black head of the flood, now the monster Destruction, whose
crest was high raised in the air, and with this in view even the weak
found wings for their feet. No words can adequately describe the terror
that filled every breast, or the awful power manifested by the flood.
The round-house had stalls for twenty-three locomotives. There were
eighteen or twenty of these standing there at this time. There was an
ominous crash, and the round-house and locomotives disappeared.
Everything in the main track of the flood was first lifted in air and
then swallowed up by the waters. A hundred houses were swept away in a
few minutes. These included the hotel, stores, and saloons on the front
street and residences adjacent. The locomotive of one of the trains was
struck by a house and demolished. The side of another house stopped in
front of another locomotive and served as a shield. The rear car of the
mail train swung around in the rear of the second section of the
express and turned over on its side. Three men were observed standing
upon it as it floated. The coupling broke, and the car moved out upon
the bosom of the waters. As it would roll the men would shift their
position. The situation was desperate, and they were given up for lost.
Two or three hardy men seized ropes and ran along the mountain side to
give them aid. Later it was reported that the men escaped over some
driftwood as their car was carried near a bank. It is believed there
were several women and children inside the car. Of course they were
drowned. As the fugitives on the mountain side witnessed the awful
devastation they were moved as never before in their lives. They were
powerless to help those seized upon by the waters; the despair of those
who had lost everything in life and the wailing of those whose relatives
or friends were missing filled their breasts with unutterable sorrow.
"The rain continued to fall steadily, but shelter was not thought of.
Few passengers saved anything from the train, so sudden was the cry 'Run
for your lives, the reservoir has broken!'
"Many were without hats, and as their baggage was left on the trains,
they were without the means of relieving their unhappy condition. The
occupants of the houses still standing on the high ground threw them
open to those who had lost all, and to the passengers of the train.
"During the height of the flood, the spectators were startled by the
sound of two locomotive whistles from the very midst of the waters. Two
engineers, with characteristic courage, had remained at their posts, and
while there was destruction on every hand, and apparently no escape for
them, they sounded their whistles. This they repeated at intervals, the
last time with triumphant vigor, as the waters were receding from the
sides of their locomotives. By half-past five the force of the reservoir
water had been spent on the village of Conemaugh, and the Pullman cars
and locomotive of the second section remained unmoved. This was because,
being on the highest and hardest ground, the destructive current of the
reservoir flood had passed between that and the mountain, while the
current of the river did not eat it away. But the other trains had been
destroyed. A solitary locomotive was seen embedded in the mud where the
round-house had stood.
"As the greatest danger had passed, the people of Conemaugh gave their
thoughts to their neighbors of the city of Johnstown. Here was centred
the great steel and iron industries, the pride of Western Pennsylvania,
the Cambria Iron Works being known everywhere. Here were churches,
daily newspapers, banks, dry-goods houses, warehouses, and the
comfortable and well-built homes of twelve thousand people. In the
contemplation of the irresistible force of that awful flood, gathering
additional momentum as it swept on toward the Gulf, it became clear that
the city must be destroyed, and that unless the inhabitants had
telegraphic notice of the breaking of the reservoir they must perish. A
cry of horror went up from the hundreds on the mountain-side, and a few
instinctively turned their steps toward Johnstown. The city was
destroyed. All the mills, furnaces, manufactories, the many and varied
industries, the banks, the residences, all, all were swallowed up before
the shadows of night had settled down upon the earth. Those who came
back by daybreak said that from five thousand to eight thousand had been
drowned. Our hope is that this is an exaggeration, and when the roll is
called most will respond. In the light of this calamity, the destruction
at Conemaugh sinks into insignificance."
Mr. George Johnston, a lumber merchant of Pittsburg, was another
witness. "I had gone to Johnstown," he says, "to place a couple of
orders. I had scarcely reached the town, about three o'clock in the
afternoon, when I saw a bulletin posted up in front of the telegraph
office, around which quite a crowd of men had congregated. I pushed my
way up, and read that the waters were so high in the Conemaugh that it
was feared the three-mile dam, as it was called, would give way. I know
enough about Johnstown to feel that my life was not worth a snap once
that dam gave way. Although the Johnstown people did not seem to pay
much attention to the warning, I was nervous and apprehensive. I had
several parties to see, but concluded to let all but one go until some
later day. So I hurried through with my most urgent transactions and
started for the depot. The Conemaugh had then gotten so high that the
residents of the low-lying districts had moved into upper stories. I
noticed a number of wagons filled with furniture hurrying through the
streets. A few families, either apprehensive of the impending calamity
or driven from their houses by the rising waters, had started for the
surrounding hills. Johnstown, you know, lies in a narrow valley, and
lies principally on the V-shaped point between the converging river and
Stony Creek.
"I was just walking up the steps to the depot when I heard a fearful
roar up the valley. It sounded at first like a heavy train of cars, but
soon became too loud and terrible for that. I boarded a train, and as I
sat at the car window a sight broke before my view that I will remember
to my dying day. Away up the Conemaugh came a yellow wall, whose crest
was white and frothy. I rushed for the platform of the car, not knowing
what I did, and just then the train began to move. Terrified as I was, I
remember feeling that I was in the safest place and I sank back in a
seat. When I looked out again what had been the busy mill yards of the
Cambria Iron Company was a yellow, turbulent sea, on whose churned
currents houses and barns were riding like ships in a brook. The water
rushing in upon the molten metal in the mills had caused deafening
explosions, which, coupled with the roar and grinding of the flood, made
a terrifying din. Turning to the other side and looking on down the
valley, I saw the muddy water rushing through the main streets of the
town. I could see men and horses floundering about almost within call.
House-tops were being filled with white-faced people who clung to each
other and looked terror-stricken upon the rising flood.
"It had all come so quickly that none of them seemed to realize what had
happened. The conductor of my train had been pulling frantically at the
bell-rope, and the train went spinning across the bridge. I sat in my
seat transfixed with horror. Houses were spinning through beneath the
bridge, and I did not know at what moment the structure would melt away
under the train. The conductor kept tugging at the bell-rope and the
train shot ahead again. We seemed to fairly leap over the yellow
torrents, and I wondered for an instant whether we had not left the
rails and were flying through the air. My heart gave a bound of relief
when we dashed into the forest on the hillside opposite the doomed town.
As the train sped along at a rate of speed that made me think the
engineer had gone mad, I took one look back upon the valley. What a
sight it was! The populous valley for miles either way was a seething,
roaring cauldron, through whose boiling surface roofs of houses and the
stand-pipes of mills protruded. The water was fairly piling up in a well
farther up, and I saw the worst had not yet come. Then I turned my eyes
away from the awful sight and tried not to even think until Pittsburg
was reached.
"I cannot see how it is possible for less than five thousand lives to
have been sacrificed in Johnstown alone. At least two-thirds of the town
was swept away. The water came so quickly that escape from the low
districts was impossible. People retreated to the upper floors of their
residences and stores until the water had gotten too deep to allow their
escape. When the big flood came the houses were picked up like
pasteboard boxes or collapsed like egg-shells. The advance of the flood
was black with houses, logs, and other debris, so that it struck
Johnstown with the solid force of a battering-ram. None but
eye-witnesses of the flood can comprehend its size and awfulness as it
came tumbling, roaring down upon the unprotected town."
[Illustration: TYPICAL SCENE IN JOHNSTOWN.]
The appearance of the flood at Sang Hollow, some miles below Johnstown,
is thus pictured by C. W. Linthicum, of Baltimore:
"My train left Pittsburg on Friday morning for Johnstown. The train was
due at Sang Hollow at two minutes after four, but was five minutes late.
At Sang Hollow, just as we were about to pull out, we heard that the
flood was coming. Looking ahead, up the valley, we saw an immense wall
of water thirty feet high, raging, roaring, rushing toward us. The
engineer reversed his engine and rushed back to the hills at full speed,
and we barely escaped the waters. We ran back three hundred yards, and
the flood swept by, tearing up track, telegraph poles, trees, and
houses. Superintendent Pitcairn was on the train. We all got out and
tried to save the floating people. Taking the bell cord we formed a line
and threw the rope out, thus saving seven persons. We could have saved
more, but many were afraid to let go of the debris. It was an awful
sight. The immense volume of water was roaring along, whirling over huge
rocks, dashing against the banks and leaping high into the air, and this
seething flood was strewn with timber, trunks of trees, parts of houses,
and hundreds of human beings, cattle, and almost every living animal.
The fearful peril of the living was not more awful than the horrors of
hundreds of distorted, bleeding corpses whirling along the avalanche of
death. We counted one hundred and seven people floating by and dead
without number. A section of roof came by on which were sitting a woman
and girl. A man named C. W. Heppenstall, of Pittsburg, waded and swam to
the roof. He brought the girl in first and then the woman. They told us
they were not relatives. The woman had lost her husband and four
children, and the girl her father and mother, and entire family. A
little boy came by with his mother. Both were as calm as could be, and
the boy was apparently trying to comfort the mother. They passed
unheeding our proffered help, and striking the bridge below, went down
into the vortex like lead.
"One beautiful girl came by with her hands raised in prayer, and,
although we shouted to her and ran along the bank, she paid no
attention. We could have saved her if she had caught the rope. An old
man and his wife whom we saved said that eleven persons started from
Cambria City on the roof with him, but that the others had dropped off.
"At about eight P. M. we started for New Florence. All along the river
we saw corpses without number caught in the branches of trees and
wedged in corners in the banks. A large sycamore tree in the river
between Sang Hollow and New Florence seemed to draw into it nearly all
who floated down, and they went under the surface at its roots like
lead. When the waters subsided two hundred and nine bodies were found at
the root of this tree. All night the living and the dead floated by New
Florence. At Pittsburg seventy-eight bodies were found on Saturday, and
as many more were seen floating by. Hundreds of people from ill-fated
Johnstown are wandering homeless and starving on the mountain-side. Very
few saved anything, and I saw numbers going down the stream naked. The
suffering within the next few days will be fearful unless prompt relief
is extended."
H. M. Bennett and S. W. Keltz, engineer and conductor of engine No.
1,165, an extra freight, which happened to be lying at South Fork when
the dam broke, tell a graphic story of their wonderful flight and escape
on the locomotive before the advancing flood. At the time mentioned
Bennett and Keltz were in the signal tower at that point awaiting
orders. The fireman and flagman were on the engine, and two brakemen
were asleep in the caboose. Suddenly the men in the tower heard a loud
booming roar in the valley above them. They looked in the direction of
the sound, and were almost transfixed with horror to see two miles
above them a huge black wall of water, at least one hundred and fifty
feet in height, rushing down the valley upon them.
One look the fear-stricken men gave the awful sight, and then they made
a rush for the locomotive, at the same time giving the alarm to the
sleeping brakemen in the caboose with loud cries, but with no avail. It
was impossible to aid them further, however, so they cut the engine
loose from the train, and the engineer, with one wild wrench, threw the
lever wide open, and they were away on a mad race for life. For a moment
it seemed that they would not receive momentum enough to keep ahead of
the flood, and they cast one despairing glance back. Then they could see
the awful deluge approaching in its might. On it came, rolling and
roaring like some Titanic monster, tossing and tearing houses, sheds,
and trees in its awful speed as if they were mere toys. As they looked
they saw the two brakemen rush out of the cab, but they had not time to
gather the slightest idea of the cause of their doom before they, the
car, and signal tower were tossed high in the air, to disappear forever
in engulfing water.
Then with a shudder, as if at last it comprehended its peril, the engine
leaped forward like a thing of life, and speeded down the valley. But
fast as it went, the flood gained upon them. Hope, however, was in the
ascendant, for if they could but get across the bridge below the track
would lean toward the hillside in such a manner that they would be
comparatively safe. In a few breathless moments the shrieking locomotive
whizzed around the curve and they were in sight of the bridge. Horror
upon horrors! Ahead of them was a freight train, with the rear end
almost on the bridge, and to get across was simply impossible! Engineer
Bennett then reversed the lever and succeeded in checking the engine as
they glided across the bridge, and then they jumped and ran for their
lives up the hillside, as the bridge and tender of the locomotive they
had been on were swept away like a bundle of matches in the torrent.
CHAPTER VII.
There have been many famous rides in history. Longfellow has celebrated
that of Paul Revere. Read has sung of Sheridan's. John Boyle O'Reilly
has commemorated in graceful verse the splendid achievement of Collins
Graves, who, when the Williamsburg dam in Massachusetts broke, dashed
down the valley on horseback in the van of the flood, warning the people
and saving countless lives:
"He draws no rein, but he shakes the street
With a shout and a ring of the galloping feet,
And this the cry that he flings to the wind:
'To the hills for your lives! The flood is behind!'
"In front of the roaring flood is heard
The galloping horse and the warning word.
Thank God! The brave man's life is spared!
From Williamsburg town he nobly dared
To race with the flood and take the road
In front of the terrible swath it mowed.
For miles it thundered and crashed behind,
But he looked ahead with a steadfast mind:
'They must be warned,' was all he said,
As away on his terrible ride he sped."
There were two such heroes in the Conemaugh Valley. Let their deeds be
told and their names held in everlasting honor. One was John G. Parke, a
young civil engineer of Philadelphia, a nephew of the General John G.
Parke who commanded a corps of the Union Army. He was the first to
discover the impending break in the South Fork dam, and jumping into the
saddle he started at breakneck speed down the valley shouting: "The dam;
the dam is breaking; run for your lives!" Hundreds of people were saved
by this timely warning. Reaching South Fork Station, young Parke
telegraphed tidings of the coming inundation to Johnstown, ten miles
below, fully an hour before the flood came in "a solid wall of water
thirty feet high" to drown the mountain-bound town.
Some heeded the note of alarm at Johnstown; others had heard it before,
doubted, and waited until death overtook them. Young Parke climbed up
into the mountains when the water was almost at his horse's heels, and
saw the deluge pass.
Less fortunate was Daniel Peyton, a rich young man of Johnstown. He
heard at Conemaugh the message sent down from South Fork by the gallant
Parke. In a moment he sprang into the saddle. Mounted on a grand, big,
bay horse, he came riding down the pike which passes through Conemaugh
to Johnstown, like some angel of wrath of old, shouting his warning:
"Run for your lives to the hills! Run to the hills!"
The people crowded out of their houses along the thickly settled streets
awe-struck and wondering. No one knew the man, and some thought he was a
maniac and laughed. On and on, at a deadly pace, he rode, and shrilly
rang out his awful cry. In a few moments, however, there came a cloud of
ruin down the broad streets, down the narrow alleys, grinding, twisting,
hurling, over-turning, crashing--annihilating the weak and the strong.
It was the charge of the flood, wearing its coronet of ruin and
devastation, which grew at every instant of its progress. Forty feet
high, some say, thirty according to others, was this sea, and it
travelled with a swiftness like that which lay in the heels of Mercury.
On and on raced the rider, on and on rushed the wave. Dozens of people
took heed of the warning and ran up to the hills.
Poor, faithful rider! It was an unequal contest. Just as he turned to
cross the railroad bridge the mighty wall fell upon him, and horse,
rider, and bridge all went out into chaos together.
A few feet further on several cars of the Pennsylvania Railroad train
from Pittsburg were caught up and hurried into the cauldron, and the
heart of the town was reached.
The hero had turned neither to the right nor left for himself, but rode
on to death for his townsmen. When found Peyton was lying face upward
beneath the remnants of massive oaks, while hard by lay the gallant
horse that had so nobly done all in his power for humanity before he
started to seek a place of safety for himself.
Mrs. Ogle, the manager of the Western Union telegraph office, who died
at her post, will go down in history as a heroine of the highest order.
Notwithstanding the repeated notifications which she received to get out
of reach of the approaching danger, she stood by the instruments with
unflinching loyalty and undaunted courage, sending words of warning to
those in danger in the valley below. When every station in the path of
the coming torrent had been warned, she wired her companion at South
Fork: "This is my last message," and as such it shall always be
remembered as her last words on earth, for at that very moment the
torrent engulfed her and bore her from her post on earth to her post of
honor in the great beyond.
Miss Nina Speck, daughter of the Rev. David Speck, pastor of the First
United Brethren Church, of Chambersburg, was in Johnstown visiting her
brother and narrowly escaped death in the flood. She arrived home clad
in nondescript clothing, which had been furnished by an old colored
washerwoman, and told the following story of the flood:
"Our house was in Kernsville, a part of Johnstown through which Stony
Creek ran. Although we were a square from the creek, the back-water from
the stream had flooded the streets in the morning and was up to our
front porch. At four o'clock on Friday afternoon we were sitting on the
front porch watching the flood, when we heard a roar as of a tornado or
mighty conflagration.
"We rushed up-stairs and got out upon the bay-window. There an awful
sight met our eyes. Down the Conemaugh Valley was advancing a mighty
wall of water and mist with a terrible roar. Before it were rolling
houses and buildings of all kinds, tossing over and over. We thought it
was a cyclone, the roar sounding like a tempest among forest trees. We
started down-stairs and out through the rear of the house to escape to
the hillside near by. But before we could get there the water was up to
our necks and we could make no progress. We turned back and were
literally dashed by the current into the house, which began to move off
as soon as [we] were in it again. From the second-story window I saw a
young man drifting toward us. I broke the glass from the frames with my
hands and helped him in, and in a few minutes more I pulled in an old
man, a neighbor, who had been sick.
"Our house moved rapidly down the stream and fortunately lodged against
a strong building. The water forced us out of the second-story up into
the attic. Then we heard a lot of people on our roof begging us for
God's sake to let them in. I broke through the roof with a bed-slat and
pulled them in. Soon we had thirteen in all crouched in the attic.
"Our house was rocking, and every now and then a building would crash
against us. Every moment we thought we would go down. The roofs of all
the houses drifting by us were covered with people, nearly all praying
and some singing hymns, and now and then a house would break apart and
all would go down. On Saturday at noon we were rescued, making our way
from one building to the next by crawling on narrow planks. I counted
hundreds of bodies lying in the debris, most of them covered over with
earth and showing only the outlines of the form."
Opposite the northern wall of the Methodist Church the flood struck the
new Queen Anne house of John Fronheiser, a superintendent in the Cambria
Works. He was at home, as most men were that day, trying to calm the
fears of the women and children of the family during the earlier flood.
Down went the front of the new Queen Anne house, and into the wreck of
it fell the Superintendent, two elder children, a girl and a boy. As the
flood passed he heard the boy cry: "Don't let me drown, papa; break my
arms first!" and the girl: "Cut off my legs, but don't let me drown!"
And as he heard them, came a wilder cry from his wife drifting down with
the current, to "Save the baby." But neither wife nor baby could be
saved, and boy and girl stayed in the wreck until the water went down
and they were extricated.
Horror piled on horror is the story from Johnstown down to the viaduct.
Horror shot through with intense lights of heroism, and here and there
pervaded with gleams of humor. It is known that one girl sang as she was
whirled through the flood, "Jesus, lover of my soul," until the water
stopped her singing forever. It is known that Elvie Duncan, daughter of
the Superintendent of the Street Car Company, when her family was
separated and she was swept away with her baby sister, kept the little
thing alive by chewing bread and feeding it to her. It is known that
John Dibart, banker, died as helplessly in his splendid house as did
that solitary prisoner in his cell; that the pleasant park, with the
chain fence about it, was so completely annihilated that not even one
root of the many shade trees within its boundaries remains. It is known
also that to a leaden-footed messenger boy, who was ambling along Main
Street, fear lent wings to lift him into the _Tribune_ office in the
second story of the Post Office, and that the Rosensteels, general
storekeepers of Woodvale, were swept into the windows of their friends,
the Cohens, retail storekeepers of Main Street, Johnstown, two miles
from where they started. It is known that the Episcopal Church, at
Locust and Market Streets, went down like a house of cards, or as the
German Lutheran had gone, in the path of the flood, and that Rector
Diller, his wife and child, and adopted daughter went with it, while of
their next-door neighbors, Frank Daly, of the Cambria Company, and his
mother, the son was drowned and the mother, not so badly hurt in body as
in spirit, died three nights after in the Mercy Hospital, Pittsburg.
But while the flood was driving people to silent death down the valley,
there was a sound of lamentation on the hills. Hundreds who had climbed
there to be out of reach during the morning's freshet saw the city in
the valley disappearing, and their cries rose high above the crash and
the roar. Little time had eyes to watch or lips to cry. O'Brien, the
disabled Millville storekeeper, was one of the crowd in the park. He saw
a town before him, then a mountain of timber approaching; then a dizzy
swirl of men at the viaduct, a breaking of the embankment to the east of
it, the forming of a whirlpool there that ate up homes and those that
dwelt in them, as a cauldron of molten iron eats up the metal scraps
that are thrown in to cool it, and then a silence and a subsidence.
It was a quarter of four o'clock. At half-past three there had been a
Johnstown. Now there was none.
CHAPTER VIII.
Volumes might be written of the sufferings endured and valor exhibited
by the survivors of the flood, or of the heart-rending grief with which
so many were stricken. At Johnstown an utterly wretched woman named Mrs.
Fenn stood by a muddy pool of water trying to find some trace of a once
happy home. She was half crazed with grief, and her eyes were red and
swollen. As a correspondent stepped to her side she raised her pale,
haggard face and remarked:
"They are all gone. O God! be merciful to them! My husband and my seven
dear little children have been swept down with the flood, and I am left
alone. We were driven by the awful flood into the garret, but the water
followed us there. Inch by inch it kept rising, until our heads were
crushing against the roof. It was death to remain. So I raised a window,
and one by one, placed my darlings on some driftwood, trusting to the
great Creator. As I liberated the last one, my sweet little boy, he
looked at me and said: 'Mamma, you always told me that the Lord would
care for me; will He look after me now?' I saw him drift away with his
loving face turned toward me, and, with a prayer on my lips for his
deliverance, he passed from sight forever. The next moment the roof
crashed in, and I floated outside, to be rescued fifteen hours later
from the roof of a house in Kernsville. If I could only find one of my
darlings I could bow to the will of God, but they are all gone. I have
lost everything on earth now but my life, and I will return to my old
Virginia home and lay me down for my last great sleep."
A handsome woman, with hair as black as a raven's wing, walked through
the depot where a dozen or more bodies were awaiting burial. Passing
from one to another, she finally lifted the paper covering from the face
of a woman, young, and with traces of beauty showing through the stains
of muddy water, and with a cry of anguish she reeled backward to be
caught by a rugged man who chanced to be passing. In a moment or so she
had calmed herself sufficiently to take one more look at the features of
her dead. She stood gazing at the corpse as if dumb. Finally, turning
away with another wild burst of grief, she said: "And her beautiful hair
all matted and her sweet face so bruised and stained with mud and
water!" The dead woman was the sister of the mourner. The body was
placed in a coffin a few minutes later and sent away to its narrow
house.
A woman was seen to smile, one morning just after the catastrophe, as
she came down the steps of Prospect Hill, at Johnstown. She ran down
lightly, turning up toward the stone bridge. She passed the little
railroad station where the undertakers were at work embalming the dead,
and walked slowly until she got opposite the station. Then she stopped
and danced a few steps. There was but a small crowd there. The woman
raised her hands above her head and sang. She became quiet and then
suddenly burst into a frenzied fit of weeping and beat her forehead with
her hands. She tore her dress, which was already in rags.
"I shall go crazy," she screamed, "if they do not find his body."
The poor woman could not go crazy, as her mind had been already
shattered.
"He was a good man," she went on, while the onlookers listened
pityingly. "I loved him and he loved me."
"Where is he?" she screamed. "I must find him."
And she started at the top of her speed down the track toward the river.
Some men caught her. She struggled desperately for a few moments, and
then fainted.
Her name was Eliza Adams, and she was a bride of but two months. Her
husband was a foreman at the Cambria Iron Works and was drowned.
[Illustration: JOHNSTOWN--VIEW COR. MAIN AND CLINTON STS.]
The body of a beautiful young girl of twenty was found wedged in a mass
of ruins just below the Cambria Iron Works. She was taken out and laid
on the damp grass. She was tall, slender, of well-rounded form, clad in
a long red wrapper, with lace at her throat and wrists. Her feet were
encased in pretty embroidered slippers. Her face was a study for an
artist. Features clear cut as though chiseled from Parian marble; and,
strangely enough, they bore not the slightest disfigurement, and had not
the swelled and puffed appearance that was present in nearly all the
other drowned victims. A smile rested on her lips. Her hair, which had
evidently been golden, was matted with mud and fell in heavy masses to
her waist.
"Does any one know her?" was asked of the silent group that had gathered
around.
No one did, and she was carried to the improvised morgue in the
school-house, and now fills a grave as one of the "unidentified dead."
Miss Rose Clark was fastened in the debris at the railroad bridge, at
Johnstown. The force of the water had torn all of her garments off and
pinned her left leg below the water between two beams. She was more
calm than the men who were trying to rescue her. The flames were coming
nearer, and the intense heat scorching her bare skin. She begged the men
to cut off the imprisoned leg. Finally half of the men turned and fought
the fire, while the rest endeavored to rescue Miss Clark. After six
hours of hard work, and untold suffering by the brave little lady she
was taken from the ruins in a dead faint. She was one mass of bruises,
from her breast to her knees, and her left arm and leg were broken.
Just below Johnstown, on the Conemaugh, three women were working on the
ruins of what had been their home. An old arm-chair was taken from the
ruins by the men. When one of the women saw the chair, it brought back a
wealth of memory, probably the first since the flood occurred, and
throwing herself on her knees on the wreck she gave way to a flood of
tears.
"Where in the name of God," she sobbed, "did you get that chair? It was
mine--no, I don't want it. Keep it and find for me, if you can, my
album. In it are the faces of my husband and little girl."
Patrick Downs was a worker in one of the mills of the Cambria Iron
Works. He had a wife and a fourteen-year-old daughter, Jessie Downs, who
was a great favorite with the sturdy, hard-handed fellow-workmen of her
father.
She was of rare beauty and sweetness. Her waving, golden-yellow hair,
brushed away from a face of wondrous whiteness, was confined by a ribbon
at the neck. Lustrous Irish blue eyes lighted up the lovely face and
ripe, red lips parted in smiles for the workmen in the mills, every one
of whom was her lover.
Jessie was in the mill when the flood struck the town, and had not been
seen since till the work of cleaning up the Cambria plant was begun in
earnest. Then, in the cellar of the building a workman spied a little
shoe protruding from a closely packed bed of sandy mud. In a few moments
the body of Jessie Downs was uncovered.
The workmen who had been in such scenes as this for six days stood about
with uncovered heads and sobbed like babies. The body had not been
bruised nor hurt in any way, the features being composed as if in sleep.
The men gathered up the body of their little sweetheart and were
carrying it through the town on a stretcher when they met poor Patrick
Downs. He gazed upon the form of his baby, but never a tear was in his
eye, and he only thanked God that she had not suffered in contest with
the angry waves.
He had but a moment before identified the body of his wife among the
dead recovered, and the mother and child were laid away together in one
grave on Grove Hill, and the father resumed work with the others.
Dr. Lowman is one of the most prominent physicians of Western
Pennsylvania. His residence in Johnstown was protected partially from
the avalanche of water by the Methodist Church, which is a large stone
structure. Glancing up-stream, the Doctor saw advancing what seemed to
be a huge mountain. Grasping the situation, he ran in and told the
family to get to the top floors as quickly as possible. They had
scarcely reached the second floor when the water was pouring into the
windows. They went higher up, and the water followed them, but it soon
reached its extreme height.
While the family were huddled in the third story the Doctor looked out
and saw a young girl floating toward the window on a door. He smashed
the glass, and, at the great risk of his own life, succeeded in hauling
the door toward him and lifting the girl through the window. She had not
been there long when one corner of the building gave way and she became
frightened. She insisted on taking a shutter and floating down-stream.
In vain did the Doctor try to persuade her to forego such a suicidal
attempt. She said that she was a good swimmer, and that, once out in the
water, she had no fears for her ultimate safety. Resisting all
entreaties and taking a shutter from the window, she plunged out into
the surging waters, and has not since been heard from.
When the girl deserted the house, Dr. Lowman and his family made their
way to the roof. While up there another corner of the house gave way.
After waiting for several hours, the intervening space between the bank
building and the dwelling became filled with drift. The Doctor gathered
his family around him, and after a perilous walk they all reached the
objective point in safety. Dr. Lowman's aged father was one of the
party. When his family was safe Dr. Lowman started to rescue other
unfortunates. All day Saturday he worked like a beaver in water to his
neck, and he saved the lives of many.
No man returns from the valley of death with more horrible remembrance
of the flood than Dr. Henry H. Phillips, of Pittsburg. He is the only
one known to be saved out of a household of thirteen, among whom was his
feeble old mother and other near and dear friends. His own life was
saved by his happening to step out upon the portico of the house just as
the deluge came. Dr. Phillips had gone to Johnstown to bring his mother,
who was an invalid, to his home in the East End. They had intended
starting for Pittsburg Friday morning, but Mrs. Phillips did not feel
able to make the journey, and it was postponed until the next day. In
the meantime the flood began to come, and during the afternoon of Friday
the family retired to the upper floors of the house for safety. There
were thirteen in the house, including little Susan McWilliams, the
twelve-year-old daughter of Mr. W. H. McWilliams, of Pittsburg, who was
visiting her aunt, Mrs. Phillips; Dr. L. T. Beam, son-in-law of Mrs.
Phillips; another niece, and Mrs. Dowling, a neighbor. The latter had
come there with her children because the Phillips house was a brick
structure while her own was frame. Its destruction proved to be the more
sudden and complete on account of the material.
The water was a foot deep on the first floor, and the family were
congratulating themselves that they were so comfortably situated in the
upper story, when Dr. Phillips heard a roaring up toward the Cambria
Iron Works. Without a thought of the awful truth, he stepped out upon
the portico of the house to see what it meant. A wall of water and
wreckage loomed up before him like a roaring cloud. Before he could turn
back or cry out he saw a house, that rode the flood like a chip, come
between him and his vision of the window. Then all was dark, and the
cold water seemed to wrap him up and toss him to a house-top three
hundred yards from where that of his mother had stood. Gathering his
shattered wits together the Doctor saw he was floating about in the
midst of a black pool. Dark objects were moving all about him, and
although there was some light, he could not recognize any of the
surroundings. For seventeen hours he drifted about upon the wreckage
where fate had tossed him. Then rescuers came, and he was taken to safe
quarters. A long search has so far failed to elicit any tidings of the
twelve persons in the Phillips' house.
Mr. G. B. Hartley, of Philadelphia, was one of the five out of
fifty-five guests of the Hurlburt House who survived.
"The experience I passed through at Johnstown on that dreadful Friday
night," said Mr. Hartley to a correspondent, "is like a horrible
nightmare in a picture before me. When the great rush of water came I
was sitting in the parlors of the Hurlburt House. Suddenly we were
startled to hear several loud shouts on the streets. These cries were
accompanied by a loud, crashing noise. At the first sound we all rushed
from the room panic-stricken. There was a crash and I found myself
pinned down by broken boards and debris of different kinds. The next
moment I felt the water surging in. I knew it went higher than my head
because I felt it. The water must have passed like a flash or I would
not have come out alive. After the shock I could see that the entire
roof of the hotel had been carried off. Catching hold of something I
manged to pull myself up on to the roof. The roof had slid off and lay
across the street. On the roof I had a chance to observe my
surroundings. Down on the extreme edge of the roof I espied the
proprietor of the hotel, Mr. Benford. He was nearly exhausted, and it
required every effort for him to hold to the roof. Cautiously advancing,
I managed to creep down to where he was holding. I tried to pull him up,
but found I was utterly powerless. Mr. Benford was nearly as weak as
myself, and could do very little toward helping himself. We did not give
up, however, and in a few minutes, by dint of struggling and putting
forth every bit of strength, Mr. Benford managed to crawl upon the roof.
Crouching and shivering on another part of the roof were two girls, one
a chamber-maid of the hotel, and the other a clerk in a store that was
next to it. The latter was in a pitiable plight. Her arm had been torn
from its socket. I took off my overcoat and gave it to her. Mr. Benford
did the same thing for the other, for it was quite chilly. A young man
was nursing his mother, who had had her scalp completely torn off. He
asked me to hold her head until he could make a bandage. He tore a thick
strip of cloth and placed it round her head. The blood saturated it
before it was well on. Soon after this I was rescued more dead than
alive."
CHAPTER IX.
Many of the most thrilling sights and experiences were those of railroad
employees and passengers. Mr. Henry, the engineer of the second section
of express train No. 8, which runs between Pittsburg and Altoona, was at
Conemaugh when the great flood came sweeping down the valley. He was
able to escape to a place of safety. His was the only train that was not
injured, even though it was in the midst of the great wave. The story as
related by Mr. Henry is most graphic.
"It was an awful sight," he said. "I have often seen pictures of flood
scenes and I thought they were exaggerations, but what I witnessed last
Friday changes my former belief. To see that immense volume of water,
fully fifty feet high, rushing madly down the valley, sweeping
everything before it, was a thrilling sight. It is engraved indelibly on
my memory. Even now I can see that mad torrent carrying death and
destruction before it.
"The second section of No. 8, on which I was, was due at Johnstown
about quarter past ten in the morning. We arrived there safely and were
told to follow the first section. When we arrived at Conemaugh the first
section and the mail were there. Washouts further up the mountain
prevented our going on, so we could do nothing but sit around and
discuss the situation. The creek at Conemaugh was swollen high, almost
overflowing. The heavens were pouring rain, but this did not prevent
nearly all the inhabitants of the town from gathering along its banks.
They watched the waters go dashing by and wondered whether the creek
would get much higher. But a few inches more and it would overflow its
banks. There seemed to be a feeling of uneasiness among the people. They
seemed to fear that something awful was going to happen. Their
suspicions were strengthened by the fact that warning had come down the
valley for the people to be on the lookout. The rains had swollen
everything to the bursting point. The day passed slowly, however. Noon
came and went, and still nothing happened. We could not proceed, nor
could we go back, as the tracks about a mile below Conemaugh had been
washed away, so there was nothing for us to do but to wait and see what
would come next.
"Some time after three o'clock Friday afternoon I went into the train
dispatcher's office to learn the latest news. I had not been there long
when I heard a fierce whistling from an engine away up the mountain.
Rushing out I found dozens of men standing around. Fear had blanched
every cheek. The loud and continued whistling had made every one feel
that something serious was going to happen. In a few moments I could
hear a train rattling down the mountain. About five hundred yards above
Conemaugh the tracks make a slight curve and we could not see beyond
this. The suspense was something awful. We did not know what was coming,
but no one could get rid of the thought that something was wrong at the
dam.
"Our suspense was not very long, however. Nearer and nearer the train
came, the thundering sound still accompanying it. There seemed to be
something behind the train, as there was a dull, rumbling sound which I
knew did not come from the train. Nearer and nearer it came; a moment
more and it would reach the curve. The next instant there burst upon our
eyes a sight that made every heart stand still. Rushing around the
curve, snorting and tearing, came an engine and several gravel cars. The
train appeared to be putting forth every effort to go faster. Nearer it
came, belching forth smoke and whistling long and loud. But the most
terrible sight was to follow. Twenty feet behind came surging along a
mad rush of water fully fifty feet high. Like the train, it seemed to
be putting forth every effort to push along faster. Such an awful race
we never before witnessed. For an instant the people seemed paralyzed
with horror. They knew not what to do, but in a moment they realized
that a second's delay meant death to them. With one accord they rushed
to the high lands a few hundred feet away. Most of them succeeded in
reaching that place and were safe.
"I thought of the passengers in my train. The second section of No. 8
had three sleepers. In these three cars were about thirty people, who
rushed through the train crying to the others 'Save yourselves!' Then
came a scene of the wildest confusion. Ladies and children shrieked and
the men seemed terror-stricken. I succeeded in helping some ladies and
children off the train and up to the high lands. Running back, I caught
up two children and ran for my life to a higher place. Thank God, I was
quicker than the flood! I deposited my load in safety on the high land
just as it swept past us.
"For nearly an hour we stood watching the mad flood go rushing by. The
water was full of debris. When the flood caught Conemaugh it dashed
against the little town with a mighty crash. The water did not lift the
houses up and carry them off, but crushed them up one against the other
and broke them up like so many egg-shells. Before the flood came there
was a pretty little town. When the waters passed on there was nothing
but a few broken boards to mark the central portion of the city. It was
swept as clean as a newly-brushed floor. When the flood passed onward
down the valley I went over to my train. It had been moved back about
twenty yards, but it was not damaged. About fifteen persons had remained
in the train and they were safe. Of the three trains ours was the
luckiest. The engines of both the others had been swept off the track,
and one or two cars in each train had met the same fate. What saved our
train was the fact that just at the curve which I mentioned the valley
spread out. The valley is six or seven hundred yards broad where our
train was standing. This, of course, let the floods pass out. It was
only about twenty feet high when it struck our train, which was about in
the middle of the valley. This fact, together with the elevation of the
track, was all that saved us. We stayed that night in the houses in
Conemaugh that had not been destroyed. The next morning I started down
the valley and by four o'clock in the afternoon had reached Conemaugh
furnace, eight miles west of Johnstown. Then I got a team and came home.
"In my tramp down the valley I saw some awful sights. On the tree
branches hung shreds of clothing torn from the unfortunates as they
were whirled along in the terrible rush of the torrent. Dead bodies were
lying by scores along the banks of the creeks. One woman I helped drag
from the mud had tightly clutched in her hand a paper. We tore it out of
her hand and found it to be a badly water-soaked photograph. It was
probably a picture of the drowned woman."
Pemberton Smith is a civil engineer employed by the Pennsylvania
Railroad. On Friday, when the disaster occurred, he was at Johnstown,
stopping at the Merchants' Hotel. What happened he described as follows:
"In the afternoon, with four associates, I spent the time playing
checkers in the hotel, the streets being flooded during the day. At
half-past four we were startled by shrill whistles. Thinking a fire was
the cause, we looked out of the window. Great masses of people were
rushing through the water in the street, which had been there all day,
and still we thought the alarm was fire. All of a sudden the roar of the
water burst upon our ears, and in an instant more the streets were
filled with debris. Great houses and business blocks began to topple and
crash into each other and go down as if they were toy-block houses.
People in the streets were drowning on all sides. One of our company
started down-stairs and was drowned. The other four, including myself,
started up-stairs, for the water was fast rising. When we got on the
roof we could see whole blocks swept away as if by magic. Hundreds of
people were floating by, clinging to roofs of houses, rafts, timbers, or
anything they could get a hold of. The hotel began to tremble, and we
made our way to an adjoining roof. Soon afterward part of the hotel went
down. The brick structures seemed to fare worse than frame buildings, as
the latter would float, while the brick would crash and tumble into one
great mass of ruins. We finally climbed into a room of the last building
in reach and stayed there all night, in company with one hundred and
sixteen other people, among the number being a crazy man. His wife and
family had all been drowned only a few hours before, and he was a raving
maniac. And what a night! Sleep! Yes, I did a little, but every now and
then a building near by would crash against us, and we would all jump,
fearing that at last our time had come.
"Finally morning dawned. In company with one of my associates we climbed
across the tops of houses and floating debris, built a raft, and poled
ourselves ashore to the hillside. I don't know how the others escaped.
This was seven o'clock on Saturday morning. We started on foot for South
Fork, arriving there at three P. M. Here we found that all communication
by telegraph and railroad was cut off by the flood, and we had naught
to do but retrace our steps. Tired and footsore! Well, I should say so.
My gum-boots had chafed my feet so I could hardly walk at all. The
distance we covered on foot was over fifty miles. On Sunday we got a
train to Altoona. Here we found the railroad connections all cut off, so
we came back to Johnstown again on Monday. And what a desolate place! I
had to obtain a pass to go over into the city. Here it is:
"Pass Pemberton Smith through all the streets.
"ALEC. HART, Chief of Police.
"A. J. MAXHAM, Acting Mayor."
"The tragic pen-pictures of the scenes in the press dispatches have not
been exaggerated. They cannot be. The worse sight of all was to see the
great fire at the railroad-bridge. It makes my blood fairly curdle to
think of it. I could see the lurid flames shoot heavenward all night
Friday, and at the same time hundreds of people were floating right
toward them on top of houses, etc., and to meet a worse death than
drowning. To look at a sight like this and not be able to render a
particle of assistance seemed awful to bear. I had a narrow escape,
truly. In my mind I can hear the shrieks of men, women, and children,
the maniac's ravings, and the wild roar of a sea of water sweeping
everything before it."
[Illustration: VIEW ON CLINTON ST., JOHNSTOWN.]
Among the lost was Miss Jennie Paulson, a passenger on a railroad
train, whose fate is thus described by one of her comrades:
"We had been making but slow progress all the day. Our train lay at
Johnstown nearly the whole day of Friday. We then proceeded as far as
Conemaugh, and had stopped from some cause or other, probably on account
of the flood. Miss Paulson and a Miss Bryan were seated in front of me.
Miss Paulson had on a plaid dress, with shirred waist of red cloth
goods. Her companion was dressed in black. Both had lovely corsage
bouquets of roses. I had heard that they had been attending a wedding
before they left Pittsburg. The Pittsburg lady was reading a novel
entitled _Miss Lou_. Miss Bryan was looking out of the window. When the
alarm came we all sprang toward the door, leaving everything behind us.
I had just reached the door when poor Miss Paulson and her friend, who
were behind me, decided to return for their rubbers, which they did. I
sprang from the car into a ditch next the hillside, in which the water
was already a foot and a-half deep, and, with the others, climbed up the
mountain side for our very lives. We had to do so, as the water glided
up after us like a huge serpent. Any one ten feet behind us would have
been lost beyond a doubt. I glanced back at the train when I had reached
a place of safety, but the water already covered it, and the Pullman
car in which the ladies were was already rolling down the valley in the
grasp of the angry waters."
Mr. William Scheerer, the teller of the State Banking Company, of
Newark, N. J., was among the passengers on the ill-fated day express on
the Pennsylvania Railroad that left Pittsburg at eight o'clock A. M., on
the now historic Friday, bound for New York.
There was some delays incidental to the floods in the Conemaugh Valley
before the train reached Johnstown, and a further delay at that point,
and the train was considerably behind time when it left Johnstown. Said
Mr. Scheerer: "The parlor car was fully occupied when I went aboard the
train, and a seat was accordingly given me in the sleeper at the rear
end of the train. There were several passengers in this car, how many I
cannot say exactly, among them some ladies. It was raining hard all the
time and we were not a very excited nor a happy crowd, but were whiling
away the time in reading and in looking at the swollen torrent of the
river. Very few of the people were apprehensive of any danger in the
situation, even after we had been held up at Conemaugh for nearly five
hours.
"The railroad tracks where our train stopped were full fourteen feet
above the level of the river, and there was a large number of freight
and passenger cars and locomotives standing on the tracks near us and
strung along up the road for a considerable distance. Between the road
and the hill that lay at our left there was a ditch, through which the
water that came down from the hill was running like a mill-race. It was
a monotonous wait to all of us, and after a time many inquiries were
made as to why we did not go ahead. Some of the passengers who made the
inquiry were answered laconically--'Wash-out,' and with this they had to
be satisfied. I had been over the road several times before, and knew of
the existence of the dangerous and threatening dam up in the South Fork
gorge, and could not help connecting it in my mind with the cause of our
delay. But neither was I apprehensive of danger, for the possibility of
the dam giving away had been often discussed by passengers in my
presence, and everybody supposed that the utmost damage it would do when
it broke, as everybody believed it sometime would, would be to swell a
little higher the current that tore down through the Conemaugh Valley.
"Such a possibility as the carrying away of a train of cars on the great
Pennsylvania road was never seriously entertained by anybody. We had
stood stationary until about four o'clock, when two colored porters went
through the car within a short time of each other, looking and acting
rather excited. I asked the first one what the matter was, and he
replied that he did not know. I inferred from his reply that if there
was any thing serious up, the passengers would be informed, and so I
went on reading. When the next man came along I asked him if the
reservoir had given way, and he said he thought it had.
"I put down my book and stepped out quickly to the rear platform, and
was horrified at the sight that met my gaze up the valley. It seemed as
if a forest was coming down upon us. There was a great wall of water
roaring and grinding swiftly along, so thickly studded with the trees
from along the mountain sides that it looked like a gigantic avalanche
of trees. Of course I lingered but an instant, for the mortal danger we
all were in flashed upon me at the first sight of that terrible
on-coming torrent. But in that instant I saw an engine lifted bodily off
the track and thrown over backward into the whirlpool, where it
disappeared, and houses crushed and broken up in the flash of an eye.
"The noise was like incessant thunder. I turned back into the car and
shouted to the ladies, three of whom alone were in the car at the
moment, to fly for their lives. I helped them out of the car on the side
toward the hill, and urged them to jump across the ditch and run for
their lives. Two of them did so, but the third, a rather heavy lady, a
missionary, who was on her way to a foreign station, hesitated for an
instant, doubtful if she could make the jump. That instant cost her her
life. While I was holding out my hand to her and urging her to jump, the
rush of waters came down and swept her, like a doll, down into the
torrent. In the same instant an engine was thrown from the track into
the ditch at my feet. The water was about my knees as I turned and
scrambled up the hill, and when I looked back, ten seconds later, it was
surging and grinding ten feet deep over the track I had just left.
"The rush of waters lasted three-quarters of an hour, while we stood
rapt and spell-bound in the rain, looking at the ruin no human agency
could avert. The scene was beyond the power of language to describe. You
would see a building standing in apparent security above the swollen
banks of the river, the people rushing about the doors, some seeming to
think that safety lay indoors, while others rushed toward higher ground,
stumbling and falling in the muddy streets, and then the flood rolled
over them, crushing in the house with a crash like thunder, and burying
house and people out of sight entirely. That, of course, was the scene
of only an instant, for our range of vision was only over a small
portion of the city.
"We sought shelter from the rain in the home of a farmer who lived high
up on the side-hill, and the next morning walked down to Johnstown and
viewed the ruins. It seemed as if the city was utterly destroyed. The
water was deep over all the city and few people were visible. We
returned to Conemaugh and were driven over the mountains to Ebensburg,
where we took the train for Altoona, but finding we could get no further
in that direction we turned back to Ebensburg, and from there went by
wagon to Johnstown, where we found a train that took us to Pittsburg. I
got home by the New York Central."
CHAPTER X.
Edward H. Jackson, who worked in the Cambria Iron Works, told the
following story:
"When we were going to work Friday morning at seven o'clock, May 31st,
the water in the river was about six inches below the top of the banks,
the rains during the night having swollen it. We were used to floods
about this time of the year, the water always washing the streets and
running into the cellars, so we did not pay much attention to this
fact. It continued rising, and about nine o'clock we left work in order
to go back to our homes and take our furniture and carpets to the upper
floors, as we had formerly done on similar occasions. At noon the water
was on our first floors, and kept rising until there was five feet of
water in our homes. It was still raining hard. We were all in the upper
stories about half-past four, when the first intimation we had of
anything unusual was a frightful crash, and the same moment our house
toppled over. Jumping to the windows, we saw the water rushing down the
streets in immense volumes, carrying with it houses, barns, and, worst
of all, screaming, terrified men, women, and children. In my house were
Colonel A. N. Hart, who is my uncle, his wife, sister, and two children.
They watched their chance, and when a slowly moving house passed by they
jumped to the roof and by careful manoeuvring managed to reach Dr. S.
M. Swan's house, a three-story brick building, where there were about
two hundred other people. I jumped on to a tender of an engine as it
floated down and reached the same house. All the women and children were
hysterical, most of the men were paralyzed by terror, and to describe
the scene is simply impossible. From the windows of this house we threw
ropes to persons who floated by on the roofs of houses, and in this way
we saved several.
"Our condition in the house was none of the pleasantest. There was
nothing to eat; it was impossible to sleep, even had any one desired to
do so; when thirsty we were compelled to catch the rain-water as it fell
from the roof and drink it. Other people had gone for safety in the same
manner as we had to two other brick houses, H. Y. Hawse's residence and
Alma Hall's, and they went through precisely the same experience as we
did. Many of our people were badly injured and cut, and they were
tended bravely and well by Dr. W. E. Matthews, although he himself was
badly injured. During the evening we saved by ropes W. Forrest Rose, his
wife, daughter, and four boys. Mr. Rose's collar-bone and one rib were
broken. After a fearful night we found, when day broke, that the water
had subsided, and I and some others of the men crawled out upon the
rubbish and debris to search for food, for our people were starving. All
we could find were water-soaked crackers and some bananas, and these
were eagerly eaten by the famished sufferers.
"Then, during the morning, began the thieving. I saw men bursting open
trunks, putting valuables in their pockets, and then looking for more. I
did not know these people, but I am sure they must have lived in the
town, for surely no others could have got there at this time. A meeting
was held, Colonel Hart was made Chief of Police, and he at once gave
orders that any one caught stealing should be shot without warning.
Notwithstanding this we afterward found scores of bodies, the fingers of
which were cut off, the fiends not wishing to waste time to take off the
rings. Many corpses of women were seen from which the ears had been cut,
in order to secure the diamond earrings.
"Then, to add to our horrors, the debris piled up against the bridge
caught fire, and as the streets were full of oil, it was feared that the
flames would extend backwards, but happily for us this was not the case.
It was pitiful to hear the cries of those who had been caught in the
rubbish, and, after having been half drowned, had to face death as
inevitable as though bound to a stake. The bodies of those burned to
death will never be recognized, and of those drowned many were so badly
disfigured by being battered against the floating houses that they also
will be unrecognizable. It is said that Charles Butler, the assistant
treasurer of the Cambria Iron Works, who was in the Hurlburt House,
convinced that he could not escape and wishing his body to be
recognized, pinned his photograph and a letter to the lapel of his coat,
where they were found when his body was recovered. I have lost
everything I owned in the world," said Mr. Jackson, in conclusion, "and
hundreds of others are in the same condition. The money in the banks is
all right, however, for it was stowed away in the vaults."
Frank McDonald, a railroad conductor, says:
"I certainly think I saw one thousand bodies go over the bridge. The
first house that came down struck the bridge and at once took fire, and
as fast as the others came down they were consumed. I believe I am safe
in saying I saw one thousand bodies burn. It reminded me of a lot of
flies on fly-paper struggling to get away, with no hope and no chance
to save them. I have no idea that had the bridge been blown up the loss
of life would have been any less. They would have floated a little
further with the same certain death. Then, again, it was impossible for
any one to have reached the bridge in order to blow it up, for the
waters came so fast that no one could have done it."
Michael Renesen tells a wonderful story of his escape. He says he was
walking down Main Street when he heard a rumbling noise, and, looking
around, he imagined it was cloud, but in a minute the water was upon
him. He floated with the tide for some time, when he was struck with
some floating timber and borne underneath the water. When he came up he
was struck again, and at last he was caught by a lightning rod and held
there for over two hours, when he was finally rescued.
Mrs. Anne Williams was sitting sewing when the flood came on. She heard
some people crying and jumped out of the window and succeeded in getting
on the roof of an adjoining house. Under the roof she heard the cries of
men and women, and saw two men and a woman with their heads just above
the water, crying "For God's sake, either kill us outright or rescue
us!"
Mrs. Williams cried for help for the drowning people, but none came,
and she saw them give up one by one.
James F. McCanagher had a thrilling experience in the water. He saw his
wife was safe on land, and thought his only daughter, a girl aged about
twenty-one, was also saved, but just as he was making for the shore he
saw her and went to rescue her. He succeeded in getting within about ten
feet of land, when the girl said, "Good-bye, father," and expired in his
arms before he reached the shore.
James M. Walters, an attorney, spent Friday night in Alma Hall, and
relates a thrilling story. One of the most curious occurrences of the
whole disaster was how Mr. Walters got to the hall. He has his office on
the second floor. His home is at No. 135 Walnut Street. He says he was
in the house with his family when the waters struck it. All was carried
away. Mr. Walters' family drifted on a roof in another direction; he
passed down several streets and alleys until he came to the hall. His
dwelling struck that edifice and he was thrown into his own office.
About three hundred persons had taken refuge in the hall and were on the
second, third, and fourth stories. The men held a meeting and drew up
some rules which all were bound to respect.
Mr. Walters was chosen president, and Rev. Mr. Beale was put in charge
of the first floor, A. M. Hart of the second floor, Dr. Matthews of the
fourth floor. No lights were allowed, and the whole night was spent in
darkness. The sick were cared for, the weaker women and children had the
best accommodation that could be had, while the others had to wait. The
scenes were most agonizing. Heartrending shrieks, sobs, and moans
pierced the gloomy darkness. The crying of children mingled with the
suppressed sobs of the women. Under the guardianship of the men all took
more hope. No one slept during all the long, dark night. Many knelt for
hours in prayer, their supplications mingling with the roar of the
waters and the shrieks of the dying in the surrounding houses.
In all this misery two women gave premature birth to children, Dr.
Matthews is a hero--several of his ribs were crushed by a falling
timber, and his pains were most severe. Yet through all he attended the
sick. When two women in a house across the street shouted for help, he,
with two other brave young men, climbed across the drift and ministered
to their wants. No one died during the night, but a woman and children
surrendered their lives on the succeeding day as a result of terror and
fatigue. Miss Rose Young, one of the young ladies in the hall, was
frightfully cut and bruised. Mrs. Young had a leg broken. All of Mr.
Walters' family were saved.
Mrs. J. F. Moore, wife of a Western Union Telegraph employee in
Pittsburg, escaped with her two children from the devastated city just
one hour before the flood had covered their dwelling-place. Mr. Moore
had arranged to have his family move Thursday from Johnstown and join
him in Pittsburg. Their household goods were shipped on Thursday and
Friday. The little party caught the last train which made the trip
between Johnstown and Pittsburg.
Mrs. Moore told her story. "Oh! it was terrible," she said. "The
reservoir had not yet burst when we left, but the boom had broken, and
before we got out of the house the water filled the cellar. On the way
to the depot the water was high up on the carriage wheels. Our train
left at quarter to two P. M., and at that time the flood had begun to
rise with terrible rapidity. Houses and sheds were carried away and two
men were drowned almost before our eyes. People gathered on the roofs to
take refuge from the water, which poured into the lower rooms of their
dwellings, and many families took flight and became scattered. Just as
the train pulled out I saw a woman crying bitterly. Her house had been
flooded and she had escaped, leaving her husband behind, and her fears
for his safety made her almost crazy. Our house was in the lower part of
the town, and it makes me shudder to think what would have happened had
we remained in it an hour longer. So far as I know, we were the only
passengers from Johnstown on the train."
Mrs. Moore's little son told the reporter that he had seen the rats
driven out of their holes by the flood and running along the tops of the
fences.
One old man named Parsons, with his wife and children, as soon as the
water struck their house, took to the roof and were carried down to the
stone bridge, where the back wash of the Stony Creek took them back up
along the banks and out of harm's way, but not before a daughter-in-law
became a prey to the torrent. He has lived here for thirty-five years,
and had acquired a nice, comfortable home. To-day all is gone, and as he
told the story he pointed to a rather seedy-looking coat he had on. "I
had to ask a man for it. It's hard, but I am ruined, and I am too old to
begin over again."
Mr. Lewis was a well-to-do young man, and owned a good property where
now is a barren waste. When the flood came the entire family of eight
took to the roof, and were carried along on the water. Before they
reached the stone bridge, a family of four that had floated down from
Woodvale, two and a half miles distant, on a raft, got off to the roof
of the Lewis House, where the entire twelve persons were pushed to the
bank of the river above the bridge, and all were saved. When Mr. Lewis
was telling his story he seemed grateful to the Almighty for his safety
while thousands were lost to him.
Another young man who had also taken to a friendly roof, became
paralyzed with fear, and stripping himself of his clothes flung himself
from the housetop into the stream and tried to swim. The force of the
water rushed him over to the west bank of the river, where he was picked
up soon after.
A baby's cradle was fished out of a ruin and the neatly tucked-in sheets
and clothes, although soiled with mud, gave evidence of luxury. The
entire family was lost, and no one is here to lay claim to baby's crib.
In the ruin of the Penn House the library that occupied the extension
was entirely gone, while the brick front was taken out and laid bare the
parlor floor, in which the piano, turned upside down, was noticeable,
while several chandeliers were scattered on top.
[Illustration: MAIN AND CLINTON STREETS, LOOKING SOUTHWEST.]
CHAPTER XI.
The first survivors of the Johnstown wreck who arrived at Pittsburg were
Joseph and Henry Lauffer and Lew Dalmeyer. They endured considerable
hardship and had several narrow escapes with their lives. Their story of
the disaster can best be told in their own language. Joe, the youngest
of the Lauffer brothers, said:
"My brother and I left on Thursday for Johnstown. The night we arrived
there it rained continually, and on Friday morning it began to flood. I
started for the Cambria store at a quarter-past eight on Friday, and in
fifteen minutes afterward I had to get out of the store in a wagon, the
water was running so rapidly. We then arrived at the station and took
the day express and went as far as Conemaugh, where we had to stop. The
limited, however, got through, and just as we were about to start the
bridge at South Fork gave way with a terrific crash, and we had to stay
there. We then went to Johnstown. This was at a quarter to ten in the
morning, when the flood was just beginning. The whole city of Johnstown
was inundated and the people all moved up to the second floor.
"Now this is where the trouble occurred. These poor unfortunates did not
know the reservoir would burst, and there are no skiffs in Johnstown to
escape in. When the South Fork basin gave way mountains of water twenty
feet high came rushing down the Conemaugh River, carrying before them
death and destruction. I shall never forget the harrowing scene. Just
think of it! thousands of people, men, and women, and children,
struggling and weeping and wailing as they were being carried suddenly
away in the raging current. Houses were picked up as if they were but a
feather, and their inmates were all carried away with them, while cries
of 'God help me!' 'Save me!' 'I am drowning!' 'My child!' and the like
were heard on all sides. Those who were lucky enough to escape went to
the mountains, and there they beheld the poor unfortunates being crushed
to death among the debris without any chance of being rescued. Here and
there a body was seen to make a wild leap into the air and then sink to
the bottom.
"At the stone bridge of the Pennsylvania Railroad people were dashed to
death against the piers. When the fire started there hundreds of bodies
were burned. Many lookers-on up on the mountains, especially the woman,
fainted."
Mr. Lauffer's brother, Harry, then told his part of the tale, which was
not less interesting. He said: "We had a series of narrow escapes, and I
tell you we don't want to be around when anything of that kind occurs
again.
"The scenes at Johnstown have not in the least been exaggerated, and,
indeed, the worst is to be heard. When we got to Conemaugh and just as
we were about to start the bridge gave way. This left the day express,
the accommodation, a special train, and a freight train at the station.
Above was the South Fork water basin, and all of the trains were well
filled. We were discussing the situation when suddenly, without any
warning, the whistles of every engine began to shriek, and in the noise
could be heard the warning of the first engineer, 'Fly for your lives!
Rush to the mountains, the reservoir has burst.' Then with a thundering
peal came the mad rush of waters. No sooner had the cry been heard than
those who could rushed from the train with a wild leap and up the
mountains. To tell this story takes some time, but the moments in which
the horrible scene was enacted were few. Then came the avalanche of
water, leaping and rushing with tremendous force. The waves had angry
crests of white, and their roar was something deafening. In one
terrible swath they caught the four trains and lifted three of them
right off the track, as if they were only a cork. There they floated in
the river. Think of it, three large locomotives and finely finished
Pullmans floating around, and above all the hundreds of poor
unfortunates who were unable to escape from the car swiftly drifting
toward death. Just as we were about to leap from the car I saw a mother,
with a smiling, blue-eyed baby in her arms. I snatched it from her and
leaped from the train just as it was lifted off the track. The mother
and child were saved, but if one more minute had elapsed we all would
have perished.
"During all of this time the waters kept rushing down the Conemaugh and
through the beautiful town of Johnstown, picking up everything and
sparing nothing.
"The mountains by this time were black with people, and the moans and
sighs from those below brought tears to the eyes of the most
stony-hearted. There in that terrible rampage were brothers, sisters,
wives and husbands, and from the mountain could be seen the
panic-stricken marks in the faces of those who were struggling between
life and death. I really am unable to do justice to the scene, and its
details are almost beyond my power to relate. Then came the burning of
the debris near the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge. The scene was too
sickening to endure. We left the spot and journeyed across country and
delivered many notes, letters, etc., that were intrusted to us."
The gallant young engineer, John G. Parke, whose ride of warning has
already been described, relates the following:
"On Thursday night I noticed that the dam was in good order and the
water was nearly seven feet from the top. When the water is at this
height the lake is then nearly three miles in length. It rained hard on
Thursday night and I rode up to the end of the lake on the eventful day
and saw that the woods around there was teeming with a seething cauldron
of water. Colonel Unger, the president of the fishing club that owns the
property, put twenty-five Italians to work to fix the dam. A farmer in
the vicinity also lent a willing hand. To strengthen the dam a plow was
run along the top of it, and earth was then thrown into the furrows. On
the west side a channel was dug and a sluice was constructed. We cut
through about four feet of shale rock, when we came to solid rock which
was impossible to cut without blasting. Once we got the channel open the
water leaped down to the bed-rock, and a stream fully twenty feet wide
and three feet deep rushed out on that end of the dam, while great
quantities of water were coming in by the pier at the other end. And
then in the face of this great escape of water from the dam, it kept
rising at the rate of ten inches an hour.
"At noon I fully believed that it was practically impossible to save the
dam, and I got on a horse and galloped down to South Fork, and gave the
alarm, telling the people at the same time of their danger, and advising
them to get to a place of safety. I also sent a couple of men to the
telegraph tower, two miles away, to send messages to Johnstown and
Cambria and to the other points on the way. The young girl at the
instrument fainted when the news reached her, and was carried away.
Then, by the timely warning given, the people at South Fork had an
opportunity to move their household goods and betake themselves to a
place of safety. Only one person was drowned in that place, and he was
trying to save an old washtub that was floating down-stream.
"It was noon when the messages were sent out, so that the people of
Johnstown had just three hours to fly to a place of safety. Why they did
not heed the warning will never be told. I then remounted my horse and
rode to the dam, expecting at every moment to meet the lake rushing down
the mountain-side, but when I reached there I found the dam still
intact, although the water had then reached the top of it. At one P. M.
I walked over the dam, and then the water was about three inches on it,
and was gradually gnawing away its face. As the stream leaped down the
outer face, the water was rapidly wearing down the edge of the
embankment, and I knew that it was a question of but a few hours. From
my knowledge I should say there was fully ten million tons of water in
the lake at one o'clock, while the pressure was largely increased by the
swollen streams that flowed into it, but even then the dam could have
stood it if the level of the water had been kept below the top. But,
coupled with this, there was the constantly trickling of the water over
the sides, which was slowly but surely wearing the banks away.
"The big break took place at just three o'clock, and it was about ten
feet wide at first and shallow; but when the opening was made the
fearful rushing waters opened the gap with such increasing rapidity that
soon after the entire lake leaped out and started on its fearful march
of death down the Valley of the Conemaugh. It took but forty minutes to
drain that three miles of water, and the downpour of millions of tons of
water was irresistible. The big boulders and great rafters and logs that
were in the bed of the river were picked up, like so much chaff, and
carried down the torrent for miles. Trees that stood fully seventy-five
feet in height and four feet through were snapped off like pipe-stems."
CHAPTER XII.
One of the most thrilling incidents of the disaster was the performance
of A. J. Leonard, whose family reside in Morrellville. He was at work,
and hearing that his house had been swept away, determined at all
hazards to ascertain the fate of his family. The bridges having been
carried away, he constructed a temporary raft, and clinging to it as
close as a cat to the side of a fence, he pushed his frail craft out in
the raging torrent and started on a chase which, to all who were
watching, seemed to mean an embrace in death.
Heedless of cries "For God's sake, go back, you will be drowned," and
"Don't attempt it," he persevered. As the raft struck the current he
threw off his coat and in his shirt sleeves braved the stream. Down
plunged the boards and down went Leonard, but as it rose he was seen
still clinging. A mighty shout arose from the throats of the hundreds on
the banks, who were now deeply interested, earnestly hoping he would
successfully ford the stream.
Down again went his bark, but nothing, it seemed, could shake Leonard
off. The craft shot up in the air apparently ten or twelve feet, and
Leonard stuck to it tenaciously. Slowly but surely he worked his boat to
the other side of the stream, and after what seemed an awful suspense he
finally landed, amid ringing cheers of men, women, and children.
The scenes at Heanemyer's planing-mill at Nineveh, where the dead bodies
are lying, are never to be forgotten. The torn, bruised, and mutilated
bodies of the victims are lying in a row on the floor of the
planing-mill, which looks more like the field of Bull Run after that
disastrous battle than a workshop. The majority of the bodies are nude,
their clothing having been torn off. All along the river bits of
clothing--a tiny shoe, a baby dress, a mother's evening wrapper, a
father's coat--and, in fact, every article of wearing apparel
imaginable, may be seen hanging to stumps of trees and scattered on the
bank.
One of the most pitiful sights of this terrible disaster came to notice
when the body of a young lady was taken out of the Conemaugh River. The
woman was apparently quite young, though her features were terribly
disfigured. Nearly all the clothing excepting the shoes was torn off
the body. The corpse was that of a mother, for, although cold in death,
she clasped a young male babe, apparently not more than a year old,
tightly in her arms. The little one was huddled close up to the face of
the mother, who, when she realized their terrible fate, had evidently
raised it to her lips to imprint upon its lips the last kiss it was to
receive in this world. The sight forced many a stout heart to shed
tears. The limp bodies, with matted hair, some with holes in their
heads, eyes knocked out, and all bespattered with blood were a ghastly
spectacle.
Mr. J. M. Fronheiser, one of the Superintendents in the Cambria Iron
Works, lived on Main Street. His house was one of the first to go, and
he himself, his wife, two daughters, son, and baby were thrown into the
raging torrent. His wife and eldest daughter were lost. He, with the
baby, reached a place of safety, and his ten-year-old boy and
twelve-year-old girl floated near enough to be reached. He caught the
little girl, but she cried:
"Let me go, papa, and save brother; my leg is broken and my foot is
caught below."
When he told her he was determined to rescue her, she exclaimed:
"Then, papa, get a sharp knife and cut my leg off. I can stand it."
The little fellow cried to his father: "You can't save me, papa. Both
my feet are caught fast, and I can't hold out any longer. Please get a
pistol and shoot me."
Captain Gageby, of the army, and some neighbors helped to rescue both
children. The girl displayed Spartan fortitude and pluck. All night long
she lay in a bed without a mattress or medical attention in a garret,
the water reaching to the floor below, without a murmur or a whimper. In
the morning she was carried down-stairs, her leg dangling under her, but
when she saw her father at the foot of the stairs, she whispered to
Captain Gageby:
"Poor papa; he is so sad." Then, turning to her father, she threw a kiss
with her hands and laughingly said, "Good morning, papa; I'm all right."
The Pennsylvania Railroad Company's operators at Switch Corner, "S. Q.,"
which is near Sang Hollow, tell thrilling stories of the scenes
witnessed by them on Friday afternoon and evening. Said one of them:
"In order to give you an idea of how the tidal wave rose and fell, let
me say that I kept a measure and timed the rise and fall of the water,
and in forty-eight minutes it fell four and a half feet.
"I believe that when the water goes down about seventy-five children and
fifty grown persons will be found among the weeds and bushes in the
bend of the river just below the tower.
"There the current was very strong, and we saw dozens of people swept
under the trees, and I don't believe that more than one in twenty came
out on the other side."
"They found a little girl in white just now," said one of the other
operators.
"O God!" said the chief operator. "She isn't dead, is she?"
"Yes; they found her in a clump of willow bushes, kneeling on a board,
just about the way we saw her when she went down the river." Turning to
me he said:
"That was the saddest thing we saw all day yesterday. Two men came down
on a little raft, with a little girl kneeling between them, and her
hands raised and praying. She came so close to us we could see her face
and that she was crying. She had on a white dress and looked like a
little angel. She went under that cursed shoot in the willow bushes at
the bend like all the rest, but we did hope she would get through
alive."
"And so she was still kneeling?" he said to his companion, who had
brought the unwelcome news.
"She sat there," was the reply, "as if she was still praying, and there
was a smile on her poor little face, though her mouth was full of mud."
Driving through the mountains a correspondent picked up a ragged little
chap not much more than big enough to walk. From his clothing he was
evidently a refugee.
"Where are your folks?" he was asked.
"We're living at Aunty's now."
"Did you all get out?"
"Oh! we're all right--that is, all except two of sister's babies. Mother
and little sister wasn't home, and they got out all right."
"Where were you?"
"Oh! I was at sister's house. We was all in the water and fire. Sister's
man--her husband, you know--took us up-stairs, and he punched a hole
through the roof, and we all climbed out and got saved."
"How about the babies?"
"Oh! sister was carrying two of them in her arms, and the bureau hit her
and knocked them out, so they went down."
The child had unconsciously caught one of the oddest and most
significant tricks of speech that have arisen from the calamity. Nobody
here speaks of a person's having been drowned, or killed, or lost, or
uses any other of the general expressions for sudden death. They have
simply "gone down." Everybody here seems to avoid harsh words in
referring to the possible affliction of another. Euphonistic phrases are
substituted for plain questions. Two old friends met for the first time
since the disaster.
"I'm glad to see you," exclaimed the first. "Are you all right?"
"Yes, I'm doing first rate," was the reply.
The first friend looked awkwardly about a moment, and then asked with
suppressed eagerness:
"And--and your family--are they all--well?"
There was a world of significance in the hesitation before the last
word.
"Yes. Thank God! not one of them went down."
A man who looked like a prosperous banker, and who had evidently come
from a distance drove through the mountains toward South Fork. On the
way he met a handsome young man in a silk hat, mounted on a mule. The
two shook hands eagerly.
"Have you anything?"
"Nothing. What have you?"
"Nothing."
The younger man turned about and the two rode on silently through the
forest road. Inquiry later developed the fact that the banker-looking
man was really a banker whose daughter had been lost from one of the
overwhelmed trains. The young man was his son. Both had been searching
for some clue to the young woman's fate.
CHAPTER XIII.
It was not "good morning" in Johnstown nor "good night" that passed as a
salutation between neighbors who meet for the first time since the
deluge but "How many of your folks gone?" It is always "folks," always
"gone." You heard it everywhere among the crowds that thronged the
viaduct and looked down upon the ghastly twenty acres of unburied dead,
from which dynamite was making a terrible exhumation of the corpses of
two thousand mortals and five hundred houses. You heard it at the rope
bridge, where the crowds waited the passage of the incessant file of
empty coffins. You heard it upon the steep hillside beyond the valley of
devastation, where the citizens of Johnstown had fled into the borough
of Conemaugh for shelter. You heard it again, the first salutation,
whenever a friend, who had been searching for _his_ dead, met a
neighbor: "Are any of your friends gone?"
It was not said in tears or even seemingly in madness. It had simply
come to be the "how-d'ye-do" of the eleven thousand people who survived
the twenty-nine thousand five hundred people of the valley of the
Conemaugh.
Still finding bodies by scores in the debris: still burying the dead and
caring for the wounded; still feeding the famishing and housing the
homeless, was the record for days following the one on which Johnstown
was swept away. A perfect stream of wagons bearing the dead as fast as
they were discovered was constantly filing to the various improvised
morgues where the bodies were taken for identification. Hundreds of
people were constantly crowding to these temporary houses, one of which
was located in each of the suburban boroughs that surround Johnstown.
Men armed with muskets, uniformed sentinels, constituting the force that
guarded the city while it was practically under martial law, stood at
the doors and admitted the crowd by tens.
[Illustration: RUINS, CORNER MAIN AND CLINTON STS.]
In the central dead-house in Johnstown proper there lay two rows of
ghastly dead. To the right were twenty bodies that had been identified.
They were mostly women and children, and they were entirely covered with
white sheets, and a piece of paper bearing the name was pinned at the
feet. To the left were eighteen bodies of the unknown dead. As the
people passed they were hurried along by an attendant and gazed at the
uncovered faces seeking to identify them. All applicants for
admission, if it was thought they were prompted by idle curiosity, were
not allowed to enter. The central morgue was formerly a school-house,
and the desks were used as biers for the dead bodies. Three of the
former pupils lay on the desks dead, with white pieces of paper pinned
on the white sheets that covered them, giving their names.
But what touching scenes are enacted every hour about this mournful
building! Outside the sharp voices of the sentinels are constantly
shouting: "Move on." Inside weeping women and sad-faced, hollow-eyed men
are bending over loved and familiar faces. Back on the steep grassy hill
which rises abruptly on the other side of the street are crowds of
curious people who have come in from the country round about to look at
the wreckage strewn around where Johnstown was.
"Oh! Mr. Jones," a pale-faced woman asks, walking up, sobbing, "can't
you tell me where we can get a coffin to bury Johnnie's body?"
"Do you know," asks a tottering old man, as the pale-faced woman turns
away, "whether they have found Jennie and the children?"
"Jennie's body has just been found at the bridge," is the answer, "but
the children can't be found."
Jennie is the old man's widowed daughter, and was drowned, with her two
children, while her husband was at work over at the Cambria Mills.
Just a few doors below the school-house morgue is the central office of
the "Registry Bureau." This was organized by Dr. Buchanan and H. G.
Connaugh, for the purpose of having a registry made of all those who had
escaped. They realized that it would be impossible to secure a complete
list of dead, and that the only practicable thing was to get a complete
list of the living. Then they would get all the Johnstown names, and by
that means secure a list of the dead. That estimate will be based on
figures secured by the subtraction of the total registry saved from
total population of Johnstown and surrounding boroughs.
"I have been around trying to find my sister-in-law, Mrs. Laura R.
Jones, who is lost," said David L. Rogers.
"How do you know she is lost?" he was asked.
"Because I can't find her."
When persons can't be found it is taken as conclusive evidence that they
have been drowned. It is believed that the flood has buried a great many
people below the bridge in the ground lying just below the Cambria
Works. Here the rush of waters covered the railroad tracks ten feet deep
with a coating of stones. Whether they will ever be dug for remains to
be seen. Meantime, those who are easier to reach will be hunted for.
There are many corpses in the area of rubbish that drifted down and
lodged against the stone bridge of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Out of
this rubbish one thousand bodies have already been taken. The fire that
was started by the driftwood touching against the burning Catholic
Church as it floated down was still burning.
Walk almost anywhere through the devastated district and you will hear
expressions like this: "Why, you see that pile of wreckage there. There
are three bodies buried beneath that pile. I know them, for I lived next
door. They are Mrs. Charles E. Kast and her daughter, who kept a tavern,
and her bartender, C. S. Noble."
Henry Rogers, of Pittsburg, is here caring for his relatives. "I am
scarcely in a condition to talk," he says. "The awful scenes I have just
witnessed and the troubles of my relatives have almost unnerved me. My
poor aunt, Mrs. William Slick, is now a raving maniac. Her husband was
formerly the County Surveyor. He felt that the warning about the dam
should not be disregarded. Accordingly he made preparations to go to a
place of safety. His wife was just recovering from an illness, but he
had to take her on horseback, and there was no time to get a carriage.
They escaped, but all their property was washed away. Mrs. Slick for a
time talked cheerfully enough, and said they should be thankful they had
escaped with their lives. But on Sunday it was noticed that she was
acting strangely. By night she was insane. I suppose the news that some
relatives had perished was what turned her mind. I am much afraid that
Mrs. Slick is not the only one in Johnstown whose reason has been
dethroned by the calamity. I have talked with many citizens, and they
certainly seem crazy to me. When the excitement passes off I suppose
they will regain their reason. The escape of my uncle, George R. Slick,
and his wife, I think was really providential. They, too, had determined
to heed the warning that the dam was unsafe. When the flood came they
had a carriage waiting at the front door. Just as they were entering it,
the water came. How it was, my aunt cannot tell me, but they both
managed to catch on to some debris, and were thus floated along. My aunt
says she has an indistinct recollection of some one having helped her
upon the roof of a house. The person who did her this service was lost.
All night they floated along on the roof. They suffered greatly from
exposure, as the weather was extremely chilly. Next morning they were
fortunately landed safely. My uncle, however, is now lying at the point
of death. I have noticed a singular coincidence here. Down in the lower
end of the city stood the United Presbyterian parsonage. The waters
carried it two miles and a half, and landed it in Sandy Vale Cemetery.
Strange as it may seem, the sexton's house in the cemetery was swept
away and landed near the foundations of the parsonage. I have seen this
myself, and it is commented on by many others."
In one place the roofs of forty frame houses were packed in together
just as you would place forty bended cards one on top of another. The
iron rods of a bridge were twisted into a perfect spiral six times
around one of the girders. Just beneath it was a woman's trunk, broken
up and half filled with sand, with silk dresses and a veil streaming out
of it. From under the trunk men were lifting the body of its owner,
perhaps, so burned, so horribly mutilated, so torn limb from limb that
even the workmen, who have seen so many of these frightful sights that
they have begun to get used to them, turned away sick at heart. In one
place was a wrecked grocery store--bins of coffee and tea, flour, spices
and nuts, parts of the counter and the safe mingled together. Near it
was the pantry of a house, still partly intact, the plates and saucers
regularly piled up, a waiter and a teapot, but not a sign of the
woodwork, not a recognizable outline of a house.
In another place was a human foot, and crumbling indications of a boot,
but no signs of a body. A hay-rick, half ashes, stood near the centre
of the gorge. Workmen who dug about it to-day found a chicken coop, and
in it two chickens, not only alive but clucking happily when they were
released. A woman's hat, half burned; a reticule, with part of a hand
still clinging to it; two shoes and part of a dress told the story of
one unfortunate's death. Close at hand a commercial traveler had
perished. There was his broken valise, still full of samples, fragments
of his shoes, and some pieces of his clothing.
Scenes like these were occurring all over the charred field where men
were working with pick and axe and lifting out the poor, shattered
remains of human beings, nearly always past recognition or
identification, except by guess-work, or the locality where they were
found. Articles of domestic use scattered through the rubbish helped to
tell who some of the bodies were. Part of a set of dinner plates told
one man where in the intangible mass his house was. In one place was a
photograph album with one picture still recognizable. From this the body
of a child near by was identified. A man who had spent a day and all
night looking for the body of his wife, was directed to her remains by
part of a trunk lid.
CHAPTER XIV.
The language of pathos is too weak to describe the scenes where the
living were searching for their loved and lost ones among the dead.
"That's Emma," said an old man before one of the bodies. He said it as
coolly as though he spoke of his daughter in life, not in death, and as
if it were not the fifth dead child of his that he had identified.
"Is that you, Mrs. James," said one woman to another on the foot-bridge
over Stony Creek.
"Yes, it is, and we are all well," said Mrs. James.
"Oh, have you heard from Mrs. Fenton?"
"She's left," said the first woman, "but Mr. Fenton and the children are
gone."
The scenes at the different relief agencies, where food, clothing, and
provisions were given out on the order of the Citizens Committee, were
extremely interesting. These were established at the Pennsylvania
Railroad depot, at Peter's Hotel, in Adams Street, and in each of the
suburbs.
At the depot, where there was a large force of police, the people were
kept in files, and the relief articles were given out with some
regularity, but at such a place as Kernsville, in the suburbs, the
relief station was in the upper story of a partly wrecked house.
The yard was filled with boxes and barrels of bread, crackers, biscuit,
and bales of blankets. The people crowded outside the yard in the
street, and the provisions were handed to them over the fence, while the
clothing was thrown to them from the upper windows. There was apparently
great destitution in Kernsville.
"I don't care what it is, only so long as it will keep me warm," said
one woman, whose ragged clothing was still damp.
The stronger women pushed to the front of the fence and tried to grab
the best pieces of clothing which came from the windows, but the people
in the house saw the game and tossed the clothing to those in the rear
of the crowd. A man stood on a barrel of flour and yelled out what each
piece of clothing was as it came down.
At each yell there was a universal cry of "That's just what I want. My
boy is dying; he must have that. Throw me that for my poor wife," and
the likes of that. Finally the clothing was all gone, and there were
some people who didn't get any. They went away bewailing their
misfortune.
A reporter was piloted to Kernsville by Kellog, a man who had lost his
wife and baby in the flood.
"She stood right thar, sir," said the man, pointing to a house whose
roof and front were gone. "She climbed up thar when the water came first
and almost smashed the house. She had the baby in her arms. Then another
house came down and dashed against ours, and my wife went down with the
baby raised above her head. I saw it all from a tree thar. I couldn't
move a step to help 'em."
Coming back, the same reporter met a man whose face was radiant. He
fairly beamed good nature and kindness.
"You look happy," said the reporter.
"Yes, sir; I've found my boy," said the man.
"Is your house gone?" asked the reporter.
"Oh, of course," answered the man. "I've lost all I've got except my
little boy," and he went on his way rejoicing.
A wealthy young Philadelphian named Ogle had become engaged to a
Johnstown lady, Miss Carrie Diehl. They were to be wedded in the middle
of June, and were preparing for the ceremony. The lover heard of the
terrible flood, but, knowing that the residence of his dear one was up
in the hills, felt little fear for her safety. To make sure, however, he
started for Johnstown. Near the Fourth Street morgue he met Mr. Diehl.
"Thank God! you are safe," he exclaimed, and then added: "Is Carrie
well?"
"She was visiting in the valley when the wave came," was the mournful
reply. Then he beckoned the young man to enter the chamber of death.
A moment later Mr. Ogle was kneeling beside the rough bier and was
kissing the cold, white face. From the lifeless finger he slipped a ring
and in its place put one of his own. Then he stole quietly out.
"Mamma! mamma!" cried a child. She had recognized a body that no one
else could, and in a moment the corpse was ticketed, boxed, and
delivered to laborers, who bore it away to join the long funeral
procession.
A mother recognized a baby boy. "Keep it a few minutes," she asked the
undertaker in charge. In a few moments she returned, carrying in her
arms a little white casket. Then she hired two men to bear it to a
cemetery. No hearses were seen in Johnstown. Relatives recognized their
dead, secured the coffins, got them carried the best way they could to
the morgues, then to the graveyards. A prayer, some tears, and a few
more of the dead thousands were buried in mother earth.
A frequent visitor at these horrible places was David John Lewis. All
over Johnstown he rode a powerful gray horse, and to each one he met
whom he knew he exclaimed: "Have you seen my sisters?" Hardly waiting
for a reply, he galloped away, either to seek ingress into a morgue or
to ride along the river banks. One week before Mr. Lewis was worth
$60,000, his all being invested in a large commission business. After
the flood he owned the horse he rode, the clothes on his back, and that
was all. In the fierce wave were buried five of his near relatives,
sons, and his sisters Anna, Louise, and Maggie. The latter was married,
and her little boy and babe were also drowned. They were all dearly
loved by the merchant, who, crazed with grief and mounted on his horse,
was a conspicuous figure in the ruined city.
William Gaffney, an insurance agent, had a very pitiful duty to perform.
On his father's and wife's side he lost fourteen relatives, among them
his wife and family. He had a man to take the bodies to the grave, and
he himself dug graves for his wife and children, and buried them. In
speaking of the matter he said: "I never thought that I could perform
such a sad duty, but I had to do it, and I did it. No one has any idea
of the feelings of a man who acts as undertaker, grave-digger, and
pall-bearer for his own family."
The saddest sight on the river bank was Mr. Gilmore, who lost his wife
and family of five children. Ever since the calamity this old man was
seen on the river bank looking for his family. He insisted on the
firemen playing a stream of water on the place where the house formerly
stood, and where he supposed the bodies lay. The firemen, recognizing
his feelings, played the stream on the place, at intervals, for several
hours, and at last the rescuers got to the spot where the old man said
his house formerly stood. "I know the bodies are there, and you must
find them." When at last one of the men picked up a charred skull,
evidently that of a child, the old man exclaimed: "That is my child.
There lies my family; go on and get the rest of them." The workmen
continued, and in a few minutes they came to the remains of the mother
and three other children. There was only enough of their clothing left
to recognize them by.
On the floor of William Mancarro's house, groaning with pain and grief,
lay Patrick Madden, a furnaceman of the Cambria Iron Company. He told of
his terrible experience in a voice broken with emotion. He said: "When
the Cambria Iron Company's bridge gave way I was in the house of a
neighbor, Edward Garvey. We were caught through our own neglect, like a
great many others, and a few minutes before the houses were struck
Garvey remarked that he was a good swimmer, and could get away no matter
how high the water rose. Ten minutes later I saw him and his son-in-law
drowned.
"No human being could swim in that terrible torrent of débris. After the
South Fork Reservoir broke I was flung out of the building, and saw,
when I rose to the surface of the water, my wife hanging upon a piece of
scantling. She let it go and was drowned almost within reach of my arm,
and I could not help or save her. I caught a log and floated with it
five or six miles, but it was knocked from under me when I went over the
dam. I then caught a bale of hay and was taken out by Mr. Morenrow.
"My wife is certainly drowned, and six children. Four of them were:
James Madden, twenty-three years old; John, twenty-one years; Kate,
seventeen years; and Mary, nineteen years."
A spring wagon came slowly from the ruins of what was once Cambria. In
it, on a board and covered by a muddy cloth, were the remains of Editor
C. T. Schubert, of the Johnstown _Free Press_, German. Behind the wagon
walked his friend Benjamin Gribble. Editor Schubert was one of the most
popular and well-known Germans in the city. He sent his three sons to
Conemaugh Borough on Thursday, and on Friday afternoon he and his wife
and six other children called at Mr. Gribble's residence. They noticed
the rise of the water, but not until the flood from the burst dam washed
the city did they anticipate danger. All fled from the first to the
second floor. Then, as the water rose, they went to the attic, and Mr.
Schubert hastily prepared a raft, upon which all embarked. Just as the
raft reached the bridge, a heavy piece of timber swept the editor
beneath the surface. The raft then glided through, and all the rest were
rescued. Mr. Schubert's body was found beneath a pile of broken timbers.
A pitiful sight was that of an old, gray-haired man named Norn. He was
walking around among the mass of débris, looking for his family. He had
just sat down to eat his supper when the crash came, and the whole
family, consisting of wife and eight children, were buried beneath the
collapsed house. He was carried down the river to the railroad bridge on
a plank. Just at the bridge a cross-tie struck him with such force that
he was shot clear upon the pier, and was safe. But he is a mass of
bruises and cuts from head to foot. He refused to go to the hospital
until he found the bodies of his loved ones.
CHAPTER XV.
Five days after the disaster a bird's-eye view was taken of Johnstown
from the top of a precipitous mountain which almost overhangs it. The
first thing that impresses the eye, wrote the observer,
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