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CONTAINING Graphic Deacriptionis of the Terrible Rutoh of Waters; the groat Destruction of Houses, Factories, Churches, Towns, aad Thousands of Human Lives; Heart-reudlnj^ Scenes of Agony, Separation of Loved Ones, Panic- stricken Multitudes and their Frantic Etforts to Esciipe a Horrible Fale. COMPRISING THRILLING TALES OF HEROIC DEEDS; NARROW ESCAPES FROM THE JAWS OF DEATH; FRIGHTFUL HAVOC BY FIRE, DREADFUL SUFFERINGS OF SURVIVORS; PLUNDERING BODIES OF VICTIMS. ETC. TOGETHER WITH Magnificent Exhibitions of Popular Sympathy; Quick Aid from overy City and State; Millions of Dollars Sent for the Relief of the Stricken Sufferers. By JAMES HERBERT WALKER, THE WELL KNOWN AUTHOR. FULLY ILLUSTRATED WITH SCENES OF THE GREAT CALAMITY. R. A. H. MORROW, ST- JOIilST, ,.>..kiV.>ii.*.->->- 4 Copyrighted, 1889^ -t ^AHanie^MMHJjg PREFACE *T^HE whole country has been profoundly startled at the '*' Terrible Calamity which has swept thousands of human beings to instant death at Johnstown and neighboring villages. The news came with the suddenness of a lightning bolt falling from the sky. A romantic valley, filled with busy factories, flourishing places of business, multitudes of happy homes and families, has been suddenly transformed into a scene of awful desolation. Frightful ravages of Flood and Fire have pro- duced in one short hour a destruction which surpasses the records of all modern disasters. No calamity in recent times has so appalled the civilized world. What was a peaceful, prosperous valley a little time ago is to-day a huge sepulchre, filled with the shattered ruins of houses, factories, banks, churches, and the ghastly corpses of the dead. This book contains a thrilling description of this awful catastrophe, which has shocked both hemispheres. It depicts with graphic power the terrible scenes of the great disaster, and relates the fearful story with masterly effect. The work treats of the great storm which devastated the country, deluging large sections, sweeping away bridges, swelling rivulets to rivers, prostrating forests, and producing incalculable damage to life and property; of the sudden rise XI 111')'] r xii PREFACE. in the Conemaugh River and tributary streams, weakening the dam thrown across the fated valley, and endangering the lives of 50,000 people; of the heroic efforts of a little band of men to stay the flood and avert the direful calamity ; of the swift ride down the valley to warn the inhabitants of their impend- ing fate, and save them from instant death ; of the breaking away of the imprisoned waters after all efforts had failed to hold them back; of the rush and roar of the mighty torrent, plunging down the valley with sounds like advancing thunder, reverberating like the booming of cannon among the hills ; of the frightful havoc attending the mad flood descending with incredible velocity, and a force which nothing could resist; of the rapid rise of the waters, flooding buildings, driving tlie terrified inhabitants to the upper stories and roofs in the des- perate effort to escape their doom ; of hundreds of houses crash- ing down the surging river, carrying men, women and children beyond the hope of rescue; of a night of horrors, multitudes dying amid the awful terrors of flood and fire, plunged under the wild torrent, buried in mire, or consumed in devouring flames; of iielpless creatures rending the air with pitiful screams crying aloud in their agony, imploring help with outstretched hands, and finally sinking with no one to save them. Whole families were lost and obliterated, perishing together in a watery tomb, or ground to atoms by floating timbers and wreck; households were suddenly bereft — some of fathers others of mothers, others of children, neighbors and friends; frantic efforts were made to rescue the victims of the flood, render aid to those who were struggling against death, and mitigate the terrors of the horrible disaster. There were noble ''SWltogBIPl mam PREFACE. xlli ikcninj^ the ng the lives and of men of the swift liir impcnd- e breakinj^ id failed to hty torrent, ig thunder, he hills ; of nding with d resist; of Jriving tlie in the des- uses crash- id children multitudes ged under devouring 1 screams tstretched together nbers and f fathers d friends; :he flood, cath, and ere noble acts of heroism, strong men and frail women and children putting their own lives in peril to save those of their loved ones. The terrible scene at Johnstown bridge, where li )usands were consumed was the greatest funeral pyre known ia the his- tory of the world. It was ghastly work — that of recovering the bodies of the dead; dragging them from the mire in which they were imbedded, from the ruins in which they were crushed, or from the burning wreck which was consuming them. Hundreds of bodies were mutilated and disfigured be- yond the possibility of identifying them, all traces of individual form and features utterly destroyed. There were multitudes of corpses awaiting coffms for their burial, putrefying under the sun, and filling the air with the sickening stench of death. There were ghouls who robbed the bodies of the victims, stripping off their jewels — even cutting off fiiigers to obtain rings, and plundering pockets of their money. Summary vengeance was inflicted upon prowling thieves- some of whom were driven into the merciless waters to perish, while others were shot or hanged by the neck until they were dead. The burial of hundreds of the known and unknown, without minister or obsequies, without friend or mourner, with- out surviving relatives to take a last look or shed a tear, was one of the appalling spectacles. There was the breathless sus- pense and anxiety of those who feared the worst, who waited in vain for news of the safety of their friends, and at last were compelled to believe that their loved ones had perished. The terrible shock attending the horrible accounts of the great calamity, was followed by the sudden outburst and ex- xiv TKEFACE. hfbition of universal ^ricf ,„,, „ , "'0 P-iden, Governors If s'r'"- ''"'""<^'"=' '"-'" announced that speedy aid »vn„l I K '; "''^°" °'' ^'ties, -' charity that Le^rt r^:':;;;^''^:;;. -^^^ -,nifi. '"-ense contributions of food ZcZ^ "^ ^°"' "' '""''''■ and heroic efforts, is one imn "^' P^^^""^' -"^^'ces «'CH and poor aii.: 7^Z '" °' ""' ^^'•"'"^ ^*°'^- 'a^I ^oiiar to aid thoselho Sri" '""'"^ '^<='^ These thrilhng scenes are d • . '• are related, in The Johnstown H "'" ''°"''"'""' '"^'c''' ■^aw the fatal flood and its diref.r"^'' ''^ "^"-""■'"'^=»«'' 'vho '-'yexciti„,hasevorbeen 1 th ''° ^' ^° ■"■ - awfu, fascination, and .„ be read'thrJu'^Uh: ilT "^^ CONTENTS. FAGU. CHAPTER I. The Appalling News, . . . . • • .17 CHAPTER n. Death and Desolation, CHAPTER in. The Horrors Increase, CHAPTER IV. Multiplication of Terrors, . • • • • CHAPTER V. The Awful Work of Death . Shadows of Despair, Burial of the Victims, CHAPTER VI. CHAPTER VII. CHAPTER VIII. Johnstown and its Industries, . . CHAPTER IX. A View of the Wreck, . , 50 74 104 • • • • • 116 129 • 146 • • • • 154 164 CHAPTER X. Thrilling Experiences, CHAPTER XI. New Tales of f lorror, Pathetic Scenes, Digging for the Dead, • CHAPTER Xn. • • CHAPTER xnr. PAGB. 182 2o3 246 • • • • 27o (V CHAPTER XIV. Hairbreadth Escap«s, • • CHAPTER XV. Terrible Pictures of Woe, CHAPTER XVI. Stories of the Flood, CHAPTER XVII. One Week after the Great Disaster, CHAPTER XVIII. A TValk Through the Valley of Death, • • CHAPTER XrX. A Day of Work and Worship, . CHAPTER XX. Millions of Money for Johnstown, 283 • i 334 380 432 • • • 455 479 489 .■■\ i^;^v P ^ --,, Al PI. ^ctfte ijSjf' PAQB. 182 2o3 246 27o 283 334 380 432 455 479 489 f . ,.. •.«--«iS5!«rt^ Pi o X H O M H Z I— I < W oa td B 1? '■«> ; : V *■ .A' '^ L mfmmmimim^ *. .mw <^*W- 1/^r t C ;^ cr. y. v. c c c h C c: <• '«»*.?'^*i<*|ai(»r*' in y, 1—1 I— I I ■A •mmammimm ii '4 >".».»«»'* fsr^ "■fc ^. '?N( 1' I 4 Q O o o j^ o /^ > < w H O D H > o ^ *?;*.^*irf* HiU>i» --sv w o fa w 7,' a k; w •/J 3 K-.-,f,(it'i»it>«i#j;< fc: .' i;i>^ .^^^^ ^ I I I w iiii^Mniwww'iyi irtL.l«*»r%«!S'.l*- i ^Msa H o to w to la H "-4 Oh < W n m ■:'|;:^ (-;•' ; , %;' ' , 1 J: .Ik aii^ u fc 05 C fcc- c/) W Ci P H ID t-J to to J t^ ^ fit mi r mm mmv: C a X 7", H Q O O X c c s w ir &5 O o n S D < O X i ^i**«^*n*|. -MW^IMP TEARING DOWN HOUSES IN JOHNSTOWN. I mk <>:. ..,^^:t<^ >t: ,:.,* ♦ t «! a^ ,.it^-- Ji'iT>fl.>- :*'^ a?^^ it«: 'V^:i "^.v ./^ I ^ SOLDIERS GUARDING A HUNGARIAN THIEF. iM* n m^ ^ ' P^ (fi a: •«^ja < A > tr. 'A a, u X H < W w o H D ca H en i)ni '■'^-^■lllll iMiiii Q UJ Q Y. ■A 3 ■ III 41 ^1^ f 1 RELIEF CORPS CROSSING THE ROPE BRIDGE. ri- y:*iM- V*:: ■•4>-i m tH SEARCHING FOR LOST RELATIVES. CD en a: u Oi b CO X ll /A A H O m H < u PS b O H o b o H en O h W W a; H t/) \ THE Johnstown horror OR Valley of Death. CHAPTER I. Tine Appalling News, On the advent of Summer, June ist, the country was horror-stricken by the announcement that a ter- rible calamity had overtaken the inhabitants of Johns- town, and the neighboring villages. Instantly the whole land was stirred by the startling news of this great disaster. Its appalling magnitude, its dreadful suddenness, its scenes of terror and agony, the fate of thousands swept to instant death by a flood as frightful as that of the cataract of Niagara, awakened the profoundest horror. No calamity in the history of modern times has so appalled the civilized world. The following graph';: pen-picture will give the reader an accurate idea of the picturesque scene of the disaster : Away up in the misty crags of the Alleghanies some tiny rills trickle and gurgle: from a cleft in the mossy 1 ^ 18 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. rocks. The drippHng waters, clmid perhaps in the bleak and lonely fastness of the heights, hug and cod- dle one another until they flash Into a limpid pool. A score of rivulets from all the mountain side babble hither over rocky beds to join their companions. Thence in rippling current they purl and tinkle down the gentle slopes, through bosky nooks sweet wit!, the odors of fir tree and pine, over meads dappled with the scarlet snap-dragon and purple heath buds, now paus- ing for a moment to idle with a wood encircled lake, now tumbling in opalescent cascade over a mossy lurch, and then on again in cheerful, hurried course down the Appalachian valley. None stays their way. Here and there perhaps some thrifty Pennsylvania Dutchman coaxes the saucy stream to turn his mill-wheel and every league or so it fumes and frets a bit against some rustic bridge. From these trifling tourneys though. It emerges only the more eager and impetuous In its path toward the towns below. The Fatal River. Coming nearer, step by step, to the busy haunts of men, the dashing brook takes on a more ambitious air. Little by little It edges its narrow banks aside, drinks in the waters of tributaries, swells with the copious rainfall of the lower valley. From its ladder in the Alleghanles it catches a glimpse of the steeples of Johnstown, red with the glow of the setting sun. Again it spurts and spreads as if conscious of its new importance, and the once tiny rill expands into the iM river ^ ens as at resi; at first then re J a dista deeper land ro the All |cannon On, ( |into th( ifrom th THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 19 '■I ips in the g and cod- mpid pool, ude babble ompanions. inkle down eet with the lied with the ,, now pans- :ircled lake, er a mossy rried course ere perhaps les the saucy eague or so istic bridge, nerges only toward the [y haunts of Imbitious air. iside, drinks I the copious Idder in the steeples of ;| setting sun. ' Is of its new ids into the dignity of a river, a veritable river, with a name of tis own. Big with this sounding symbol of prowess it rushes on as if to sweep by the teeming town in a flood of majesty. To its vast surprise the way is barred. The hand of man has dared to check the will of one that up to now has known no curb save those the forest gods imposed. For an mstant the waters, taken aback by this strange audacity, hold Uiemselves in leash. Then, like erl king in the German legends, they broaden out to engulf their opponent. In vain they surge with crescent surface against the barrier of stone. By day, by night, ^hey beat and breast in angry impotence against tae ponderous wall of ma- sonry that man has reared, for pleasure and profit, to stem the mountain stream. The Awful Kiish of Waters. Suddenly, maddened by the stubborn hindrance, the river grows black and turgid. It rumbles and threat- ens as if confident of an access of strength that laughs at resistance. From far up tlie hillside comes a sound, at first soft and soothing as the fountains of Lindaraxa, then rolling onward it takes the voluminous quaver of a distant waterfall. Louder and louder, deeper and deeper, nearer and nearer comes an awful crashing land roaring, till its echoes rebound from the crags of the Alleghanies like peals of thunder and boom of Icannon. On, on, down the steep valley trumpets the torrent [into the river at Jamestown. Joined to the waters from the cloud kissed summits of its source, the exul- ' U . I MJ 20 THE JOHNSTOWN HORRuR. bi: ! i: tant Conemaugh, with a deafening din, dashes its way through the barricade of stone and starts 'ike a demon on its path of destruction. Into its maw it sucks a town. A town with all its hundreds of men and women and children, with Its marts of business, its homes, Its factoi'^s and houses of worship. Then, insatiate still, with a blast like the chaos of worlds dissolved, it rushes out to new desola- tion, until Nature herself, awe stricken at the sight of such Ineffable woe, blinds her eyes to the uncanny scene of death, and drops the pall of night upon the earth. Destruction Descended as a Bolt of Joye. A fair town in a western valley of Pennsylvania, happy in the arts of peace and prospering by its busy manufactures, suddenly swept out of existence by a gigantic flood and thousands of lives extinguished as by one fell stroke — such has been the fate of Jr^hns- town. Never before in this country has there happened a disaster of such appalling proportions. It is necosary to refer to those which have occurred in the vallrys o! the great European rivers, where there is a densely crowded population, to find a parallel. The Horrors Unestlmaled. At first the horror was not all known. It could only be imperfectly surmised. Until a late hour on the fol- lowing night there was no communication with the hapless city. All that was positively known of Its fate was seen from afar. It was said, that out of all l-J'H THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 91 shes Us way ike a demon [ with all its ren, with its and houses )last like the I new desola- ; the sight of the uncanny 2^ht upon the • Jove. i^ennsylvania, lg by its busy :istence by a tinguished as ate of Jr^hns^ happened a is necessary le vallrys o! is a deosel)! It could only ur on the fol- ion with the nown of its lat out of all the habitations, which had sheltered about twelve thousand people before this awful doom had befallen, only two were visible above the water. All the rest, if this be true, had been swalloved up or else shat- tered into pieces and hurled downward into the flood- vexed valley below. What has become of those twelve thousand inhab- itants? Who can tell until after the waters have . wholly susided ? Of course it is possible that many of them escaped. Much hope is to be built upon the natural exaggeration of first reports from the sorely distressed surrounding : region and the lack of actual knowledge, in the absence of direct communication. But what suspense must there be between now and the moment when direct communication shall be opened 1 Heedless of Fate. The valley of the Conemaugh in which Johnstown « stood lies between the steep walls of loity hills. The '■ gathering of the rain into torrents in that region is quick and precipitate. The river on one side roared :• out its warning, but the people would not take heed I of the danger impending over them on the other side s — the great South Fork dam, two and a half miles up I the valley and looming one hundrt,d feet in height I from base to top. Behind it were piled the waters, a :| great, ponderous mass, like the treasured wrath of : fate. Their surface was about three hundred feet above the deserted town. If Noah's neicfhbors thought It would be only a little '11: mmt '.?; 22 THE J0HNS10WN HORROR. i \ n 1 1 shower the people of Johnstown were yet more fool- ish. The railroad officials had repeatedly told them that the dam threatened destruction. They still per- versely lulled themselves into a false security. The ;Mow came, when it did, like a flash. It was as if the iieavens had fallen In liquid fury upon the earth. It was as if ocean itself had been precipitated into an abyss. The slow but inexorable march of the might- iest glacier of the Alps, though comparable, was not equal to this in force. The whole of a Pyramid, shot from a colossal catapult, would not have been the petty charge of a pea clxooter to it. Imagine Niagara, or a greater even than Niagara, falling upon an ordinary collection of brick and wooden houses. An Inconceivable Force. The South Fork Reservoir was the largest in the United States, and it contained millions of tons ot water. When Its fetters were loosened, crumbling before it I'ke sand, a building or even a rock that stood in its path presented as much resistance as a card house. The dread execution was little more than the work of an instant. The flood passed over the town as It would over a pile of shingles, covering over or carrying with it everything that stood in its way. It bounded down the valley, wreaking destruction and death on each hand and In its fore. Torrents that poured down out of th wilds of the mountains swelled its vol- ume. Ail along from the point of its re lease it bore debris THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR, 23 and corpses as Its hideous trophies. In a very brief time It displayed some of both, as If In hellish glee, to the horrified eyes of Pittsburg, seventy-eight miles west of the town of Johnstown that had been, having danced them along on Its exultant billows or rolled them over and over In the depths of Its dark current all the way through the Conemaugh, the Kiskiminitas and the Allegheny river. It was like a fearful monster, gnashing Its dripping Jaws In the scared face of the multitude, in the flesh of Its victims. One eye-witness of the effects of the deluge declares that he saw five hundred dead bodies. Hundreds were counted by others. It will take many a day to make up the death roll. It will take many a day to make up the reckoning of the material loss. If any pen could describe the scenes of terror, an- guish and destruction which have taken place In Cone- maugh Valley It could write an epic greater than the "Iliad." The accounts that come tell of hairbreadth escapes, heartrending tragedies and deeds of heroism almost without number. A Cilmax of Horror. As If to add a lurid touch of horror to the picture that might surpass all the rest a conflagration came to mock those who were in fear of drowning with a death yet more terrible. Where the ruins of Johnstown, composed mainly of timber, had been piled up forty /eat high against a railroad bridge below the town a I lire was started and raged with eager fury. It Is said M T 24 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR, [| hf r ii that scores of persons were burned alive, their pies cing cries appealing" for aid to hundreds of spectators who stood on the banks of the river, but could do nothing Western Pennsylvania is In mourning. Business in the cities is virtually suspended and all minds are bent upon this great horror, all hearts convulsed with the common sorrow. Heartrending Scenes and Heroic Strugg^les for Lif«. Another eye-witness describes the calamity as fol- lows: A flood of death swept down the Alleghany Mountains yesterday afternoon and last night. Almost the entire city of Johnstown is swimming about in the rushing, angry tide. Dead bodies are floating about in every direction, and almost every piece of movable timber is carrying from the doomed city a corpse of humanity, drifting with the raging waters. The dis- aster overtook Johnstown about six o'clock last evening. As the train bearing the writer sped eastward, the reports at each stop grew more appalling. At Derry a group of railway officials were gathered who had come from Bolivar, the end of the passable portion of the read westward. They had seen but a small por- tion of the awful flood, but enough to allow them to imagine the rest. Down through the Packsaddle came the rushing waters. The wooded heights of the Alle- ghanies looked down in wonder at the scene of the most terrible destruction that ever struck the romantic valley of the Conep'^ x^h THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR, 21b Business L minds are ivulsed with s for Iiif«. mity as fol- ; Alleghany rht. Almost about in the )ating about of movable a corpse of . The dis- D* clock last astward, the At Derry d who had e portion of 1 small por- ow them to saddle came of the AUe- cene of the he romantic Th« water was rising vhen ihe men left at xix o'clock at the rate of five feet an hour. Clinging to improvised rafts, constructed in the death batde from floating boards and timbers, were agonized men, women and children their heartrending shrieks for help striking f horror to the breasts of the onlookers. Their criei " were of no avail. Carried along at railway speed on the breast of this rushing torrent, no human ingenuity could devise a means of rescue. With pallid face and hair clinging wet and damp to t her cheek, a mother was seen grasping a floating tim- j ber, while on her other arm she held her babe, already 'I drowned. With a death-grip on a plank a strong man I just giving up hope cast an imploring look to those on I the bank, and an instant later he had sunk into the \ waves. Prayers to God and cries to those in safety I rang above the roaring waves. I The special train pulled into Bolivar at half^past 1 eleven last night, and the trainmen were there notified I that further progress was impossible. The greatest :| excitement prevailed at this place, and parties of citi- >i zens are out all the time endeavoring to save the poor I unfortunates that are being hurled to eternity on the 1 rushing torrent. m A' tempts at Rescue. ■| The tidal wave struck Bolivar just after dark, and I in five minutes the Conemaugh rose from six to forty || feet and the waters spread oui over the whole country, ^ISoon houses began floating down, and clinging to the ^^ibris were men, women and children shrieking for 26 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR, M(i ♦ . ' ' cL \ t : ^ II :; - ' aid. A large number of citizens at once gathered on the county bridge, and they were reinforced by a num- ber from Garfield, a town on the opposite side of the river. They brought a number of ropes and these were thrown over into tlie boiling waters as persons drifted by in efforts to save some poor beings. Fc: half an hour all efforts were fruitless, until at last, when the rescuers were about giving up all hope, a little boy, astride a shingle roof, managed to catch hold of one of the ropes. He caught it under his le^t arm and was thrown violently against an abutment, but managed to keep hold, and was successfully pulled on to the bridge amid the cheers of the onlookers. His name was Hessler and his rescuer was a trainman named Carney. The lad was at once taken to the town of Garfield and was cared for. The boy was aged about sixteen. His story of the frightful calamity is as follows : The Alarm. "With my father I was spending the day at my grandfather's house in Cambria City. In the house at the time were Theodore, Edward and John Kintz, and John Kintz, Jr. ; Miss Mary Kintz, Mrs. Mary Kintz, wife of John Kintz, Jr. ; Miss Treacy Kintz, Mrs. Rica Smith, John Hirsch and four children, my father and myself Shortly after five o'clock there was a noise of roaring waters and screams of people. We looked out the door and saw persons running. My father told us to never mind, as the waters would not rise further. " But soon we saw houses being swept away, and then t )eopl( lothin Thii THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 27 fathered on I by a nil in- side of the these were 5ons drifted i^c^ half an t, when the L httlc boy, lold of one rm and was Tianaged to D the bridge name was led Carney. arfield and cteen. His day at my le house at Kintz, and ary Kintz, Mrs. Rica ather and a noise of Ve looked father told se further, away, and i then we ran up to the floor above. The house was three stories, and we were at last forced to the top one. In my fright I jumped on the bed. It was an old fashioned one, with heavy posts. The water kept rising and my bed was soon afloat. Gradually it was lifted up. The air in the room grew close and the house was moving. Still the bed kept rising and pressed the ceiling. At last the posts pushed against the plaster. It yielded and a section of the roof gave I way. Then suddenly I found myself on the roof, and was being carried down stream. Saved. I "After a little this roof began to part, and I was lafraid I was going to be drowned, but just then an- I other house with a shingle roof floated by, and I Jmanaged to crawl on it, and floated down until nearly dead with cold, when I was saved. After I was freed from the house I did not see my father. My grand- athei* was on a tree, but he must have been drowned, s the waters were rising fast. John Kintz, Jr., was Iso on a tree. Miss Mary Kintz and Mrs. Mary Kintz I saw drown. Miss Smith was also drowned. John Hirsch was in a tree, but the four children were Idrowned. The scenes were terrible. Live bodies ^^nd corpses weie floating down with me and away from me. I would see persons, hear them shriek, and |then they would disappear. All along the line were ^people who were trying to save us, but they could do Jiothing, and only a few were caught." I This boy's story is but one incident, and shows ■i -WBm >i r t n THE JOHNSTOWK HORROR. what happened to one family. No one knows what has happened to the hundreds who were in the path of the rushing water. It is impossible to get anything in the way of news save meagre details. An eye-witness at Bolivar Block Station tells a story of unparalleled heroism that occurred at the lower bridge which crosses the Conemaugh at this point. A. Young, with two women was seen coming down the river on a part of the floor. At the upper bridge a rope was thrown down to them. This they all failed to catch. Between the two bridges he was noticed to point towards the elder woman, who, it is supposed, was his mother. He was then seen to instruct the women how to catch the rope that was lowered from the other bridge. Down came the raft with a rush. The brave man stood with his arms around the two women. UnavailiDff Courage. As they swept under the bridge he seized the rope. He was jerked violently away from the two women, who failed to get a hold on the rope. Seeing that they would not be rescued, he dropped the rope and fell back on the raft, which floated on down the river. The current washed their frail craft in toward the bank. The young man was enabled to seize hold of a branch of a tree. He aided the two women to get up into the tree. He held on with his hands and rested his feet on a pile of driftwood. A piece of floating debris struck the. drift, sweeping it away. The man hung with his THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 120 body immersed in the water. A pile of drift soon collected and he was enabled to get another insecure footing. Up the river there was a sudden crash, and a section of the bridge was swept away and floated down the stream, striking the tree and washing it away. All three were thrown into the water and were drowned before the eyes of the horrified spectators just opposite the town of Bolivar. Early in the evening a woman with her two children was seen to pass under the bridge at Bolivar clinging to the roof of a coal house. A rope was lowered to her, but she shook her head and- refused to desert the children. It was rumored that all three were saved at Cokeville, a few miles below Bolivar. A later re- port from Lockport says that the residents succeeded in rescuing five people from the flood, two women and three men. One man succeeded in getting out of the water unaided. They were taken care of by the peo- ple of the town. A Child's Faith. A little girl passed under the bridge just before dark. She was kneeling on a part of a floor and had her hands clasped as if in prayer. Every effort was made to save her, but they all proved futile. A rail- roader who was standing by remarked that the piteous appearance of the little waif brought tears to his eyes. All night long the crowd stood about the ruins of the bridge which had been swept away at Bolivar. Th« water rushed past with a roar, carrying with it parts of houses, furniture and trees. The flood had 30 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. l:i evidently spent its force up the valley. No more living persons were being carried past. Watchers with lanterns remained along the banks until daybreak, when the first view of the awful devastation of the flood was witnessed. Along the bank lay remnants of what had once been dwelling houses and stores; here and there was an uprooted tree. Piles of drift lay about, in some of which bodies of the victims of the flood will be found. Rescuing parties are being formed in all towns along i the railroad. Houses have been thrown open to refu- gees, and every possible means is being used to pro- tect the homeless. Wrecking Trains to the Hescue. The wrecking trains of the Pennsylvania Railroad are slowly making their way east to the unfortunate city. No effort was being made to repair the wrecks, and the crews of the trains were organized into rescu- ing parties, and an effort will be made to send out a mail train this morning. The chances are that they will go no further east than Florence. There is abso- lutely no news from Johnstown. The little city Is entirely cut off from communication with the outside world. The damage done is inestimable. No one can tell its extent. The little telegraph stations along the road are ilUed with anxious groups of men who have friends and relatives in Johnstown. The smallest item of news is eagerly seized upon and circulated. If favorable they have a moment of relief, if not their faces become more 4. THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 31 o-loomy. Harry Fisher, a young telegraph operator who was at Bolivar when the first rush began, says: — **We knew nothing of the disaster until we noticed the river slowly rising and then more rapidly. News then reached us from Johnstown tjiat the dam at South Fork had burst. Within three hours the water in the river rose at least twenty feet. Shortly before six o'clock ruins of houses, beds, household utensils, bar- rels and kegs came floating past the bridges. At eight o'clock the water was within six feet of the roadbed of the bridge. The wreckage floated past without stop- ping for at least two hours. Then it began to lessen, and night coming suddenly upon us we could see no more. The wreckage was floating by for a long time before the first living persons passed. Fifteen people that I saw w^ere carried down by the river. One oi these, a boy, was saved, and three of them were drowned just directly below the town. It was an awful sight and one that I will not soon forget.'* Hundreds of animals lost their lives. The bodies of horses, dogs and chickens floated past. The little boy who was rescued at Bolivar had two dogs as compan- ions during his fearful ride. The dogs were drowned just before reaching the bridge. One old mule swam past. Its shoulders were torn, but it was alive when swept past the town. Saved from a Watery Grave to Perlsli by Flames. After a long, weary ride of eight or nine miles over the worst of country roads New Florence, fourteen miles from Johnstown, was reached. The road bed ^^f 32 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. : S^ : -J * between this place and Bolivar was washed out in many places. The trackmen and the wreck crews were all night in the most dangerous portions of the road. The last man from Johnstown brought the informa- tion that scarcely a house remained in the city. The upper portion above the railroad bridge had been completely submerged. The water dammed up against the viaduct, the wreckage and debris finishing the work that the torrent had failed to accomplish. The bridge at Johnstown proved too stanch for the fury of the water. It is a heavy piece of masonry, and was used as a viaduct by the old Pennsylvania Cana^ Some of the top stones were displaced. The story reached here a short time ago that a family consisting of father and mother and nine chil- dren were washed away in a creek at Lockport. TL mother managed to reach the shore, but the husband and children were carried out into the Conemaugh to drown. The woman is crazed over the terrible event. A Night of Horror. After night settled down upon the mountains the horror of the scenes was enhanced. Above the roar of the water could be heard the piteous appeals from the unfortunate as they were carried by. To add also to the terror of the night, a brllliar>t illumination lit up the sky. This illumination could be plainly seen from this place. A message received from Sang Hollow stated that this light came from a hundred burning wrecks of houses that wer« piled upon the Johnstown Bridge. :* i w^m^ THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 33 1 out in many rews were all the road, the informa- le city. The re had been sd up against finishing the uplish. The >r the fury of nry, and was vania Cana. 2 ago that a nd nine chil- :kport. TL the husband onemaugh to jrrible event. ountains the 3ve the roar ippeals from )y. To add illumination ! plainly seen r stated that g wrecks of own Bridge. :>^ A supervisor from up the road brought the informa- tion that the wreckage at Johnstown was piled up forty feet above th bridge. The startling news came in that more than a thou- sand lives had been lost. This cannot be substan- tiated. By actual count one hundred and ten people had been seen floating past Sang Hollow before dark. Forty-seven were counted passing New Florence and the nui-^ber had diminished to eight at Bolivar. The darkness coming on stopped any further count, and it was only by the agonizing cries that rang out above the waters that it was known that a human being was being carried to death. An Irresistible Torrent. The scenes along the river were wild in the extreme. Although the water was subsiding, still as it dashed against the rocks that filled the narrow channel of the Conemaugh its spray was carried high up on the shore. The towns all along the line of the railroad from Johnstown west had received visitations. Many of the houses in New Florence were partially under water. At Bolivar the whole lower part of the town was submerged. The ride over the mountain road gave one a good idea of the cause of this disaster. Every creek was a rushing river and every rivulet a raging torrent. The ground was water soaked, and when the immense mountain district that drains into the Conemaugh above South Fork is taken into consideration the terrible volume of water that must have accumulated 3 1 34 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. can be realized. Gathering, as it did, witnin a few| minutes, it came against the breast of the South Fork dam with irresistible force. The frightened inhabi- tants along the Conemaugh describe the flood as some- thing awful. The first rise came almost without warn- ing, and the torrent came roaring down the mountain passes in one huge wave, several feet in height. After the first swell the water continued to rise at a fearful rate. Daylig^ht Bring-s No Relief. The gray morning light does not seem to show either hope or mitigation of the awful fears of the night. It has been a hard night to everybody. Thei overworked newspaper men, who have been without rest and food since yesterday afternoon, and the operators who have handled the messages are already preparing for the work of the day. There has been a long wrangle over the possession of a special train for the press between i ival newspaper men, and it has delayed the work of others who are anxious to get further east. Even here, so far from the washed-out towns, seven bodies have been found. Two were in a tree, a man and a woman, where the flood had carried them. The country people are coming into the town in large numbers telling stories of disaster along the li/er banks in sequestered places. Floating Houses. John McCarthey, a carpenter, who lives in Johns- town, reached here about four o'clock. He left Johns- town at half-past four yesterday afternoon and says the THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 35 scene then was indescribable. The people had been warned early in the morning to move to the higlilands, but they did not heed the warning, although it was re- peated a number of times up to one o'clock, when the water poured into Cinder street several feet deep. Then the houses began rocking to and fro, and finally the force of the current carried buildings across streets and vacant lots and dashed them against each other, breaking them into fragments. These building? were full of the people who had laughed at the cry of danger. McCarthey says that in sume cases he counted as many as fifteen persons clinging to build- ings. McCarthey's wife was with him. She had three sisters, who lived near her. They saw the house in which these girls lived carried away, and then they could endure the situation no longer and hurried away. The husband feared his wife would go crazy. They went inland along country roads until they reached hp'-e. It is said to be next to impossible to get to Johns- town proper to-day in any manner except by rowboat. The roads are cut up so that even the countrymen re- fuse to travel over them in their roughest vehicles. The only hope is to get within about three miles by a special train or by hand car. -. Tlie Dead Cast Up. Nine dead bodies have been picked up within the limits of this borough since daylight. None of them has yet been recognized. Five are women. One woman, probably twenty-five years old, had clasped in ■■ d<} THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. her arms a babe about six months old. The body of a young man was discovered in the branches of a huge tree which had been carried down the stream. All the orchard crops and shrubbery along the banks of the river have been destroyed. The body of another woman has just been dis- covered in the river here. Her foot was seen above the surface of the water and a rope was fastened about it. A Roof as a Kaft. John Webet and his wife, an old couple, Michael Metzgar and John Forney were rescued near here early this morning. They had been carried from their home in Cambria City on the roof of the house. There were seven others on the roof when it was carried off, all of whom were drowned. They were unknown to Weber, having drifted on to the roof from floating debxris. Weber and wife were thoroughly drenched and were almost helpless from exposure. They were unable to walk when taken off the roof at this place. They are now at the hotel here. Hundreds of people from Johnstown and up river towns are hurrying here in search of friends and relatives who were swept away in last night's flood. The most intense excitement prevails. The street corners are crowded with pale and anxious people who tell of the calamity with bated breath. Squire Bennett has charge of the dead bodies, and he is hav- ing them properly cared for. They are being pre- pared for burial, but will be held here for identification. Fo above numl They bruis< R. wired dead asks ^ can c: : thous; ; Ar are o wome A 1 ' hundr ; V town ] '4 air is but 11' , certaii 3 ined. It is I cause dange of an tions ( - last sp from t Ace 'm^^ THt? JOHNSTOWN HORROR. sr Four boys have just come from the river bank above here. They say that on the opposite side a number of bodies can be seen lying In the mud. They found the body of a woman on this side badly bruised. R. B. Rodgers, Justice of the Peace at Nineveh, has wired the Coroner at Greensburg that one hundred dead bodies have been found at that place, and he asks what Is to be done with them. From this one can estimate that the loss of life will reach over one thousand. A report has just been received that twenty persons are on an Island near Nineveh and that men and women are on a partly submerged tree. A report has just reached here that at least one hundred people were consumed In the flames at Johns- town last night, but it cannot be verified here. The air is filled with thrilling and most incredible stories, but none of them have as yet been confirmed. It is certain, however, that even the worst cannot be Imag- ined. TVarniiig^H Reineiiiberetl Too Late. It is very evident that more lives have been lost be- cause of foolish Incredulity than from ignorance of the danger. For more than a year there have been fears of an accident of just such a character. The founda- tions of the dam were considered to be shaky early last spring and many increasing leakages were reported from time to time. According to people who live in Johnstown and othei V, 38 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. I ?4' ; < ;5 towns on the line of the river, ample time was given to the Johnstown folks by the railroad officials and by other gendcmen of standing and reputation. In dozens, yes, hundreds of cases, this warning was ut- terly 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 among the rank grass beside the river. There has grown up a bitter feeling among the sur- viving sufferers against those who owned the lake ar^d dam. and damage suits will be plentiful by and by. The dam in Stony Creek, above Johnstown, broke about noon yesterday and thousands of feet of lumber passed down the stream. It is impossible to tell what the loss of life will be, but at nine o'clock the Coroner of Westmoreland county sent a message out saying that ICO bodies had been recovered at Nineveh, half- way from here to Johnstown. Sober minded people do not hesitate to say that 1,200 is moderate. Fire's Awful Work. "How can anybody tell how many are dead?" said a railroad engineer this morning. *T have been at Long Hollow with my train since eleven o'clock yes- terday, and I have seen fully five hundred persons lost in the flood." J. W. Esch, a brave railroad employee, saved six- teen lives at Nineveh. The most awful culmination of the awful night was the roasting of a hundred or more persons In mid- flood. The ruins of houses, old buildings and other the wre* were lit* burned the mas the ruir the brid The 1 houses ( only thr The f the Pen New F towns ai The f the heav road bri has beer ton, half bridge a woman were se were se shordy c A gre The rive THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR 39 IS given and by 3n. In was ut- ly in the ly jeers Lhe rank the sur- [ake ar.d iby. n, broke f lumber tell what Coroner t saying reh, half- eople do J?" said been at ock yes- sons lost Lved six- ight was in mid- id other structures swept against the new railroad bridge at lohnstown, and from an overturned stove or some such cause the upper part of the wreckage caught fire. There were crowds of m.en, women and children on the wrecK, and their screams were soon heard. They were literally roasted on the flood. Soon after the fire burned itself out other persons were thrown against the mass. There were some fifty people in sight when the ruins suddenly broke up and were swept under the bridge into the darkness. The latest news from Johnstown is that but two houses could be seen in the town. It is also said that only three houses remain in Cambria City. The first authentic news was from W. N. Hays, of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, who reached New Florence at nine o'clock. He says the valley towns are annihilated. Destriic»-:on at Blairsvillc. The flood in the Conemaugh River at this point is the heaviest ever known here. At this hour the rail- road bridge between here and Blairsville intersection has been swept away, and also the new bridge at Coke- ton, half a mile below. It is now feared that the iron bridge at the lower end of this town will go. A living woman and dead man, supposed to be her husband, were seen going under the railroad bridge. They were seen to come from under the bridge safely, but shortly disappeared and were seen no more. ^ A great many families lose their household goods. The river is running full of timber, houses, goods, etc *^ ''■«-!^?-^f' 'a 40 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. The loss will be heavy. The excitement here is very great. The river is still rising. There are some famil- ies below the town in the second story of their houses who cannot get out. It is feared that if the water goes much higher the loss of life will be very great. The railroad company had fourteen cars of coal on their bridge when it went down, and all were swept down the river. The town bridge has just succumbed to the seeth- ing floods, whose roar can be heard a long distance. The water is still rising and it is thought that the West Pennsylvania Railroad will be without a single bridge. It is reported that a man went down with the Blairs- ville bridge while he was adjusting a headlight. Havoc about Altoona. The highest and most destructive flood that has visited this place for fifty years occurred yesterday. It has been raining continuously for the past twenty- four hours. The Juniata river is ten feet above low water mark and is still risinof. The lower streets of Gaysport bordering on the river bank are submerged, and the water is two feet deep on the first floors of the houses there. The water rose so rapidly that the people had to be removed from the houses in boats and wao-ons. Three railroad trestles and a number of bridges over the streams have been carried away, and railroad travel between this place and the surrounding- towns has been interrupted. Property of all kinds was carried off. The truck gardens and grain fields along the river were utterly ■«¥fi# THE JOHNSTOWN IfORROR. 41 lere is very some faniil- heir houses the water very great. :oal on then- wept down ) the seeth- g distance. It the West gle bridge, the Blairs- ght. .1 that has yesterday, ist twenty- above low streets of ubmcrged, oors of the that the in boats number of away, and irrounding The truck :re utterly r destroyed, and the fences carried away. The iron furnaces and rolling mills at this place and Duncan- ville were compelled to shut down on account of the high water. Keene ^ Babcock lost 300,000 brick in the kiln ready to \y'ro.. G. W. Rhodes 350,000, and Joseph Hart 15,000. It is estimated that the flood has done over $50,000 damage in this vicinity. The fences of the Blair County Agricultural Society were de- stroyed. Alarm at York. Last night was one of great alarm here. It rained steadily all day, some of the showers being severe. The great flood of 1884 is forcibly recalled. Many families are moving out. At half-past one A. M. a general alarm was sounded on the bells of the city. The flood in the Susquehanna River here reached its greatest height about six o'clock this morning, when all bridofes save one were under water. Busi 'e:iS places and residences in the low section were flooded to a great extent, and the damage in this city alone amounts to ^^25,000 so far. The injury to the Spring Grove paper mills near this city is heavy. By noon the water had fallen sufliciently to restore travel over nearly all the bridges. A number of bridges in the county have been swept away, and the loss in the county exclusive of the city is estimated at $100,000. In attempting to catch some driftwood James Mcll- vaine lost his balance and fell into the raging current and was drowned. mrnm ■xgSMF tii PWt-lft ^ * is* ! 42 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. II It If t! Seven bodies have been taken from the water and debris on the river banks at New Florence. One body has also been taken from the river at this point, that of a young girl. None of them have been identi- fied. The whole face of the country between here and New Florence is under water, and houses, bridges and buildings fill the fields and even perch upon the hill- side all the way to Johnstown. Great flocks of crows are already filling the valley, while buzzards are almost as frequently seen. The banks of the river are lined with people who are looking as well for booty as for bodies. Much valuable property was carried away in the houses as well as from houses not washed away. The river has fallen again into its channel, and noth- ing in the stream itself except its ^'ed, angry color shows the wild horror of last night. It has fallen fully twenty feet since midnight, and by to-night it will have attain- ed its normal depth. Painful Scenes. At all points from Greensburg to Long Hollow, the limit of the present trouble, scores of people throng the stations begging and beseeching railroad men on the repair trains to take them aboard, as they are almost frenzied with anxiety and apprehension in re- gard to their friends who live at or near Johnstown. Strong men are as tearful as the women who join in the request. > Pitiable sights and scenes multiply more and more II THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 43 rapidly. The Conemaugh is one great valley of mourn- ing. Those who have not lost friends have lost their house or their substance, and apparently the grief far the one is as poignant as for the other. They Were Warned. The great volume of water struck Johnstown about half-past five in the afternoon. It did not find the people unprepared, as they had had no- tice from South Fork that the dam was threatening to go. Many, however, disregarded the notice and remained in their houses in the lower part of the city and were caught before they could get out. Superintendent Pitcairn, of the Pennsylvania Rail- road, who has spent the entire day in assisting not only those who were afflicted by the flood, but also in an attempt to reopen his road, went home this morn- ing. Before he left he issued an order to all Pennsyl- vania Railroad employees to keep a sharp lookout for bodies, both in the river and in the bushes, and to return them to their friends. Assistant Superintendent Trump is still on the ground near Lone Hollow directing the movements of gravel and construction trains, which are arriving as fast as they can be fitted up and started out. The roadbeds of both the Pennsylvania and the West Pennsylvania railroads are badly damaged, and it will cost the latter, especially from the Bolivar Junc- tion to Saltsburg, many thousands of dollars to repair injuries to embankments alone. 44 THi: JCHN'StoWN HO.kROR. hi Pittsburg there was but one topic of conversa- tion, and that was the Johnstown deluge. Crowds of eager watchers all day long besieged the newspaper bulletin boards and rendered streets impassable in their vicinity. Many of them had friends or relatives in the stricken district, and "Names!'* "Names!" was their cry. But there were no names. The storm which had perhaps swept away their loved ones had also carried away all means of communication and their vigil was unrewarded. It is not yet known whether the telegraph operator at Johnstown is dead or alive. The nearest point to that city which can be reached to-night is New Florence, and the one wire there is u^ed almost constantly by orders for coffins, embalming fluid and preparing special cars to carry the recovered dead to their homes. Along the banks of the now turbulent Allegheny were placed watchers for dead bodies, and all wreck- age was carefully scanned for the dead. The result of this vigilance was the recovery of one body, that of a woman floating down on a pile of debris. Seven other bodies were seen, but could not be reached owing to the swift moving wreckage by which they were surrounded. A lieartreuding Sig-ht. A railroad conductor who arrived in the city this morning said: — "There is no telling how many lives are lost. We got as far as Bolivar, and I tell you it is a terrible sight. The body of a boy was picked up by some of us there, and there were eleven bodies recov- THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 4J) ered altogether. I do not think that anyone got into Johnstown, and it is my opinion that they will not get in very soon. No one who is not on the grounds has any idea of the damage done. It will be at least a week before the extent of this flood fs known, and the-n I think many bodies will never be recovered." Assistant Superintendent Wilson, of the West Pennsylvania Railroad, received the following despatch from Nineveh to-day : — "There appears to be a large number of people lodged in the trees and rubbish along the line. Many are alive. Rescuing parties should be advised at every station." Another telegram from Nineveh said that up to noon 175 bodies had been taken from the river at that point. The stage of water in the Allegheny this afternoon became so alarming that residents living in the low- lying districts began to remove their household effects to a higher grade. The tracks of the Pittsburgh and Western Railroad are under water in several places, ?*^d great inconvenience Is felt in moving trains. Criminal Negligence. it was stated at the office of the Pennsylvania Rail- road early this morning that the deaths would run up into the thousands rather than hundreds, as was at first supposed. Despatches received state that the stream of human beings that was swept before the floods was pitiful to behold. Men, women and children were carried along frantically shrieking for help. Rescue was impossible. •if 1 46 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. Husbands were swept past their wives, and ciiildre* were borne along at a terrible speed to certain death before the eyes of their terrorized nnd frantic parents. It was said at the depot that it was impossible to estimate the number whose lives were lost in the flood. It will simply be a matter of conjecture for several days as to who was lost and who escaped. The o jiople of Johnstown were warned of the pos- sibility of the bursting of the dam during the morn- ing, but very few if any of the inhabitants took the warning seriously. Shortly after noon ! gave way about five miles above Johnstown, and sweeping everything before It burst upon the town with terrible force. Everything was carried before It, and not an .In- stant's time was given to seek safety. Houses were demolished, swept from their foundations and carried in the flood to a culvert near the town. Here a mass of all manner of debris soon lodged, and by evening It had dammed the water back Into the city over the tops of many of the still remaining chimneys. The Dam Always a Menace. Assistant Superintendent Trump, of the Pennsyl- vania, is at Conemaugh, but the officials at the depot had not been able to receive a line from him until as late as half-past two o'clock this morning. It was said also that it will be Impossible to get a train through either one way or die other for at least two or three days. This applies also to the mails, as there is ab»o« lutely no way of getting mails through. II i*i)^-U#^, f f THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 47 "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. I doubt if there was 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 though con- scious that the fearful day would come some tim.e when their worst fears would be transcended by the horror of the actual occurrence. Converted Into a Lake. "Johnstown is in a hollow between two rivers, and that lake must have swept over the city at a depth of forty feet. It cannot be, it is impossible that such an awful thing could happen to a city of ten thousand inhabitants, and if it has, thousands have lost their lives, and men are to blame for it, for warnings have been uttered a thousand times and have received no attention." The body of a Welsh woman, sixty years of age, was taken from the river near the suspension bridge, at ten o'clock this morning. Four other bodies were iSeen, but owing to the mass of wreckage which is ..> • IP 48 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. I coming down they could not be recovered, and passed down the Ohio River. A citizens* meeting has been called to devise means to aid the sufferers. The Pennsylvania Railroad offic- ials have already placed cars on Liberty street for the purpose of receiving provisions and clothing, and up * to this hour many prominent merchants have made heavy donations. Anxiety of the People. The difficulty of obtaining definite information added tremendously to the excitement and apprehen- sion of the people in Pittsburgh who had relatives and friends at the scene of the disaster. Members of the South Fork Club, and among them some of the most eminent men in the Pittsburgh financial and mercantile world, were in or near Johns- town, and several of them were accompanied by their wives and families. There happened to be also quite a number of residents of Johnstown In Pittsburgh, and when the news of the horror was confirmed and the railroads bulletined the fact that no trains would go east last night the scene at Union Depot was profoundly pathetic and exciting. But two trains were sent out by the Pennsylvania road from the Union station at Pittsburgh. A despatch states that the Cambria Iron Company's plant on the north side of the Conemaugh River at Johnstown is a complete wreck. Until this despatch was received it \v3^s not thought that this portion of the plant had been seriously injured. It was known THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 49 thax the portion of the plant located on the south bank of the river was washed away, and this was thought to be the extent of the damage to the property of that immense corporation. The plant is said to be valued at ji5, 000,000. I' '>■ n CHAPTER II. Oeatln and Desolation. The terrible situation on the second day after the great disaster only intensifies the horror. As informa- tion becomes more full and accurate, it does not abate one tittle of the awful havoc. Rather it adds to it, and gives a thousand-fold terror to the dreadful calamity. Not only do the scenes which are described appear all the more dreadful, as is natural, the nearer they are brought 'to the imagination, but it seems only too probable that the final reckoning in loss of Hie and material wealth will prove far more stupendous than has even yet been supposed. The very greatness of the destruction prevents the possibility of an accurate estimate. Beneath the ghastly ruins of the once happy towns and villages along the pathway of the deluge, who shall say how many victims lie buried ? Amid the rocks and woods that border the broad track of the waters, who shall say how many lie bruised and mangled and unrecog- nizable, wedged between boulders or massed amid debris and rubbish, or hidden beneath the heaped-up deposits of earth, and whether all of them shall ever be found and given the last touching rites ? Already the air of the little valley, which four days ago was smiling with all the health of nature and the (50) THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 61 ter the iforma- t abate it, and imity. appear hey are ily too ite and us than nts the th the villages ay how woods no shall irecog- d amid iped-up all ever ur days nd the i-^ contentment of industrious man, is waxing pestiferous with the awful odor of decaying human bodies. Buz- zards, invited by their disgusting instinct, gather for a promised feast, and sit and glower on neighboring perches or else circle round and round in the blue em- pyrean over the location of unfriended corpses, known only to their keen sense of smell or vision. But another kind of buzzard, more disgusting, more hideous, more vile, has hastened to this scene of woe and anguish and desolation to exult over it to his profit. Thugs and thieves in unclean hordes have mysteriously turned up at Johnstown and its vicinity, as hyenas in the desert seem to spring bodily out of the deadily sand whenever the corpse of a gallant warrior, abandoned by his kind, lies putrefying in the night. There is a cry from the afflicted community for the policing cf the devastated region, and there is no doubt it is greatly needed. Happily, Nemesis does not sleep this time in the face of such provocation as is given her by these atrociously inhuman human beings. It is a satisfaction to record that something more than a half dozen of them have been dealt with as promptly and as mercilessly as they deserve. For such as they there should be no code of pity. There is an inexhaustible store of pathos and hero- ism in the tale of this disaster. Of course, in all of its awful details it never can be fitly written. One reason is that too many of the witnesses of its more fearful phases "sleep the sleep that knows not waking." ■ir- 62 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. But there is a greater reason, and that is that there is a point in the intenser actuahty of things at which all huiiian language fails to do justice to it. Yet — as simply told as possible — there are many incidents of this great tragedy which nothing has ever surpassed or ever can surpass in impressivcness. It is a con- solation, too, that human nature at such times does betray here and there a gleam of that side of it which gives forth a reflection of the ideal manhood or woman- hood. Bits of heroism and of tender devotedness scattered throughout this dark, dismal picture of de- struction and despair light it up with wonderful beauty, and while they bring tears to the eyes of the sternest reader, wjll serve as a grateful relief from the per- vading hue of horror and blackness. There is the very gravest need of vigorous relief measures in favor of the survivors of the flood. A spontaneous movement in that direction has been begun, but as yet lacks the efficiency only to be de- rived from a general and organized co-operation. Complete Annihilation. When Superintendent Pitcairn telegraphed from Johnstown to Pittsburgh Friday night that the town was annihilated he came very close to the facts of the case, although he had not seen the ill-fated city. To say that Johnstown is a wreck is but stating 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. 'V ■, THE JOHNSTOWN aORROR. 63 The losses, however, arc as nothini^ com pared to the frightful sacrifices of precious hu- man lives. During Sunday Johnstown has been drenched with the tears of stricken mortals, and the air Is filled with sobs that come fronf\ breaking hearts. There are scenes enacted here every hour and every minute that affect all behold- ers profoundly. When brave men die in battle, for country or for principle, their loss can be reconciled to the stern destinies of life. When homes are torn asunder in an instant, and the loved ones hurled from the arms of loving and devoted mothers, there is an element of sadness connected with the tragedy that touches every heart. TJie loss of life is simply dreadfal, Hie most consev' vaiive j)eople declare that the number will reach 5000, while others confidently assert that 8000 or 10,000 have perished. How Johnstown Looks after Flood and Fire Have Done Their Worst. An eye-witness writing from Pittsburgh says: — ^We have just returned from a trip through what is left of Johnstown. The view from beyond is almost impossi- ble to describe. To look upon it is a sight that neither war nor catastrophe can equal. House is piled upon house, not as we have seen in occasional floods of the the Western rivers, but the remains of two and four storied buildings piled upon the top of one another. The ruins of what is known as the Club House are in perhaps the best condition of any In that portion of the town, but it is certainly damaged beyond possi- n 04 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. bility of repair. On the upper floor five IxxHes are If/inrj unidentified. One of them, a woman of genteel birth, judging by her dress, is locked in one of the small rooms to prevent a possibility of spoiliation by wreckers, who are flocking to the spot from all direc- tions and taking possession of everything hey can get hold of. Here and there bodies can be seen sticking in the ruins. Some of the most prominent citizens are to be seen working with might and main to get at the re- mains of relatives whom they have located. Tliere ia no doubt that, wild as the estimates of the loss of life and damage to jiroj^erti/ have 6een, it is even larger than there is any idea of Close on to 2,000 residences lie in kindling wood at the lower end of the town. Fr<$aks of the Flood. An idea of the eccentricity of the flood may be gathered from the fact that houses that were situated at Woodvale and points above Johnstown are piled at the lower end of the town, while some massive houses have been lifted and carried from the lower end as far as the cemetery at the extreme upper portion of the town. All through the ruins are scattered the most costly furniture and store goods of all kinds. Thieves are Busy. I stood on the keyboard and strings of a piano while I watched a number of thieves break into the remnants of houses and pilfer them, while others again had got at a supply of fine groceries and had ^ \ I -k ^mmmi THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 55 broken into a barrel of fine brandy, and were fairly steeping themselves in it. I met quite a number of Pittsburghers in the ruins looking for friends and rela- tives. If the skiffs which were expected from Pitts- burgh were there they would be of vast assistance in reaching the ruins, which are separated by the stream of water descending from the hills. A great fear is felt that there will be some difficulty In restoring the stream to its proper channel. Its course now lies right along Main street, and it is about two hundred yards wide. Something should be done to get the bodies of the dead decently taken care of. The ruins are reeking with the smell of decaying bodies. Right at the edge of the ruins the decaying body of a stout colored woman is lying like the remains of an animal, without any one to identify and take care of it Liynchins: the Ghouli. A number of Hungarians collected about a number of bodies at Cambria which had been washed up and began rifling the trunks. After they had secured all tlie contents they turned their attention to the dead. The ghastly spectacle presented by the distorted features of those who had lost their lives during the flood had no influence upon the ghouls, who acted more like wild beasts than human beings. They took every article from the clothing on the dead bodies, not leaving anything of value or anything that would serve to identify the remains. After the miscreants had removed all their plunder 65 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. to dry ground a dispute arose over a division of the. spoils. A pitched battle followed and for a time the situation was alarming. Knives and clubs were used freely. As a result several of the combatants were seriously wounded and left on the ground, their fellow countrymen not making any attempt to remove tliem from the field of strife. Johnstown, Pa., June 2, 1 1 A. M. They have j^ist hung a man over near the railroad to the telegraph j)ole for cutting the finger off of a dead woman in order to get a ring. Vcngreance, Swift and Sure. The way of the transgressor in the desolated valley of the Conemaugh is hard indeed. Each hour reveals some new and horrible story of suffering and outrage, and every succeeding hour brings news of swift and merited punishment meted out to the fiends who have dared to desecrate the stiff and mangled corpses in che city of the dead, and torture the already half crazed victims of the cruelest of modern catastrophes. As the roads to the lands round about are opened tales of almost indescribable horror come to light, and deeds of the vilest nature, perpetrated in the darkness of the night, are brought to light. Followed, by Aven^iiigr Fanners. Just as the shadows began to fall upon the earth lasi: evening a party of thirteen Hungarians were noticed stealthily picking their way along the banks of the Conemaugh toward Sang Hollow. Suspicious of their purpose, several farmers armed tiiemselves and start] wen der. U and «< \ * ' V, .^^ . THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 57 m of thd time the zre used nts were :ir fellow ve tliem A. M. ilroad to ' a dead ;d valley • reveals Dutrage, tvift and ho have is in the crazed opened ht, and arkness e earth s were anks of :ious of es and I started In pursuit. Soon their most horrible fears were realized. The Hungarians were out for plun- der. Lying upon the shore they came upon the dead and mangled body of a woman upon whose person there were a number of trinkets and jewelry and two diamond rings. In their eagerness to secure the plunder, the Hungarians got into a squabble, during which one of the number severed the finger upon which were the rings, and started on a run with his fearful prize. The revolting nature of the deed so wrought upon the pursuing farmers, who by this time were close at hand, that they gave imme- diate chase. Some of the Hungarians showed fight, but being outnumbered were compelled to flee for their lives. Nine of the brutes escaped, but four were literally driven into the surging river and to their death. The inhuman monster whose atrocious act has been described was among the number of the in- voluntary suicides. Another incident of even greater moment has just been brought to notice. Anxious to be a Murderer. At half-past eight this morning an old railroader who had walked from Sang Hollow stepped up to a number of men who were congregated on the platform stations at Curranville and said : — " Gentlemen, had I a shotgun with me half an hour ago I would now be a murderer, yet with no fear of ever having to suffer for my crime. "Two miles below here I watched three men going along the banks stealing the jewels from the bodies of the vtafV* ■r" 68 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. dead wives and daughters of men icho have been robbed of cU tliey held dear on earth.'' He had no sooner finished the last sentence than five burly men, with looks of terrible determination written on their faces, were on their way to the scene of plunder, one with a coil of rope over his shoulder and anudicr with a revolver in his hand. In twenty minutes, so it is stated, they had overtaken two of the wretches, who were then in the act of cutting pieces from the ears and fingers from the hands of the bodies of two dead women. Brutes at Bay. With revolver levelled at the scoundrels the leader of the posse shouted, "Throw up your hands or I'll blow yoiir heads off! " With blanched faces and trembling forms they obeyed the order and begged for mercy. They were searched, and as their pockets were emptied of their ghastly finds the indignation of the crowd intensified, and when a bloody finger of an infant^ encircled ivith two tiny gold rings, was found among the plunder in the leader's pocket, a cry went up ''Lynch them/ Lynch them/'* Without a moment's delay ropes were thrown around their necks and they were dangling to the limbs of a tree, in the branches of which an hour before were entangled the bodies of a dead father and son. After the expiration of a half hour the ropes were cut, and the bodies lowered and carried to a pile of rocks in the forest on the hill above. It is hinted that an Allegheny county official was one of the most prom- inent actors in this justifiable homicide. 1 I 5^|fcfi|0!^\;#'':^?- Ijl.JWIiF -H niE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 09 m robbed nee than mination he scene shoulder n twenty o of the g pieces e bodies le leader h or I'll ces and yged for pockets ation of er of an found went up wmenfs nd they iches of a dead es were pile of ;ed that t prom- Another case of attempted lynching was witnessed this evening near -^rnville. The man was observed stealing valuable articles from the houses. He was seized by a mob, a rope was placed around his neck and he was jerked up into the air. The rope was tied to the tree and his would-be lynchers left him. By- standers cut him down before he was dead. The other men did not interfere and he was allowed to go. The man was so badly scared that he could not give his name if he wanted to do so. Two colored men were shot while robbing the dead bodies, by the Pittsburgh police, who are doing guard about the town. Fiends in Human Form. To one who saw bright, bustling Johnstown a week ago the sight of its present condition must cause a thrill of horror, no matter how callous he might be. I doubt if any incident of war or flood ever caused a more sickening sight. Wretchedness of the most pathetic kind met the gaze on every side. Unlawfulness runs riot. If ever military aid was needed now is the time. The ioicn is perfectly overrun tciih thieves^ many of them from Pittsburgh. The Hun- garians are the worst. They seem to operate in reg- ular organized bands. In Cambria City this morning they entered a house, drove out the occupants at the point of revolvers and took possession. They can be constandy seen carrying large quantities of plunder to the hills. The number of drunken men is remarkable. Whis- W; r:' 60 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. ii ! key seems marvelously plenty. Men are actually carrying it around in pails. Barrels of the stuff are constantly located among the drifts, and men are scrambling over each other and fighting like wild beasts in their mad search for it. At the cemetery, at the upper end of the town, I saw a sight that rivals the inferno. A number of ghouls had found a lot of fine groceries, among them a barrel of brandy, with which they were fairly stuffing themselves. One huge fellow was standing on the strings of an upright piano singing a profane song, every little while breaking into a wild dance. A half dozen others were engaged in a hand-to-hand fight over the possession of some treasure stolen from a ruined house, and the crowd around the barrel were yelling like wild men. The cry for help increases every hour. Something must be done to get the bodies decently taken care of. The ruins are reeking with the smell of decaying bodies. At the very edge of the ruins the body of a large colored woman, in an advanced state of decom- position, is lying like the body of an animal. Watched Their Friends Die. The fire in the drift above the bridge is still burning fiercely and will continue to do so for several days. The skulls of six people can be seen sticking up out of the ruins just above the east end of the bridge. Noiiiing but the blackened skulls can be seen. They are all together. The sad scenes will never all be written. One lady ^l. :ii#. f THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 61 actually stuff are men are like wild i town, I mber o( ng them ' stuffing r on the ie song, A half nd fight n from a rel were mething care of. lecaying ody of a decom- burning il days. ; up out bridge. They ne lady ■'■At, 1 told me this morning of seeing her mother crushed to pieces just before her eyes and the mangled body carried off down the stream. William Yarner lost six children and saved a baby about eighteen months old. His wife died just three weeks ago. An aged German, his wife and five daughters floated down on their house to a point below Nineveh, where the house was wrecked. The five daughters were drowned, but the old man and his wife stuck in a tree and hung there for twenty-four hours before they could be taken off. Died KissiiiiT Bcr Babe. One of the most pidful sights of this terrible dis- aster came to my notice this afternoon, 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 except the shoes was torn off the body. The corpse was that of a mother, for although cold in death the woman clasped a young male babe appar- endy not more than a year old tightly in her arms. The little one was huddled close up to its mother's face, who when she realized their terrible fate, had ev- idently raised the babe to her lips to imprint upon Its lltde lips the last motherly kiss it was to receive in this world. The sight was a pathetic one and turned many a stout heart to tears. Among the miraculous escapes to be recorded in connection with the great disaster is that of George J. Leas and his family. He resided on Iron street. When the rush of water came there were eight e^^^^. i 'I 62 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. people on the roof. The little house swung around off its moorings and floated about for nearly half an hour before it came up against the bank of drift above the stone bridge. A three-year-old girl with sunny golden hair and dimpled cheeks prayed all the while that God would save them, and it seemed that God really answered the prayer of this innocent little girl and directed the house against the drift, enabling every one of the eight to get off. Mrs. Leas carried the little girl in her arms, and how she got off she doesn't know. Every house around them, she said, was crushed, and the people either killed or drowned. Thugrs at Their Work. One of the most dreadful features of this catastrophe has been the miserable weakness displayed by the authorities of Johnstown and the surrounding boroughs. Johnstown needed them sadly for forty-eight hours. There is supposed to be a Burgess, but like most bur- gesses he is a shadowy and mythical personage. If there had been concerted and intelligent action the fire in the debris at the dam could have been extinguished within a short time after it started. Too many cooks spoiled this ghastly broth. Even now if dynamite or some other explosive was intelligently applied the huge mass of wreckage which has up to the present time escaped the flame, and no doubt contains a number of bodies, could be saved from fire. This, however, is a matter of small import compared with the immunity granted the outrageous and open THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. •S graveyard robbery and disgusting thievery which have thriven bravely since Friday morning. Foreigners and natives carrying huge sacks, and in some mstances even being assisted by horses and carts, have been busily engaged hunting corpses and stealing such valuables as were to be found in the wreckage. Dozens of barrels of strong liquor have been res- cued by the Hungarian and Polish laborers from among the ruins of saloons and hotels and the con- tents of the same have been freely indulged in. This has led to an alarming debauchery, which is on the increase. All day the numbers of the drunken crowd have been augmented from time to time by fresh arrivals from the surrounding districts. Those who have suffered from the tidal vvave have become much embittered against the law breakers. There have been many small fights and several small riots in consequence. This has been regarded with apprehension by the State authorities, and Adjutant General Hastings has arrived at Johnstown to ex- amine into the condition of affairs and to guard the desolated district with troops. The Eighteenth regi- ment, of Pittsburgh, has tendered its services to this work, but has received no reply to its tender. General Hastings estimates that the loss of life is at least eight thousand. An employee of J. L. Gill, of Latrobe, says he and thirty-five other men were in a three-story building in Johnstown last night. They had been getting out logs for the Johnstown Lumber Company. The man says I 64 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. I.-. that the building was swept away and all the men were drowned except Gill and his family. Handlings the Dead. The recovery of bodies has taken up the time of thousands all day. The theory now is that most of those killed by the torrent were buried beneath the debris. To-day's work in the ruins in a large degree justifies this assumption. I saw six bodies taken out of one pile of rubbish not eight feet square. The truth is that bodies are almost as plentiful as logs. The whirl of the waters puts the bodies under and the logs and boards on top. The rigidity of arms standing out at right angles to the bloated and bruised bodies show that death in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases took place amid the ruins — that is after the wreck of houses had closed over them. Dr. D. G. Foster, who has been here all day, is of the opinion that most of the victims were killed by coming into violent contact with objects in the river and not by drowning. He found many fractured skulls and on most heads blows that would have ren- dered those receiving them Instantly unconscious, and the water did the rest. Not fewer than three hundred bodies have been taken frcnn the river and rtibbish to-day. It has been the labor of all classes of citizens, and marvellous work has been accomplished. The eastern end of Main street, through which the waters tore most madly and destructively, and in which they left their legacy of wrecked houses, fallen trees and dead bodies in a greater degree than in any mmmf;^0m0it>, THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 60 other portion of the city, has been cleared and the re- mains of over fifty have been taken out. All over town the searchen have been equally suc» cessful. As soon as a body i^> found it is placed on a litter and sent to tlie Morgue, where it is washed and INTERIOR OF THE MORGUE. placed on a board for several hours to await identifi- cation. The Morgue is the Fourth-ward school house, and it has been surrounded all day by a crowd of several thousand people. At first the crowd were disposed to stop those bearing the stretchers, uncover the remains 5 i^::\! c^ THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. and view them, but this was found to be prolific not only of great delay, also scenes of agony that not even the bearers could endure. Now a litter is guarded by a file of soldiers with fixed bayonets, and the people are forced aside until the Morgue is reached. It is astonishing to find how small a number of injured are in the city. Few sur- vived. It was death or nothing with the demon of the flood. Now that an adequate idea of what has befallen them*' has been reached, and the fact that a living has still to be made, that plants must be taken care of, that con- tracts must be filled, the business people of the city are giving their attention to the future. Vice President and Director James McMillan, of the Cambria Iron Company, says their loss has been well nigh incalcula- ble. They are not daunted, but will to-morrow begin the work of clearing up the ruins of their mills prepar- atory to rebuilding and repairing their works. They will also immediately rebuild the Gautier Iron Works. This is the disposition of all. " Our pockets are light," they say, "but if nothing happens all of us will be in business again." The cen- tral portion of Johnstown is as completely obliterated as if it had never had foundation. The river has made its bed upon the sites of hundreds of dwellings, and a vast area of sand, mud and gravel marks the old channel. It is doubtful whether it will be possible even to reclaim what was once the business portion of the THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 67 city. The river will have to be returned to its old bed in order to do this. Among the lost is H. G. Rose, the District Attor- ney of Cambria county, whose body was among the first discovered. Gove'-nor Foraker, of Ohio, this afternoon sent five hundred tents to this city. They will be pitched on the hillside to-morrow. They are sadly needed, as the buildings that are left are either too damp or too un- safe for occupancy. Burying the Dead. The work of burying the dead began this morning and has been kept up till late this evening. The bruising of the bodies by logs and trees and other debris and other exposure in the water have tended to hasten decomposition, which has set in in scores of cases, making interment instantly necessary. Bodies are being buried as rapidly as they are iden- tified. The work of Pittsburgh undertakers in exam- ining the dead has rendered it possible to keep all those embalmed two or three days longer, but this is desirable only in cases where identification is dubious and no claimants appear at all. To-day the cars sent out from Pittsburgh with pro- visions for the living were hastily cleared in order to contain the bodies of the dead intended for interment in suburban cemeteries and in graveyards handy to the city. Formality is dispensed with. In some instances only the undertaker and his as'^istants are present, and in 68 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. Others only one or two members of tlie family of the dead. The dead are more plentiful than the mourners. Death has certainly dealt briefly with the stricken city. ''Let the dead bury the dead" has been more nearly exemplified in this instance than in any other in this country's history. The magnitude of the horror increases with the hours. It is believed that not less tlian two thousmd of the drowned found lodgment beneath the omnliun gutherum in the triangle of ground that the Conemaugh cut out of the bank between the river and the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge. The Greatest Funeral Pyre in History. The victims were not upon it, but were parts of it. Whole houses were washed into the apex of the trian- gle. Hen coops, pigstys and stables were added to the mass. Then a stove ignited the mass and the work of cremation began. It was a literal breast of fire. The smoke arose in a huge funnel-shaped cloud, and at times it changed to the form of an hour glass. At night the flames united would light up this misty remnant of mortality. The effect upon the living, both ignorant and intelligent, was the same. That volume of smoke with its dual form, produced a feeling of awe in many that was superior in most cases to that felt in the awful moment of the storm's wrath on Friday. Hundreds stood for hours regarding the smoke and wondering whether it foreboded another visitation more dire than its predecessor. i THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 69 of the ;s of it. 2 trian- ded to id the [iast of shaped n hour up this )n the same, aced a t cases wrath ce and itation The people hereabouts this morning awoke to find that nothing was left but a mass of ashes, calcined human bones, sto/es, old iron and otiier approximately indestructible matter, from which only a light blue vapor was arising. General Hastings took precau- tions to prevent the extension of the fire to another huge pile, a short distance away, and this will be r m^- maged to-day for bodies of flood victims. The Pittsburgh undertakers have contributed more to facilitate the preparation of the dead for the graves tiian all others besides. There was a disposition on the part of many foreign- ers and negroes to raid the houses, and do an all around thieving business, but the measures adopted by the police had a tendency to frighten them off in nearly every case. One man was caught in the act of robbing the body of an old woman, but he protested that he had got nothing and was released. He immediately dis- appeared, and it was found afterward that he had taken j^ioo from the pocket ot the corpse. A half-breed negro yesterday and this morning was doing a thriving business in collecting hams, shoulders, chickens and even furniture. He had thieves in his employ, and while to some of them he was paying reg- ular salaries, others were doing the work for a drink of whiskey. The authorities stopped this thing very suddenly, but not until a number of the people threat- ened to lynch the half Veed. In one or two instance very narrow escapes fr* ^m the rope were made. 70 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. Thousands of coffins and rough boxes have already arrived, and still the supply is short. They are brought in marked to some undertaker, who has a list of his dead, and as fast as the coffins come he writes the name of its intended tenant and tells the friends (when there arc any) where to find it. How a Funeral Takes Place, Two of them go after it, and, carrying it between them to ihe Morgue or to their homes, place the body in it and take it to the burial grounds. One unfortunate feature of the destruction is the fact that some one has been drowned from nearly every house in the city, and teams are procurable only with the greatest difficulty. Dead horses are seen everywhere. In one stable two horses, fully harnessed, bridled and ready to be taken out, stand 6.^7\.^ in their stable, stiff and upright. In a sand pile near the Pennsylvania Railroad depot a horse's hind feet, rump and tail are all that can be seen of him. He was caught in the rapidly running waters and had been driven into the sand. The following telegram from Johnstown has been received at Pittsburg : " For God's sake tell the sight-seers to keep away from Johnstown for the present. What we want is people to work, not to look on. "Citizen's Committe." Three trains have already been sent out with crowded cargoes of sight-seers. At every station along the road excited crowds are waiting for an op- portunity' to get aboard. ■ ■■it • '^'^^f'f(^i^A]s-i^M^\f^>^^^ THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 71 xTiat's what would have happened to the owners of 5v.>uth Fork if they had put in an appearance. There is great indignation among the people of Johnstown at the wealthy Pittsburghers who own South Fork. They blame them severely for having maintained such a frightfully dangerous institution •here. The feeling among the people was intense. If any of the owners of the dam had put in an appear- ance in Johnstown they would have been lynched. The dam has been a constant menace to this valley ever since it has been in existence, and the feeling, which has been bitter enough on the occasion of every flood hidierto, after this horrible disaster is how at fever heat. Without seeing the havoc created no idea can be given of the area of the desolation or the extent of the damage. Only One Left to Motim. An utterly wretched woman stood by a muddy pool of water, trying to find some trace of a once happy home. She was half crazed widi grief, and her eyes were red and swollen. As I stepped to her side she raised her pale and haggard face, crying: "They are all gone. Oh God be merciful to them. My husband ,nd my seven dear little children have been swept down widi the flood and I am left alone. We were driven by the raging flood into the garret, but the waters 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 4 ^1 • i ' -1 iMii iCi 72 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. by one placed my darlings on some drift wood, trust- ing' to the Great Creator. As I liberated the last one, my sweet litde 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 de- liverance he passed from sight forever. The next moment the roof crashed in and I floated outside to be rescued fiheen hours later from the roof of a house in Kernville. If I could only find one of my darlings, I could bow to the will of God, but they all are gone. I have lost everydiing 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. 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 sto I gazing at the unfortunate as if dumb. Finally turi.a-,g away with another wild burst of grief she said : — '*And her beautiful hair all matted and her sweet face bruised and stained with mud and water" THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 73 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. These incidents are but fair samples of the scenes familiar to every turn in this stricken city. W THE AWFUL RUSH OP WATERS. &-'l CHAPTER III. Tlie Horror Increases. During the night thirty-three bodies were brought to one house. As yet the relief force is not perfectly organized and bodies are lying around on boards and doors. Within twenty feet of where this was written the dead body of a colored woman lies. Provision has been made by the Relief Committee for the sufferers to send despatches to all parts of the countr}\ The railroad company has a track through to the bridge. The first train arrived about half-past nine o'clock this morning. A man in a frail craft got caught in the rapids at the railroad bridge, and it looked as if he would increase the already terrible list of dead, but fortunately he caught on a rock, where he uij\v is and is liable to remain all day. The question on every person's lips is — Will the Cambria Iron Company rebuild? The wire mill is completely wrecked, but the walls of the rolling mill are still standing. If they do not resume it is a ques- tion whether the town will be rebuilt. The Hunga- rians were beginning to pillage the houses, and the arrival of police was most timely. W^ord had just been received that all the men employed by Peabody, the Pittsburgh contractor, have been sived. (74) THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 75 The v/orst part of tliis disaFJs; ha«; not been told. Indeed, the most graphic description -hat can be writ- ten will not tell half the tale, v'o p- n can describe nor tongue tell the vastness of tlii.^ dev astation. I walked over the greater part of tlie wrecked town this morning, and one could not have pictured such a wreck, nor could one have imagined that an entire town of this size could be so completely swept away. A. J. Haws, one of the prominent men of the town, was standing on the hillside this morning, taking a view of the wreck. He said : •' I never saw anything like this, nor do I believe any one else ever did. No idea can be had of the tremendous loss of property here. It amounts up into tlie millions. I am going to leave the place. I never will build here." I heard the superintendents and managers of the Cambria Iron Works saying they doubted if the works will be rebuilt. This woul ' rnea.) the death blow to the place. Mr. Stackhous nrst vice-president; of the iron works, is expected ht c to-day. Nothing can be done until a meeting of the company Is held. PrepamtioiiH foi iJJurJai. Adjutant General Hastings, who is in charge of the relief corps at the railroad station, has a force of car- penters at v/ork making rough boxes in which to bury the dead. They will be buried on the hill, just above the town, on ground belonging to the Cambria Iron Company. The graves will be numbered. No one will be buried that has not been identified without a 1 '1 " 4 • ^^\. ,*r^f^ ■M: 4 >. 1 1 t-'^- dd "iJ't 76 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. ^^l;?fi'-'-^ ■:^5^ ' 'j>' " " 11^ careful description being taken. General Hastings drove fifty-eight miles across the country in order to get here, and as soon as he came took charge. He has the whole town organized, and in connection with PREPARATIONS FOR BURIAL. L. S. Smith has commenced the building of bridges and clearing away the wrecks to get out the dead bodies. General Hastings has a large force of men clearing private tracks of the Cambria Iron Company in order that the small engines can be put to work bringing up Pref rapidl)) No wi shippe Those bodies boards soap f; c^ather wantei to the An( after t Tht estimc geratt THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 77 the dead that have been dragged out of the river at points below. The bodies are being brought up and laid out in freight cars. Mr. Kittle, of Ebensburg, has been deputized to take charge of the valuables taken from the bodies and keep a registry of them, and also to note any marks of identification that may be found. A number of the bodies have been stripped of rings or bracelets and other valuables. Over six hundred corpses have now been taken out on the south side of Stony Creek, the greater portion of which have been identified. Send Us C(>flins. Preparations for their burial are being carried on as rapidly as possible, and "coffins, coffins,'* is the cry. No word has been received anj'where of any being shipped. Even rough boxes will be gladly received. Those that are being made, and in which many of the bodies are being buried, are of rough unplaned boards. One hundred dead bodies are laid out at the soap factory, while two hundred or more people are gathered there that are in great distress. Boats are wanted. People have the greatest difficulty in getting to the town. Struggliiigr for Order, Another account from Johnstown on the second day after the disaster says: The situation here has not changed, and yesterday's estimates of the loss of life do not seem to be exag- gerated. Six hundred bodies are now lying in Johns- 78 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. town, and a large number have already been buried Four immense relief trains arrived last night, and the survivors are being well cared for. Adjutant General Hastings, assisted by Mayor Sanger, has taken command at Johnstown and vicinity. Nothing is legal unless it bears the signature of the former. The town itself is guarded by Company H, Sixth regiment. Lieutenant Leggett in command. New members were sworn in by him, and they are making excellent soldiers. Special police are numerous, and the regulations are so strict that even the smoking of a cigar is prohibited. General Hastings expresses the opinion that more troops are necessary. Mr. Alex. Hart is in charge of the special police. He has lost his wife and family. Notwithstanding his great misfortune he is doing the work of a Hercules in his own way. Firemen and Soldiers Arriving". Chief Evans, of the Pittsburgh Fire Department, ar- rived this evening with engines and several hose carts, with a full complement of men. A large number of Pittsburgh physicians came on the same train. A squad of Battery B, under command of Lieuten- ant Brown, the forerunners of the whole battery, ar- rived at the improvised telegraph ofiice at half-past six o'clock. ^ Lieutenant Brown went at once to Adjutant General Hastings and reported for duty. A portion of the police force of Pittsburgh and Alle- ghany are on duty, and better order is maintained than THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 79 prevailed yesterday. Communication has been re- stored between Cambria City and Johnstown by a foot bridge. The work of repairing the tracks between Sang Hollow and Johnstown is going on rapidly, and trains will probably be running by to morrow morning. Not less than fifteen thousand strangers are here. The unruly element has been put down and order is now perfect. The Citizen's Committee are in charge and have matters well organized. A proclamation has just been issued that all men who are able to work must report for work or leave the place. **We have too much to do to support idlers," says the Citizen's Committee, " And will not abuse the generous help that is being sent by doing so." From to-morrow all will be at work. Money now is greatly needed to meet the heavy pay rolls that will be incurred for the next two weeks. W. C, Lewis, Chairman of the Finance Committee, is ready to receive the same. Fall of the Wall of Water. Mr. Crouse, proprietor of the South Fork Fishing Club Hotel, came to Juluistown this afiernoon. He 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, car- rying everything before it. For a mile its front seemed like a solid wall twenty feet high." Freight Agent Dechert, when the great wall that 80 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. held the body of water began to crumble at the top sent a message begging the people of Johnstown for God's sake to take to the hills. He reports no serious acci- dents at South P^ork. 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 de scribe the mad rush," he said. "At first it looked like dusL 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 tottcjr for a moment, then rise and the next moment be crushed like egg shells against each other." To Rise Phoenix -like. James McMillin, vice-president of the Cambria Iron Works, was met this afternoon. In a conversation he said : ** I do not know what our loss is. I cannot even estimate, as I have not the faintest idea what it may be. The upper mill is totally wrecked — damaged be- yond all possibility of repairs. The lower mill is dam- aged to such an extent that all machinery and build- ings are useless. "The mills will be rebuilt immediately. I have sent out orders that all men that can must report at the mill to-morrow to commence cleaning up. I do not think the building was insured against a flood. The great thing we want is to get the mill in operation again." i^^^^^^'!^^Hn<0fi^:*'i^ii'm^.-^m'^p^'-^^t^'^mi- sent the not The )» v] <^ /a >*. 'c^l ^. C/A % t> ^^ /a &^ ew c% o 7 IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 Iff Ilia 112.5 I.I 2.2 " lis iio 1.25 U 11.6 Photographic Sciences Corporation V /. 4, f^?^ [/ ■^ V 4v :\ \ ^^ ,V^"'"o^ ^ % 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEPSTER,N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 C^. # >> t/^ I f ''ill 'Sh'II 1 ■ II, Iffil i f ill'/ 1:'r Wf'"" 1 1' 1 1 1 j 1 I.I 1 Irl ill It" % ''fill IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH. Ii Kill i!^^ Ji V l« ■if»>'40 i ti>. m mm. 'ii ONLY A MINUTES WARNING, I|*f'al1^^^^i^'|!'|''|'ll'|i*||^^^ ALL PERISHED IN THE FLOOD. c^, ;l B O. X u C u H o o o s H to O w i^i^H \/::m2^'] ■V-. m h,^ 9m •■K^ ■■'^ v« SWEPT AWAY I'.Y THE TORRENT. - n LYNCHING AND DROWNING THIEVES. 1 I'-- K W Oh D en O M •—I Pi H en .«uuituiuj:s '\ w H O H h W P w h C h W o H O »-< o 5 en H o u D o C w N <: i ' I il MADE ORPHANS BY THE FLOOD. tr- "h :^i I v\ 5 o 'A o 'A H H 7) H « •h'l ^.li^-: B \ST. VALLEY OF THE CONEMAUGH NEAR JOHNSTOWN. ^ hM MEETIXO OF FRIENDS AND RELATIVES AFTER THE FLOOD. ■%..'. i ^m ^^^^^E^jgg?^ i 1 MOTHER AND BABE CAST UP BY THE WATERS. I: il i.l THE MILITIA AT REST. TheG The bull operatioi is compl( barren a Sahara E TheC stores. ^50,000. The b loss. Tl a handso building, The Dc boarded, many oc( Estinic pany giv little of t TheC 1853. I the cour capacity tons of s shapes, angles, There w< heating i haminerij THE JOHNSTOWN HORRO«L 81 The Gautier Wire Works was completely destroyed. The buildings will be immediately rebuilt and put in operation as soon as possible. The loss at this point is complete. The land on which it stood is to-day as barren and desolate as if it were in the midst of the Sahara Desert. The Cambria Iron Company loses fts great supply stores. The damage to the stock alone will amount to ^50,000. The building was valued at 5150,000, and is a total loss. The company offices which adjoins the store was a handsome structure. It was protected by the first building, but nevertheless is almost totally destroyed. The Dartmouth Club,at which employees of the works boarded, was carried away in the flood. It contained many occupants at the time. None were saved. Estimates of the losses of the Cambria Iron Com- pany given are from $2,000,000 to J2, 500,000. But little of this can be recovered. History of the Works, The Cambria Iron Works at Johnstown were built in 1853. It was the second largest plant of its kind in the counti-y, and was completely swept away. Its capacity of finished steel per annum was 180,000 net tons of steel rails and 20,000 net tons of steel in other shapes. The mill turned out steel rails, spike bars, angles, flats, rounds, axles, billets and wire rods There were nine Siemens and forty-two reverbatory heating furnaces, one seven ton and two 6,000 pound hammers and three trains of rolls. i) ! a2 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. The Bessemer Steel Works made their first blow July lo, 1 87 1, and they contained nine gross ton con- verters, with an annual capacity of 200,000 net tons of ingots. In 1878 two fifteen gross tons Siemens open- hearth steel furnaces were built, with an annual capacity of 20,000 net tons of ingots. The Cambria Iron Company also owns the Gautier Steel Works at Johnstown, vhich were erected in 1878. The rolling mill produced annually 30,000 net tons of merchant bar steel of every size and for every pur- pose. The wire mill had a capacity alone of 30,000 tons of fence wire. There are numerous bituminous coal mines near Johnstown, operated by the Cambria Iron Company, the Euclid Coal Company and private persons. There were three woolen mills, employing over three hundred hands and producing an annual product valued at $300,000. Awful Work of the Flames. Fifty acres of town swept clean. One thousand two hundred buildings destroyed. Eight thousand to ten thousand lives lost. That is the record of the Johnstown calamity as it k)oked to me just before dark last night. Acres of the town were turned Into cemeteries, and miles of the river bank were Involuntary storage rooms for house- hold goods. From the half ruined parapet at the end of the stone railroad bridge, in Johnstown proper, one sees sights upd It: At V beefn th ITie ^e lo\^ obliten Walnu three-q crowde other 1 streets at Far In th and W' buildini Mill an The the diir against 200 ya feet de' and p:;i Whe buildini some tl comprc to burr numbe THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 88 5t blow Dn con- tons of s open- annual [jautier :ted in et tons ry pur- 30,000 IS near upany, There undred ued at nd two to ten ty as it cres of of the house- e stone sights so gn^esome that none but the soulless Hungarian a:xl Italian laborers can command his emotions. At my right is a fiery int that is now believed to Jiave bee7i the funeral pyre of almost a thousand persons. Streets Obliterated. ITie fiercest rush of the current was straight across the lower, level part of Johnstown, where It entirely obliterated Cinder, Washington, Market, Main and Walnut streets. These streets were from a halt to three-quarters of a mile in length, and were closely crowded along their entire course with dwellings and other buildings, and there is now no more trace of streets or houses than there is at low tide on die beach at Far Rockaway. In the once well populated boroughs of Conemaugh and Woodvale there < re to-night literally but two buildings left, one the shell of the Woodvale Woolen Mill and die other a sturdy brick dwelling. The buildings which were swept from twenty out of the diirty acres of devastated Johnstown were crowded against the lower end of the big stone bridge in a mass 200 yards wide, 500 yards broad and from 60 to 100 feet deep. They were crushed and split out of shape and p:;cked together like playing cards. When you realize that in nearly every one of these buildings there were at least one human being, while in some there were as many as seventy-five. It is easy to comprehend how awful it was when this mass began to burn fiercely last night. It was known that a large number of persons were imprisoned in the debris, for ■ji Hi 1^ 84 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. they could be plainly seen by those on shore, but If was not until people stopped to think and to ask them selves questions, which startled them in a ghastly way, that the fact became plain that instead of a pitiful hundred or two of victims at least a thousand were in that roaring, crackling, loathsonie, blazing mass upon the surface of the water and in the imgc, inaccessible arches of the big bridge. Charred Bodies. Charred bodies could be seen here and there all through the glowing embers. There was no attempt to check the fire by tne autno* ivies, nor for that matter did they try to stop the robbing of the dead, nor any other glaring violation of law. The fire is spreading toward a large block of crushed buildings further up the stream. There is a broa(' stretch of angry water above and below, while over tliere, just opposite the end of the bridge, is the ruin of the great Cambria Iron Works, which have been damaged lo the exterit of over $1,000,000. The Gautier Steel Works have been wiped away, and are represented by a loss of ;J 1,000,000 and a big hole. The Holbert House, owned by Renford Brothers, has entirely disappeared. It was a five story building, was the leading hotel of Johnstown, and contained a hundred rooms. Of the seventy-five guests \/ho were in it when the flood came, onlv eijjht have been saved. Most of them were crushed by the fall of the walls and flooring. Hun ir^uddy and the In o a youn^ in each pressec small p doctors said thi have be The coffins 1 A dis people i came, trying t of some iastancc I'.nd ga\ Sons st( parents watery : Such In; are nun One ( known l side anc THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 8& Hundreds of searching parties are looking in the n^uddy ponds and among *he wreckage for bodies, and they are being gadiered in ghastly heaps. In one building among the bloated victims, I saw a young and well-dressed man and woman, still locked in each oth-'^rVs arms, a young mother with her babe pressed with delirious tenacity to her breast, and on a small pillow was a tiny babe a few hours old, which the doctors said must have been born In the water. It is said that 720 bodies have so far been recovered, or have been located. The coroner of Westmoreland county is ordering coffins by the carload. In the Ragging Waters. A dispatch from Der.y says : In this city the poor people in the raging waters cried out for aid that never came. More than one brave man risked his life in trying to save those in the flood. Every hour details of some heroic action are brought to light. In many laslances the victims displayed remarkable courage and orave their chances for re^icue to friends with them. o Sons stood back for mothers, and were lost while their parents were taken out Many a son went down to a watery grave that a sister or a father might be saved. Such instances of sacrifice in the face of fearful danger are numerous. Tlie Force of the Waters. One can estimate the force of the water when it is known that it carried locomotives down the mountain side and turned diem upside down where diey are now \r ■, if ■• 't. 86 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. lying. Long trains of cars have been derailed and carried great distances from the r-^iilroads. The first sight that greeted the men at nine this morning was the body of a beautiful woman ^y'lng crushed and mangled under the ponderous wheels of a gondola car. The clotliing was torn to shreds. Dr Berry said that he never saw such intense pain pic tured on a face before. Terr: ble Stories. At this time of writing It is impossible to secure the names of any of the lost. Every person one meets along the road has some horrible tale of drowned anJ dead bodies recovered. One thousand people or more were buried and crushed In the great fire. The flats below Conemaugh are full of cars with many dead bodies lying under them. At Sang Hollow a man nam.ed Duncan sat on the roof of a house and saw his father and mother die in the attic below him. The poor fellow was powerless to help them, and he stood there wringmg his hands and tearing his hair. A man was seen clinging to a tree, covered with blood. He was lost with the ochers. Long after dark the flames of fire shot high above the burning mass of timber, lighting the vast flood of rushing waters on all sides. The Dead. Dead bodies are being picked up. The train master, E. Pitcairn, has been working manfully directing the rescuing of dead bodies at Nineveh. In a ter* acre fiL'kl sev mile of men, the tiful youi dressed, ..-ith thei siandy b The w confideni and und< Some of features in die n lying stn Many worked i fine gra bone in 1 ber of w Nineveh, the most Mr. O began, night, an island ap and insts a knot d( rent. V. down hai 'HE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. «7 and ficl .1 seventy-five bodies were taken out ^vithin a haU mile of each other. Of this number only five were men, the rest being women and children. Many beau- tiful young girls, refined in features and handsomely dressed, were found, and women and young mothers vvlth their hair matted with roots and leaves are con- siandy being removed. The wrecking crew which took out these bodies are confident that 150 bodies are lyin • buried in the sand and under the debris on those low-lying bottom lands. Some of the bodies were horribly mangled, and the features were twisted and contorted as if they had died in die most excrutiating agony. Others are found lying stretched out with calm faces. Many a tear was dropped by the men as they worked away removing the bodies. An old lady with fine gray hair was picked up alive, although every bone in her body was broken. Judging from the num- ber of women and children found in the swamps of Nineveh, the female portion of the population suffered the most. A Fatal Tree. Mr. O' Conner was at Sang Hollow when the flood began. He remained there through the afternoon and night, and he states that there was a fatal tree on the island against which a number of people were daslied and instantly killed. Their bodies were almost tied in a knot doubled over the tree by the force of the cur- rent. Mr. O' Conner says that the first man who came down had his brains knocked out against this obstruc- w m 88 THE JOHNS I OWN HORROR, tion. In fact, those who hit the tree met the same fate and were instantly killed under the ^^ile of driftwood collected there. He could give n^ stimate of the number lost at this point, but says thai it is certainly large. Braves I>ei«tli for liis Family. One of the most thrilling incidents of the disaster was the performance of A. J. Leonard, whose family reside in Morrellville, a short distance below this point. He was at work here, and hearing that his house had been swept away determined at all hazards to ascer- tain 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 per- severed. 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 otl awful of mer The a mou house wife ar The Switch ing sto afternc "In rose ai timed eight n •T I sevent] found i river JL "Th dozens believe other s -Th of tlie *'Go dead, ii "Ye: kneel in THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR, 89 Tie fate ftwood of the :rtainly lisaster family ; point se had ascer- ^ been ft, and fence, nt and tching, k, you e per- *ew off tream. onard, nighty Dn the nestlv lemed, the air k to it oat 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 last seen of him he was making his way down a mountain road in the direction of the spot where his house had lately stood. His family consisted of his wife and three children. An An^^cl in the Mud. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company's operators at Switch Corner, which is near Sang Hollow, tell thrill- ing 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 T 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 al ^ut 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. '•'ihere 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 litde girl in white just now," said one of die other operators. •'Good God!" Slid 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 n £■'; • ■'■ ■ 1 li •0 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. when she went down the river." Turning to me he said : — " That was the saddest thing we saw all day yester- day. 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 ancrel. 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 com- panion, who had brought the unwelcome news. " She sat there," was the reply, "as if she were still praying, and there was a smile on her poor little face, though her mouth was full of mud." All agreed in saying that at least one hundred peo- ple were drowned below Nineveh. Direful Incidents. The situation at Johnstown grows worse as fuller particulars are being received in Pittsburgh. This morning it was reported that three thousand people were lost In the flood. In the afternoon this number was increased to six thousand, and at this writ- ing despatches place the number at ten thousand. It is the most frightful destruction of life that has ever been known In the United States. Vampires at Hand. It is stated that already a large gang of thieves and vampires have descended on and near the place. Their presume* JcmoUsh The T Guard hi A tele iuffcr mi out of thi with mot Edw.'ir saw an trunk w! excited h clothes a Scarcely house flo and her again, ar house c weakenc mother i Georg out WIl hausted twenty r John pugilist, boy, but the midc The 1 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 91 has presumed purpose is to rob the dead and ransack the demolished buildings. The Tenth regiment of the Pennsylvania National Guard has been ordered out to protect property. A telegram from Bolivar says Lockport did not uiffer much, but that sixt)'-five families were turned out of their homes. The school at that place is filled w'idi mothers, fathers, daughters and children. Noble Act8 of IleroiNni. Edward Dick, a young railroader living in the place, saw an old man floating down the river on a tree trunk whose agonized face and streaming gray hair excited his compassion. He plunged into the torrent, clothes and all, and brought the old man safely ashore. Scarcely had he done this when the upper story of a house floated by on which Mrs. Adams, of Cambria, and her two children were borne. He plunged in again, and while breaking through the tin roof of the house cut an artery In his left wrist, but> although weakened with loss of blood, succeeded In saving both mother and children. George Shore, another Lockport swimmer, pulled out William Jones, of Cambria, who was almost ex- hausted and could not possibly have survived another twenty minutes In the water. John Decker, who has some celebrity as a local pugilist, was also successful In saving a woman and boy, but was nearly killed In a tJiird attempt to reach the middle of the river by being struck by a huge log. The most miraculous fact about the people who 92 THE lOHNSTOWN HORROR. reached Bolivar alive was how they passed through the falls half way between Lockport and Bolivar. The seething waters rushed through that barrier of rock with a noise which drowned that of all the passing trains. Heavy trees were whirled high in the air out of the water, and houses which reached there whole were dashed to splinters against the rocks. A Talc of Horror. On the floor of William Mancarro's house, groaning wich pain and grief, lay Patrick Madden, a furnace man of the Cambria Iron Company. He told of his terrible experience in a vol'-'i 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 tor- rent of debris. 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 3 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. THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. d'4 through /Sir. The r of rock i passing e air out ;re whole groaning I furnace old of his emotion. /'s bridge , Edward I neglect, 2s before It he was tter how him and rible tor- oir broke en I rose upon 2 drowned 3t help or ive or six in I went and was A despatch from Greensburg says the day express, which left Pittsburgh at eight o'clock on Friday morn- ing was lying at Johnstown in the evening at the time die awful rush of waters came down the mountains. We have been informed by one who ;vas there that the coach next to the baggage car was struck by the rag- ing flood, and with its human freight cut loose from the rest of the train and carried down the stream. All on board, it is feared, perished. Of the passengers who were left on the track, fifteen or more who endea- vored to flee to the mountains were caught, it is thought, by the flood, and likewise carried to destruc- tion. Samuel Bell, of Latrobe, was conductor on the tiain, and he describes the scene as the most appalling and heart-rending he ever witnessed. A special despatch from Latrobe says : — "The spe- cial train which left the Union Station, Pittsburgh, at half past one arrived at Nineveh Station, nine miles from Johnstown, last evening at five o'clock. The train was composed of four coaches and locomotive, and carried, at the lowest calculation, over nine hundred persons, including the members of the press. The passengers were packed in like sardines and many were compelled to hang out upon the platform. A large proportion of the passengers were curiosity seekers, while there was a large sprinkling of suspicious looking characters, who had every appearance of being crooks and wreckers, such as visit all like disasters for the sole purpose of plundering and committing kindred dep- redations. r Bn i§- f I . ■ 1 m p yjL 94 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. When the train reached Nineveh the report spreau through it that a number of bodies had been fished out of the water and were awaiting identification at a neigh- boring planing mill. I stopped off to investigate the rumor, while the balance of the party journeyed on TAKING DEAD BODIES FROM A ROOF. toward Sang Hollow, the nearest approach to Johns- town by rail. I visited Mumaker s planing mills and found that the report was true. AJl day long the rescuers had been at work, and at this writing (six o'clock) they have taken out seventy- eight dead bodies, the majority of whom are wcmen and chi coverec tliose o identifi( of the I ahout t Ever pressec ment c takes o mischie burgh c Pittsl mass m short sj ferers. The] every h they cai corps h; Ln enth f«^red th The 1 5>urvivo of wate ciety ha as a ter have al charge spreau ed out neigh- ite the ^ed on Johns- Is and ind at venty- /HE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 95 and children. The bodies are horribly mutilated and covered with mud and blood. Fifteen of them are tliose of men. Their terribly mutilated condition makes identification for the present almost impossible. One of the bodies found was that of a woman, apparendy about thirty-five years of age. Every conveyance that could be used has been pressed into service. Latrcbe is all agog with excite- ment over the great disaster. Almost every train takes out a load of roughs and thugs who are bent on mischief. They resemble the mob that came to Pitts- burgh during the riots. Measures of Relief. Pittsburgh Is In a wild state of excitement. A large mass meeting was held yesterday afternoon and in a short space of time f i,ooo was subscribed for the suf- ferers. The Pennsylvania company has been running trains every hour to the scene of the disaster or as near it as they can get. Provisions and a large volunteer relief corps have been sent up. The physicians have had Kn enthusiastic meeting at which one and all freely of- ft^red their services. The latest project is to have the wounded and the survivors who fled to the hillsides from the angry rush of waters brought to Pittsburgh. The Exposition So clety has offered the use of its splendid new building as a temporary liospltal. All the hospitals in the city have also offered to care for the sufferers free of charge to the lull limit of their capacity. 1. 96 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. IP '-^l m Word has been received at Allegheny Junction, twenty- two miles above Pittsburgh, from Leechburg that a woman and two children were seen floating past there at five o'clock yesterday morning on top of some wreckage. They were alive, and their pitiful cries for help drew the attention of the people on the shore. Some men got a boat and endeavored to reach the sufferers. As they rowed out in the stream the woman could be heard calling to then to save the children first. The men made a gallant effort. It was all without avail, as the strong current and floating masses of debris prevented them from reaching the victims, and the latter floated on down the stream until their de- spairing cries could no longer be heard. Mrs. Chambers, of Apollo, was swept away when her house was wrecked durlnof the nioht. She had gone to bed when the flood came and she had not time to dress. Fortunately she managed to secure a hold on som^i wreckage which was being carried past her. She kept her hold until her cries were heard by some men a short distance above Leechburs;-. Thev got out a boat and succeeded in reaching her, and took her to a house near the bank of the river. When they got her there it was found that she was badly bruised and all her clothing had been torn off by the debris with which she had come in contact, leaving her entirely naked. She was also rescued at Natrona. A Lucky Olianjfe of Kesidciicc. Mr. F. J. Moore, of the Western Union office in this city, is giving thanks to-day for the fortunate es- k -cape o city, disaste move ) city. day, ar lltde p trip be Mrs. IV ster av' the ne dan ore r o ones h^ "Oh broken, filled th to the ( P. M., i rise wii carried our ver' refugee i rooms c and bee Just as terly. escaped his safet the low€ to think THE JOHNSTOWN HORKOR. 97 past ird by Thev took they uiscd ebris her :e in |e es- cape of his wife and two children from the devastated city. As if by some foreknowledge of the impending disaster, Mr. Moore had arranged to have his family move yesterday from Johnstown and join him in this city. Their household goods were shipped on Thurs- day, and yesterday just in time to save themselves, the little party departed in the single triln which made the trip between Johnstown and Pittsburgh. I called on Mrs. Moore at her husband's apartments. No. 4 Web- ster avenue, and found her completely prostrated by the news of the final catastrophe, coupled with the dangerous experience through which she and her little ones had passed. "Oh, it was terrible," she said. "The reservoir had broken, and before we got out of the house the water filled the cellar, and on the way to the depot it was up to the carriage bed. Our train left at a quarter to two P. M., and at that hour the flood had commenced to rise with terrible rapidity. Houses and sheds were carried away, and two men were drowned almost under our very 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 fright and became scattered beyond hope of being reunited. Just as the train pulled out I saw a woman crying bit- terly. 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 7 I ; H 9S THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. in It an hour longc. So far as I know we were the only passengers from Johnstown on the train, and therefore I suppose we are the only persons who got away in time to escape the culminating dis- aster." Mrs. Moore's little son told me how he had seen the rats driven out of their holes by the flood and running along the tops of the fences. Mr. Moore endeavored to get to Johnstown yesterday, but was prevented by the suspension of traffic and says he is very glad of it. What the Eye Hatli Seen. The scenes at Heanemyer's planing mill at Nineveh, where the dead bodies are lying, are never to be for- gotten. 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 disasterous battle than a work shop. 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 disas ter came to my notice this afternoon 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 cloth- ing excepting the shoes was torn off the body. The corpse was that of a mother, for although cold in death THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 09 she clasped a young male babe, apparently not more than a )ear old. tightly in her arms. The little one was huddled close up to th(^ face of the mother, who -wh^n ."^he rcal'zed their terrible fiite had evidently raised il t j her lips to imprint upon its lips the last kiss it was t>) receive ia this ^vorld. 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. Story of The First Fuj-itives. TJie first survivors of the Johnstown wreck who ar- rived in the city last night were Joseph and Henry Lauffer andLev/Dalmeyer, three well known Pittburgh- ers. They endured considerable hardship and had several narro.v escapes with their lives. Their story of the disaster can best be told in their own lan- guage. Jo J, the youngest of the Lauffer brothers, said : — " My brother and I left on Thursday for Johnstcwn. The night we arrived there it rained continually, and on I'riday morning it began to flood. ! started for the Cambria stc^reata 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 lar 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 ¥ ; 100 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. ilm|;. [y'pi '™ f 1 1 I. ^' I "• u M^ ^ ^I|l 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. Mountains of Water. ** 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 Con- emaugh River, carrying before them death and destruc- tion. I shall never forget the harrowing scene. Just think of it ! thousands of people, men, women and chil- dren, 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 drown- ing ! ' * 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 unfortu- nates being crushed among the debris to death 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 tlie Pennsylvania company 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 women, fainted. THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 101 in Mr. Laufifer's brother, Harry, then told his part of the tale, which was not less interesting. He said : — *' We had the most narrow escapes of anybody, 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 w .re discussing the situation when suddenly, with- out any warning, the whistles of every engine began to shriek, and in the noise could be heard the warning of the first engineer, ' My God ! Rush to the moun- tains, the reservoir has burst.' Then, with a thunder- ing like peal came the mad rush of waters. No soon- er had the cry been heard than those who could with a wild leap rushed from the train and up the moun- tains. To tell this story takes some time, but the moments in which the horrible scene was enacted were few. Then came the tornado 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 varnished Pull- mans floating around, and above all the hundreds of ™i,i. I '^^^^^H W:': i^H (:H|P !':*';'' ' i ^Itili:. 102 THb. JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 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 of the track. The mother and child were saved, but if one more minute had elapsed we all would have perished. Beyond the Power of Words, " During all of this time the waters kept rushing down the Conemauorh and throuorh the beautiful town o o 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 be yond 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. We rode thirty-one miles In a buckboard, then walked six miles, reached Blalrsvllle and journeyed again on foot to what is called the ** Bow," and from thence we arrived home. On our way we met Mr. F# Thomps and he s at Ann( were re sixty ye; hey ca clasped Presic ford, an away, bi left. Amoi wife anc the Gra Pythias Genera MNEVE %. THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 105 Thompson, a friend of ours, who resides in Nineveh, aiul he stated that rescuing parties were busy all c?ay at Annom. One hundred and seventy-five bodies were recovered at that place. An old couple about sixty years of age were rescued from a tree, on which hey came floating down the stream. They were clasped in each other's arms. President Harrison's private secretary, Elijah Hal- ford, and wife, were on the train which was swept away, but escaped and were in the mountains when I left. Among the lost are Colonel John P. Linton and his wife and children. Colonel Linton was prominent in the Grand Army of the Republic and in the Knights oi Pythias and other orders. He was formerly Auditor General of Pennsylvania. i MNEVEH STATION, WHERE TWO HUNDRED BODIES VERT fOi^ND. l: ft CHAPTER IV. Nlultlpllcation of Terrors. The handsome brick Ili^h School Building is dam- aged to such an extent that it will have to be rebuilt. The water attained the height of the window sills of the second floor. Its upper stories formed a refuge for many persons. All Saturday afternoon two little girls could be seen at the windows frantically calling for aid. They had spent all night and the day in the building, cut off from all aid. Without food and drink- ing water their condition was lametable. Late in the evening the children were removed to higher ground and properly cared for. A number of persons had been taken from this building earlier in the day, but in the excitement the children were forgotten. Their names could not be obtained. Death in Many Forms. Morrell Institute, a beautiful building and the old homestead of the Morrell family, is totally ruined. The water has weakened the walls and foundations to such an extent that there is danger of its collapsing. Many families took refuge in diis building and were saved. Now that txie waters have receded there is dano-er from falling walls. All day long the crashing of walls could be heard across the river. Before daybreak this morn- THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 105 inn^ the sounds could not but make one shudder at the very thought of the horrible deaths that awaited many who had escaped the devastating flood. Library Hall was another of the fine buildings of the many in the city that is destroyed. Of the Episcopal church not a vestige remains. Where it once stood, there is now a placid lake. The parsonage is swept away, and the rector of the church, Rev. Mr. Diller^ was drowned. Buried Under Falling Buildings. The church was one of the first buildings to fall. It carried with it several of the surrounding houses. Many of them were occupied. The victims were swept into the comparatively still waters at the bridge, and there met death either by fire or water. James M. Walters, an attorney, spent the 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. Walter's 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. Liong^ Dark Night of Terror. About two 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. ,/f 106 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. m» which all were bound to respect. Mr. Walters was chosen president. Rev. Mr. Beale was put in charge of the first floor, A. M. Hart of the second floor, Doctor Matdiews of the fourth floor. No lights were allowed, and the whole night was spent in darkness. I he sicL were cared for. The weaker women and children had the best accommodations 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. Un- der 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. Here is a Hero. 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 women and children sur- rendered their lives on the succeeding day as a result of terro'' and fatigue. Miss Rose Young, one of the young ladies in the hall, was frightfully cut and bruised. Mrs. Youncr had a letr broken. All of Mr. Walter's family were s aved. While tl- lumber cen been enorir to g 500,00c there have elled over t to Dubois, I swollc^n to 1 of the low-1 water enou boat. Leaving road, we ra ber. Frorr the river w; shattered h' with floatin other luml sight was a can describ At Red kind of lu: cutting. 1^ who was o stations na lumber, wh owners. Clarion ^^ section ak i^75o,ooo. ii THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 107 While the loss of property about Brookville, the lumber centre of Pennsylvania, by the great flood has been enormous, variously estimated at from 5g25o,cxx> to ;^500,ooo, not a single life has been lost. At least there have been none reported so far, and I have trav- elled over the line from Red Bank, on the Valley road, to Dubois, on the low grade division. Every creek is swollon to many times its natural size. A great deal of the lov^-lying farm lands and roads in places have water enough over them to float an ordinary steam- boat. Leaving Pittsburgh Saturday morning on the valley road, we ran past millions and millions of feet of lum- ber. From the city to the junction opposite Freeport the river was almost choked with debris of broken and shattered houses. In places the river was fairly black with floating masses of lath, shingles, roofs, floors a::d other lumber that had formerly been houses. The sight was appalling and spoke louder than any pen can describe. At Red Bank the river was filled with a different kind of lumber, including huge saw logs ready for cutting. F^rom the estimates of an old lumber man who was on the train I was told that between the stations named we passed at least ten million feet of lumber, which means a loss of fully js 100,000 to the owners. A big portion of this came out of the Clarion river, the estimated money loss from that section alone being anywhere from ;j^5oo,ooo to ^750,000. 108 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR, All along the Allegheny river were gathered peoplr trying to catch the logs, risking their lives, for the logs swept down the river in a current that was runniiKr fully ten miles an hour. The work was very hazard- ous. The catchers are allowed by law six and a quar- ter cents for each log captured, and the river was almost lined with people trying to save the property. At Red Bank, which we left at noon, there were at least six feet of water expected from Oil City, and with it, according to the reports from up the river, was an immense amount of lumber. Leaving the valley road at Red Bank we went up the low grade division to Bryant, where immense sawmills, the largest in the vicinity are located. The current was rushing a]png at a rate anywhere from twelve to fifteen miles an hour, tossing the huge logs around like so many toothpicks and carrying everything before them. So great was the current and mass of logs that the big- iron bridge at Reynoldsville, sixteen miles above Brookville, was swept away, as were two wagon bridges and several small foot bridges. Hundreds Homeless and Suffering^. Many houses here and there along Red Bank Creek were turned upside down, some of them float- ing clear away, while the more secure ones were flooded wilh water clear into the second floors. Many of the smaller cottages and shanties were covered, leaving only the peaks of the roofs sticking out to show the spots that families had but a fe^v hours before called home. All along the railroad track was piled THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 109 the few household effects, furniture, bedding, tables and clothes which the poor owners had saved before they were forced out on the high ground. These same people had gone to bed last evening thinking themselves safe from the high water, only to be wak- ened about midnight by the noise of the rushing floods and the huge saw logs bumping against their homes. The very narrow escapes that some of them made while getting their families Into places of safety would ill! many pages of this book. Floating" to Safety on Saw liOg-s. One man had to mount the different members of his family on logs. The mother and children alike sat astride of them, and then, with the father on the other end, were poled across to the high ground. Another man, whose house was in a worse place, swam ashore and, throwing a rope back to the mother, who was surrounded on the porch of the house by the children, yelled for her to tie one end to the little ones so he could pull them over the fast running water. This operation was continued until the entire family was rescued. Willing workers from the neighborhood were not long in getting huge bonfires started, and with the aid of these and dry clothing brought in haste by people .vhose homes stood on higher ground the family were soon warmed. The same willing hands hastily constructed sheds, and with immense bonfires the people were kept warm till daylight. Others, more fortunate, were able to * ,1= w i;^ 1 no THE JOHNSTOWN HORKf m< save enough from their houses to make themstlves comfortable for a short season of camping. One poor family I noticed had saved enough carpet to make a tent out of, and under this temporary shelter the mother was doing her best to prepare a meal and at- tend to her other household duties. Sheltered by Friendly Neighbors. In Brookville a great many houses were submerged, but no lives were lost. While the people were driven from their homes, they were more fortunate than the people of Bryants, because they could at once find shelter under the roofs of the neighbors' houses. All of the saw mills, the chief industry of the town, were closed down. Some because the water was over the first floor, and others because their entire working force were on the creek trying to construct temporary- booms, by which they expected to save at least a por tion of the property from being swept away. One man rigged a boom with the aid of a cable i,6oo feet long and thick enough to hold the heaviest steamer. About fifty logs were chained together for further protection. This arrangement for a time checked the mass of logs, but just when everybody was thinking it would stop the output a small dam gave way, bringing down with it another half million feet of lumber. When this struck the temporary boom it parted, as if the huge cable was a piece of thread, and the logs shot past. Just at Bryants, however, a gorge formed shordy after two o'clock Friday afternoon, and within a re- markably short time there was a pile of logs wedged THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. Ill in that stretched back fully a quarter of a mile and the top of which was more than ten feet hiah. This of course changed the course of the stream a little, but the natural gorge had saved enough logs to amount to more than $iog,ooo in money. I'he following comments by one of our journals sum up the situation after receiving the dreadful news of the three preceding days : The Great Calamity. The appalling catastrophy which has spread such awful havoc through the teem.ing valley of the Cone- maugh almost surpasses belief and fairly staggers im- agination. Widiout yet measuring its dire extent, enough is known to rank it as the greatest calamity of the natural elements which this country has ever wit- nessed. Nothing in our history short of the deadly blight of batde has approached this frightfi ' cataclysm, and no battle, though destroying more life, has ever left such a ghastly trail of horror and devastation. It seems more like one of those terrible convulsions of nature from which we have hitherto been happily spared, but w^hich at rare intervals have swallowed up whole communities in remote South American or oiiental lands. Ingenious and masterful as the human intellect 's in guiding and controlling the ordinary forces of nature, how impotent and insignificant it appears in the pres- ence of such a transcendent disaster ! It is well nigh inconceivable that a great section throbbing with pop- ulous towns, and resonant with the hum of industry, (( ■'■ 112 THK JOHNSTOWN HORROR. m should be wiped out In the twinkling of an eye by a mighty, raging torrent, more consuming than fire and more violent than the earthquake. The suddenness of the blow and the impossibility of communicating with the scene add to the terror of the event. The sickening spectacle of ruin and death which will be re- vealed when the veil of darkness is lifted is left to con- jecture. The imagination can scarcely picture the dread realities, and it would be difficult to overdraw the awful features of a calamity which has every ele- ment of horror. The River and Lake. Nature is so framed at the fated point for such a dis- aster that man was called upon for unceasing vigi- lance. The Conemaugh makes its channel through a narrow valley between high ranges. Numerous streams drain the surrounding mountains into its current. Along its course swarm frequent hamlets busy with the wealth dug from the seams of the earth. The chief of these towns, the seat of an immense Industry, lies in a little basin where the gap broadens to take in a converging stream and then immediately narrows again, no outlet save the constricted waterway. High above stands a great lake which is held In check only by an artificial barrier, and which, if once unchained, must pour its resistless torrent through this narrow gorge like a besom of destruction overwhelming every thing before it. There were all the elements of an unparalleled disaster. Years of immunity had given a feeling o^ security for all time without some ext)^ most ten 4 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. Vi ordinary and unexpected occasion. But the occasion appeared when In unforseen force the rains descended and the floods came, and to-day desolation reigns. A I>irefUl Calamity. It is impossible yet to measure the extent of the cal- amity. But the destruction of life and property must be something that it is appalling to think of, and the sorrow and suffering to follow are incalculable. A solemn obligation devolves upon the people of the whole country. We can not remedy the past but we can alleviate the present and the future. Thousands of fimilies are homeless and destitute; thousands are without means of support; perchance, thousands are bereft of the strong arms upon which they have relied. There is an instant, earnest demand for help. Let there be immediate, energetic, generous action. Let us do our part to relieve the anguish and mitigate the suffering of a community upon whom has fallen the most terrible visitation in all our history. An Historic Catastrophe. When an American Charles Reade wishes in the future to weave into the woof of his novel the account of some great public calamity he will portray the mis- fortune which overwhelmed the towns and villages lying in the valley of the Conemaugh River. The bursting of a reservoir, and the ensuing scenes of death and destruction, which are so vividly described in " Put Yourself in His Place," were not the creatures of Mr. Reade's imagination, but actual occurrences. The novelist obtained facts and incidents for one of the 8 '■ V lU THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. i I. ""Kftalli;,, most Striking chapters in all of his works from the events which followed the breaking of the Dale Dyke embankment at Sheffield, England, in March, 1864, when 238 lives were lost and property valued at mil lions was destroyed. It will need even more vivid and vigorous descripo tive powers than Mr. Reade possessed to adequately delineate the scene of destruction and death now pre- sented in Johnstown and the adjacent villages. The Sheffield calamity, disastrous as it proved to be, was a small affair when compared with this latest reservoir accident. The Mill River reservoir disaster of May, 1874, with its 200 lives lost and $1,500,000 of property destroyed, almost sinks into insignificance beside It. The only recorded calamity of the kind which any- where approaches it occurred in Estrecho de RIentes, in Spain, in April, 1802, when a dam burst and drowned 600 persons and swept 1^7,000,000 worth of property away. But above all these calamities In sad pre-emiinence will stand the Conemaugh disaster. But dark as the picture is, it will doubtless be re- lieved by many acts of heroism. The world will wait to learn if there was not present at Conemaugh some Myron Day, whose ride on his bareback steed before the advancing wall of water that burst from Mill River Dam in 1874, shouting to the unsuspecting people as he rode: "The reservoir is breaking! The flood is coming ! Fly ! Fly for your lives," was the one miti- gating circumstance in that scene of woe and destruc- tion. When the full story of the Conemaugh calamity THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 115 Is told it will, doubtless, be found that there were many deeds of heroism performed, many noble sacrifices made and many an act as brave as any performed on the field of battle. Already we are told of husbands and mothers who preferred to share a watery grave with their wives and children sooner than accept safety alone. Such a calamity, while it makes the heart sick with its story of death and suffering, always serves to bring out the better and higher qualities in men and women, and to illustrate how closely all mankind are bound to- gether by ties of sympathy and compassion. This fact will be made evident now by the open-handed lib- erality which will quickly flow in to relieve the suffering, and, as far as possible, to repair the loss caused by this historic calamity. CHAPTER V. Ttie A'wftal Work: of Deathi. The record of June 3rd continues as follows : The iivi*ror of the situation does not lessen. The latest estimate of the number of dead Is an official one by A Jjutant General Hastings, and it places the number between 12,000 and 15,000. The uncovering of hundreds of bodies by the reces- sion of the waters has already filled the air with pesti- lential odors. The worst is feared for the surviving population, who must breathe this poisoned atmos- phere. Sharp measures prompted by sheer necessity have resulted in an almost complete subsidence of cowardly efforts to profit by the results of the disaster. Thieves have slunk into places of darkness and are no longer to be seen at their unholy work. All thoughts are now fixed upon the hideous revela- tion that awaits the light of day, when the waters shall have entirely quitted the ruins that now lie beneath them, and shall have exposed the thousands upon thousands of corpses that are massed there. A sad and gloomy sky, almost as sad and gloomy as the human faces under it, shrouded Johnstown to- day. Rain fell all day and added to the miseries of the wretched people. The great plain where the best part of Johnstown used to stand was half covered with (116) THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 117 water. The few sidewalks in the part that escaped the flood were inches thick with black, sticky mud, through which tramped a steady procession of poor women who are left utterly destitute. The tents whert the people are housed who cannot find other shelter were cold and cheerless. A Great Tomb. The town seemed like a great tomb. The people of Johnstown have supped so full of horrors that they go about in a sort of a daze and oniy half conscious of their griefs. Every hour, as one goes through the streets, he hears neighbors greeting each other and then inquiring without show of feeling ho"w^ many each had lost in his family. To-day I heard a gray haired man hail another across the street with this question. "I lost five ; all are gone but Mary and !," was the reply. "I am worse off than that,'* said the first old gentle- man. "I have only my grandson left. Seven of us gone." And so they passed on without apparent excitement They and everyone else had heard so muc^i of these melancholy conversations that somehow the calamity had lost its significance to them. They treat it exactly AS if the dead persons had gone away an d v/ere com- ing back in a week. The Gliastly Seareh. The melancholy task of searching the ruins for more bodies went on to-day in the soaking rain. There were little crowds of morbid curiosity hungers around 118 THE JOHNSTOWN HOKKOR, *if each knot of workingmen, but they were not residents of Johnstown. All their cunosity in that direction was satiated long ago. Even those who come in from neighboring towns with the idea of a day's strange and ghastly experiences did not care to be near after they had seen one body exhumed. There were hundreds and thousands of these visitors from the country to- day. The effect of the dreadful things they saw and heard was to drive most of them to drink. By noon the streets were beginning to be full of bois> erous and noisy countrymen, who were trying to counteract the strain on their nerves with unnatural excitement Then the chief of police, foreseeing the unseemly sights that were likely to disgrace the streets, drove out and kept out all the visitors who had not some good reason for their presence. After that and far into the evening all the country roads were filled with drunken stragglers, who were trying to forget what they had seen. One thing that makes the work of searching for the bodies very slow is the strange way that great masses of objects were rolled into intricate masses of rubbish. Horrible Masses. As the flood came down the valley of the Soi ith. Fork it obliterated the suburb of Woodvale, where not a house was left, nor a trace of one. The material they had contained rolled on down the valley, over and over, grinding it up to pulp and finally leaving it against an unusually firm foundation or in the bed of an eddy. The masses contain human bodies, but it is slow work 'i: THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 119 to pick them to pieces. In the side of one of them I saw the remnants of a carriage, the body of a harness- ed horse, a baby cradle and a doll, a tress of woman's THE REMAINS OF CAMBRIA CITY. hair, a rocking horse, and a piece of beefsteak still hanging on a hook. The city is now very much better patrolled than it has been at any time since the flood occurred. Many members of the police force of Pittsburgh came in and fif^ 120 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. offered their services. One of them showed his spirit during the first hour by striking a man, whom he saw Opening a trunk among the rubbish, a tremf^ndous blow over the head which knocked him senseless. Several big trunks and safes lie in full light on the desolate plain in the lower part of the town, but no one dared to touch them after that. The German Catholic Church at Cambria City, a short distance west of Johnstown, is almost a complete wreck. Rather a singular coincidence in connection with the destruction of the above is that the Immacu- late Conception, that stood m the northwest corner of the lecture rooms, stands just as it was when last seen. The figure, which is wax, was not even scratched, and the clothes, which are made of white silk and deep duchess lace, were spotless. This seems strange, when the rag- ing water destroyed everything else in the buildmg. Hundreds of persons visited the place during the day. Ten Bodies an Hour. Bodies are now being brought in nt lower Cambria at the rate often per hour. A man named Dougherty tells a thrilling story of a ride down the river on a log. When the waters struck the roof of the house on which he had taken shelter he jumped astride a telegraph pole, riding a distance of some twenty-three miles, from Johnstown to Bolivar, before he was rescued. Many inquiries have been made as to why the militia did not respond when ordered out by Adjutant Gen- eral Hastings. "In the first place it is beyond the 4' Wv THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 121 General's authority to order troops to a scene of this kind unless the Governor first issues a proclamation, then it becomes his duty to issue orders." The Gen- eral said he was notified that the Pittsburgh troops, consisting of the Fourteenth and Eighteenth regi- ments, had tendered their services, and no doubt would have been of great service. The General consulted with the Chief Burgess of Johnstown and Sheriff of Cambria county in regard to calling the troops to the scene, but both officials strenuously objected, as they claimed the people would object to anything of this kind. As a proof of this not a breach of peace was committed last night in Johnstown and vicinity. It has not been generally believed that the district in the neighborhood of Kernville would be so ex- tremely prolifiv. of corpses as it has proven to be. I visited that part of the town where both the river and Stony Creek have done their worst. I found that within the past twenty-four hours almost one thousand bodies had been recovered or were in sight. The place is one great repository of the dead. The Total May Never b« Known. The developments of every hour make it more and more apparent that the exact number of lives lost in the Johnstown horror will never be known. All esti- mates made to this time are conservative, and when all is known will doubtless be found to have been too small. Over one thousand bodies have been found since sunrise to-day, and the most skeptical concede that the remains of thousands more rest beneath the ¥ tj: 122 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. *•; debris above the Johnstown bridge. The population of Johnstown, the surrounding towns and the portion of the valley affected by the flood is, or was, from 50,- 000 to 55,000. Numerous leading citizens of Johns- town, who survived the flood, have been interviewed, and the concensus of opinion was that fully thirty per cent, of the residents of ohnstown and Cambria had been victims of the continued disasters of fire and water. If this be true, the total loss of life in the entire valley cannot be less than seven or eight thou- sand and possibly much greater. Of the thousands who were devoured by the flames and whose ashes rest beneath the smoking debris above Johnstown bridge, no definite Information can ever be obtained. Hundreds Carried Miles Away. As little will be learned of hundreds that sank be- neath the current and were borne swiftly down the Conemaugh only to be deposited hundreds of miles below on the banks and in the driftwood of the raging Ohio. Probably one-third of the dead will never be recovered, and it will take a list of the missing weeks hence to enable even a close estimate to be made of the number of lives that were lost. That this estimate can never be accurate will be understood when it is remem- bered that in many instances whole families and their relatives were swept away, and found a common grave beneath the wild waste of waters. The total destruc- tion of the citv leaves no data to even demonstrate that the names of these unfortunates ever found place on the pages of eternity's history. THE J jHNSTOWN HORROR. 123 "All indications point to the fact that the death list will reach over five thousand names, and in my opinion the missing will reach eight thousand in number," de- clared General D. H. Hastings to-night. At present there are said to have been tv^'enty-two hundred bodies recovered. The great difficulties ex- perienced in getting a correct list is the great number of morgues. There is no central bureau of informa- tion, and to communicate with the different dead houses is the work of hours. The journey from the Pennsylvania Railroad morgue to the one in the Fourth ward school house in Johnstown occupies at least one hour. This renders it impossible to reach all of them in one day, particularly as some of the morgues are situated at points inaccessible from Johnstown. At six o'clock in the evening the 630th body had been re- covered at the Cambria depository for corpses. >ronc Left to Care for the Dead. Kernville is in a deplorable condition. The living are unable to take care of the dead. The majority of the inhabitants of the town were drowned. A lean-to of boards has been erected on the only street remain- ing in the town. This is the headquarters for the com- mittee that controls the dead. As quickly as the dead are brought to this point they are placed in boxes and then taken to the cemetery and buried. A supply store has opened in the town. A milk- man who was overcharging for milk narrowly escaped lynching. The infuriated men appropriated all his milk and distributed it among the poor and then drove ^■1 ^ mfmm m 1 ] i < l\^ H m I t f; 124 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. him out of the town. The body of the Hungarian who was lynched in an orchard was removed by his friends during the night. There is but one street left in the town. About one hundred and fifty-five houses are standing where once there stood a thousand. None of the large buildings in what was once a thriving little borough have escaped. One thousand people is a low estima^> of the number of lives lost from this town, but few of th« bodies have been recovered. It is directly above the ruins and the bodies have floated dow^n into them, where they burned. A walk through the town revealed a desolate sight. Only about twesi^y-five able-bodied men have survived and are able to render any assistance. Men and women can be seen with black eyes, bruised faces and cut heads. Useless Calls for Help. The appearance of some of the ladies is heart-rend- ing. They were injured in the flood, and since that have not slept. Their faces have turned a sickly yel- low and dark rings surround the eyes. Many have succumbed to nervous prostration. For two days but little assistance could be rendered them. The wounded remained uncared for in some of the houses cut off by the water, and died from their injuries alone. Some were alive on Sunday, and their shoutj* could be heard by the people on the shore. A man is now in a temporary jaii it» wnat is left of the town. He was caught stealing a gold watch. A shot was fired at him but he was not wounded. The ill I THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 125 only thing that saved him from lynching v;a5i thesmall- ness of the crowd. His sentence will be the heaviest that can be given him. Services in the cliapel from which the bodies were buried consisted merely of a prayer by one of the sur- vors. No minister was present. Each coffin had a descriptive card on it, and on the graves a similar card was placed, so that bodies can be removed later by friends. There are about thirty Catholic priests and nuns here. The sisters are devoting themselves to the cure of the sick and injured in the hospitals, while the priests are doing anything and everything and making themselves generally useful. Bishop Phelan, who reached here on Sunday evening, returned to Pitts- burgh on the three o'clock train yesterday afternoon. He has organized the Catholic forces in this neighbor- hood, and all are devoting themselves to hard work as- siduously. Mr. Derlln, who heeded the warning as to the dan- ger of the dam, had hurried his wife and two children to the hills, but returned himself to save some things from his house. While in the building the flood struck it and swept it away, jamming it among a lot of other houses and hurling them all around with a regular churning motion. Mr. Derlin was in a fix, but went to his top story, clambered to the roof and escaped from there to solid structures and then to the ground. His property was entirely ruined, but he thinks him- self fortunate in saving his family. 3 ■ Jif f 126 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. Where Woodvale once stood there is now a sea of mud, broken but rarely by a pile of wreckage. I waded through mud and water up the valley to-day over the site of the former village. As has been often stated, nothing is standing but the old woollen mills. The place is swept bare of all other buildings but the ruins of the Gautier wire mill. The boilers of this great works were carried one hundred yards from their foundations. Pieces of engines, rolls and other ma- chinery were swept far away from where they once stood. The wreck of a hose carriage is sticking up out of the mud. It belonged to the crack company of Johnstown. The engine house is swept away and the cellar is filled with mud, so that the site is obliterated. A German watchman was on guard at the mill when the waters came. He ran for the hillside and suc- ceeded in escaping. He tells a graphic story of the appearance of the v/ater as it swept down the valley. He declares that the first wave was as high as the third story of a house. The place is deserted. No effort is being made to clean off the streets. The mire has formed the grave for many a poor victim. Arms and legs are protrud- ing from the mud and it makes the most sickening of pictures. General Hastings' Report. In answer to questions from Governor Beaver, Adjutant-General Hastings has telegraphed the follow- ing: •'Good order prevailed throughout the city and THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 127 i r%^ ma- vicinity last night. Police arrangements are excellent. Not one arrest made. No need of sending troops. The Mayor of Johnstown and the Sheriff of Cambria county, with whom I am in constant Lommunication* request that no troops be sent. I concur in their judgment. There is a great outside clamor for troops. ' Do not send tents. Have nine hundred here, Vv'hich are sufficient. I advise you to make a call on the general public for money and other assistance." "About two thousand bodies have been rescued and the work of embalming and burying the dead is going on with regularity. There is plenty of medical assist- ance. We have a bountiful supply of food and cloth- ing to-day, and the fullest telegraphic facilities are af- forded and all inquiries are promptly answered. "Have you any instructions or inquiries? The most conservative estimates here place the number of lives lost at fully 5,000. The prevailing impression is that the loss will reach from 8,000 to 10,000. There are many widows and orphans and a great many wounded — impossible to give an estimate. Property destroyed will reach J2 5,000,000. The popular esti- mate will reach ^{^40,000,000 to $50,000,000. "I will issue a proclamation to-night to the people of the country and to all who sympathize with suffer- ing to give aid to our deeply afflicted people. Tell them to be of good chee** that the sympathies of all our people, irrespective of section, are with them, and wherever the news of their calamity has been carried responses of sympathy and aid are coming in. A sln- ■if • a'^'i 111;-. J58 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROK gle subscription from England just received is for $i,ooo." Grand View Cemetery has three hundred buried in it All met death in the flood. They have thirty-five men digging graves. Seven hundred dead bodies in the hospital on Bedford street, Conneaut. One hun- dred dead bodies in the school-house hospital, Adam street, Conneaut. Three hundred bodies found to-day in the sand banks along Stony Creek, vicinity of the Baltimore and Ohio ; 182 bodies at Nineveh. ON A MISSION OP MEUCY. r'M CHAPTER VI. S1:Tiaciows of E)esp£a.ir. Another graphic account of the fearful calamity is furnished by an eye-witness : The dark disaster of the day with its attendant terrors thrilled the world and drew two continents closer together in the bonds of sympathy that bind humanity to man. The midnight terrors of Ashtabula and Chatsworth evoked tears of pity from every fireside in Christendom, but the true story of Johnstown, when all is known, will stand sol- itary and alone as the acme of man's affliction by the potent forces to which humanity is ever subject. The menacing clouds still hover darkly over the valley of death, and the muttering thunder that ever and anon reverberates faintly in the distance seems the sardonic chuckle of the demon of destruction as he pursues his way to other lands and other homes. The Waters Receding. But the modern deluge has done its worst for Johns- town. The waters are rapidly subsiding, but the angry torrents still eddy around Ararat, and the winged mes- senger of peace has not yet appeared to tell the pa- thetic tale of those who escaped the devastation. It is not a hackneyed utterance to say that no pen can adequately depict the horrors of this twin disaster "-holocaust and deluge. The deep emotions that well » (129) 1 m I- ■ i% m 130 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. I;::- from the heart of every spectator find most '"; )quent expression in silence — the silence that besp^ ::s rec- ognition of man's subserviency to the elements and impotence to avert catastrophe. The insignificance of human life is only fully realized by those who witness such scenes as Johnstown, Chatsworth and Ashtabula and to those whose memory retains the picture of hor ror the dread experience cannot fail to be a fitting les- son. A Dreary Morning^. This morning opened dark and dreary. Great drops of rain fell occasionally and another storm seems imminent. Every one feels thankful though that the weather still remains cold, and that the gradual putre- faction of the hundreds of bodies that still line the streams and lie hidden under the miles of driftwood and debris is not unduly hastened. The peculiar stench of decaying human flesh is plainly perceptible to the senses as one ascends the bank of Stony Creek for a half mile along the smould ering ruins of the wreck, and the most skeptical now conceive the worst and realize that hundreds — aye, perhaps thousands — of bodies lie charred and black- ened beneath this great funeral pyre. Searchers wan der wearily over this smoking mass, and as occasion ally a sudden shout comes over the waters, the patient watchers on the hill realize that another ghastly dis covery has been added to that long list of revelations that chill every heart and draw tears to the eyes ol pessimists. ^ THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 131 From the banks many charred remains ol /ictims of flames and flood are plainly visible to the nnked eye, as the retreating waters reluctantly give up their dead. Beneath almost every log or blackened beam a glisten- ing skull or the blanched remnants of ribs or limbs mark all that remains of life's hopes and dreams. Since ten o'clock last night the fire engines have been busy. Water has been constantly playing on the burning ruins. At times the fire seems almost extin- guished, but fitful flames suddenly break out afresh in some new quarter, and again the water and flames wage fierce combat. The Count is Still Lackiuj;. As yet there is no telling how many lives have been lost. Adjutant General Hastings, who has charge of everything, stated this morning that he supposed there were at least two thousand people under the burning debris, but the only way to find out how many lives were lost was to take a census of the people now liv- ing and subtract that from the census before the flood. vSaid he, "In my opinion there are any way from twelve thousand to fifteen thousand lost." Up to this morning people living here who lost whole families or parts of families hardly seemed to realize what a dreadful calamity iiad befallen them. To-day, however, they are beginning to understand the situa- tion. Agony is stamped on the faces of every one, and it is truly a city of mourning. The point of observation is on the hillside, midway between the woolen mills of Woodvale and Johnstown I m »',«■' ll 1^2 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. proper, which I reached to-day after a journey througli the portions of the city from which the waters, reced- ing- fast, are revealing scenes of unparalleled horror. From the point on the hillside referred to an excellent view of the site of the town can be obtained. Here it can be seen that from the line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which winds along the base of Prospect Hill, to a point at which St. John's Catholic Church formerly stood, and from the stone bridge to Concmaugh, on the Conemaugh River, but twelve houses by actual count remain, and they are in such a condition as to be practically useless. To any one familiar with the geography of the iron city of Cambria county this will convey a vivid idea of a swarth averaging one-half mile in width and three miles in length. In all the length and breadth of the most peaceful and cosdy portion of Johnstown not a shingle remains except those adhering to the buildings mentioned. Houses Upside Down, But do not think for an instant that this comprehends in full the awfulness of the scene. What has just been mentioned is a large waste o* territory swept as clean as if by a gigantic broom. In the other direction some few of the houses still remain, but they are up- side down, piled on top of each other, and in many ways so torn asunder that not a single one of them is available for any purpose whatever. It is in this dis- trict that the loss of life has been heartrending. Bodies are being dug up in every direction. On the main street, from which the waters have re- THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR, 133 ceded sufficiently to render access and work possible, bodies are being exhumed. They are as thick as pota- toes in a field. Those in charge seem to have the utmost difficulty in securing the removal of bodies after they have beer found. The bodies are ly ig among the mass of wrecked buildings as thick as flies. The fire in the drift above tlic bridge is under control and is being rapidly smothered by the Pittsburgh firemen in charge of the work. About seven o'clock this morninof a crowd of Battery B boys discovered a family of five people in the smoking and burned ruins above the bridge. They took out father, mother and three children, all terribly burned and mutilated. The little girl had an arm torn off. Finding the Dead. The work of rescuing the bodies from the mud and debris has only fairly begun, and yet each move in that direction reveals more fiilly the horrible extent of the calamity. It is estimated that already i,8oo corpses have been found in all parts of the valley and given some little attention. Many of them were so mangled as to be beyond Identification. A regularly organized force of men has been at work most of the day upon the mass of debris about the stone bridge. Early in the forenoon ten bodies vvere found close together. There was nothing to identify them, as they were burnt almost to a crisp. Several of them must have belonged to one house- hold, as they were taken from under the blackened timbers of a single roof, ■4 :t:r. iMMii f I (U U (d cfl Cd M Soon the ruin: man,an( It is 3 people vvatchin; more lit As th finds ir turned < bodies i Man) in their morning of gove hands. Herboc relative Frorr were ta and pla as poss mg mai of bodi showing suicide Wor side of six hun ^ : t « 4i ^«-. ^ ^ ;■:•. as :-^= a •mf— ^ i,*^^ L^ " N^ 2 P^^^ H ^■^^Bfe C/) " ^L«<^. S; i Ij^ X "^^ « (l?t' t5 "B > < In ^ " ri ', 1. > "1/ « THE JOHNSTOWTT riDRROR. 133 Soon after a man, woman and child were taken from the ruins. The child was clasped in the arms of the wo- man, and the trio were evidently husband, wife and child. It is a most distressing sight to see the relatives of people supposed to be lost standing around and watching every body as it is pulled out, and acting more like maniacs than sensible people. As the work progressed the number of the ghastly finds increased. The various parties of workmen turned out from ten to fifteen bodies and fragments of bodies an hour all day long. Many of the corpses found had valuables still clasped in their hands. One woman taken from the mill this morning had several diamond rings and earrings, a roll of government bonds and some money clasped in her hands. She was a widow, and was very wealthy. Her body has been embalmed and is at the house of relatives. Suicide Brougrht Relief. From under the large brick school-house 124 bodies were taken last night and to-day, and in every corner and place the bodies are being found and buried as fast as possible. The necessity for speedy burial is becom* mg manifest, and the stench is sickening. A number of bodies have been found with a bullet hole in them, showing conclusively that in their maddening fright suicide was resorted to by many. Work was commenced during the day on the south side of the town. It is supposed that five hundred or six hundred bodies will be found in that locality. ''h'\A mM 13G THE JOHNSTOWN HORKOR. 'ml 'X, I I , I, hi About twelve o*clock ten bodies were taken out of the wreck near the Cambria Library. On account of the bruised and mangled condition, some having faces crushed in, it was impossible to identify them. It is supposed they were guests at the Hurlbert House, which is completely demolished. Eight bodies were recovered near the Methodist Church at eleven o'clock. It is said that fully one hun- dred and fifty bodies were found last evening in a sort of pocket below the Pennsylvania Railroad signal tower at Sang Hollow, where it was expected there would be a big find. Kemvillo One Vast Morgue • Over one thousand bodies have been taken from the river, drsigged from the sluggish pools of mud or dug out of the sand about Kernville during the day. Three hundred of them were spread out upon the dry sand along the river's bank at one time this afternoon. The sight is one that cannot be described, and is one of the most distressing ever witnessed. A crowd of at least five hundred were gathered around, endeavoring to find the bodies of some friends or relatives. There were no cofifins there at the time and the bodies had to be laid on the ground. However, five hundred cof- fins are on the way here, and the undertakers have sent for five hundred additional ones. Kernville from now on will be the place where most of the bodies will be found. The water has fallen so much that it is possi- ble to get at the bodies. However, all the bodies have to be dug out of the sand, and it causes no end of work. .^■i THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR, 137 i«%* It is thought that most of the bodies that will be found at Kernville are under a large pile of debris, about an acre in length. This is where most of the buildings drifted, and it is natural to suppose that the bodies floated with them. A rain is now fallino^ but this does not interfere with the work. Most of the rescuing party have been up for two days, yet they work with a determination that is wonderful. Nineveh, the City of the Dead. Nineveh is literally a city of the dead. The entire place is filled with corpses. At the depot eighty -seven coffins were piled up and boxed. On the streets coffin boxes covered the sidewalks. improvised undertaking shops have embalmed and placed in their shrouds 198 persons. The dead were strewn about the town in all conceivable places where their bodies would be protected from the thoughtless feet of the living. Most of the bodies embalmed last night had been taken out of the river in the morning by the people at Nineveh, who worked incessantly night and day searching the river. The bodies when found were placed in a four-horse wagon, frequently twelve at a time, and driven away. Of the bodies taken out near Moorhead fully three-fourths are women and the rest children. But few men are found there. In one row at the planing mill to-day were eighteen children's bodies awaiting embalming. Next to them was a woman whose head had been crushed in so as to destroy her features. On her hand were three diamond rings. n w V V '!'■ ' * [ 138 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. i s'ii ;; I 1'- -..-.. ^ Dr. Graff, of the State Board of Health, stationed at Nineveh, states that up till ten o'clock this morning they had embalmed about two hundred bodies, and by noon to-day would about double that number, as they were fishing bodies out of the river at this point at the rate of one every five minutes. In the driftwood and debris bodies are being exhumed, and an additional force of undertakers has been despatched to this place. la a Ghamel House. At the public school-house the scene beggars de- scription. Boards have been laid from desk to desk, and as fast as the hands of a large body of men and women can put the remains in recognizable shape they are laid out for possible identification and removed as quickly as possible. Seventy-five still remain, although many have been taken away, and they are being brought in every moment. It is something horrifying to see one portion of the huge school taken up by corpses, each with a clean white sheet covering it, and on the other side of the room a promiscuous heap of bodies in all sorts of shapes and conditions, looking for all the world like decaying tree trunks. Among the number identified are two beautiful young ladies named respectively Mrs. Richardson, who was a teacher in the kindergarten school, and Miss Lottie Yost, whose sister I afterwards noticed at one of the corners near by, weeping as if her very heart was broken. Not a single acquaintance did she count in all of the great throng who passed her by, although THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 139 many tendered sincere sympathy, which was accentu- ated by their own losses. Lost and Found. At the station of Johnstown proper this morning tlic following names were added to the list of bodies found and identified: Charles Marshall, one of the engineers Cambria Company. A touching incident in connection widi his death is that he had been married but a short time and his widow is heartbroken. Order at any Cost. lix-Sheriff C. L. Dick, who was at one time Burgess of Johnstown, has charge of a large number of special deputies guarding the river at various points. He and a posse of his men caught seven Hungarians robbing dead bodies in Kernville early this morning, and threw them all into the ri er and drowned them. He says he has made up his mind to stand no more nonsense with this class of persons, and he has given orders to his men to drown, shoot or hang any man caught stealing from the dead. He said the dead bodies of the Huns can be found in the creek. Sheriff Dick, or "Chall" as he is familiarly called, is a tall, slim man, and is well known in Pittsburgh, principally to sportsmen. He is a first-class wing shot, and during the past year he has won several live bird matches. He is slow to anger, but when forced into a fight his courage is unfailing. • Shooting Looter? on the Wingr. Dick wears corduroy breeches, a large hat, a cart- ridge belt, and is armed with a Winchester rifle. He ■nu 140 THE JOHNSrOWN HORROR. h U is a crack shot and has taken charge of the deputies in the wrecked portion of the city. Yesterday after- noon he discovered two men and a woman cutting the finger from a dead woman to get her rings. The Winchester rifle cracked twice in quick succession, and the right arm of each man dropped, helplessly shat- tered by a bullet. The woman was not harmed, but she was so badly frightened that she will not rob corpses again. Some five robbers altogether were shot during the afternoon, and two of them were killed. The lynchings in the Johnstown district so far num- ber from sixteen to twenty. Treasure L.yiug' Loose. Notwithstanding this, and the way that the town is most thoroughly under martial law, the pilfering still goes on. The wreck is a gold mine for pilferers. A Hungarian woman fished out a trunk down in Cambria City yesterday, and on breaking it open found $7,500 in it. Another woman found a jewel box containing several rings and a gold watch. In one house in Johnstown there is f 1,700 in money, but it is impossi- ble to get -at it. Ilant^cil and Riddled with Bullets. Quite an exciting scene took place in the borough of Johnstown last night. A Hungarian was discovered by two men in the act of blowing up the safe in the First National Bank Building with dynamite. A cry was raised, and in a few minutes a crowd had col- lected and the cry of " Lynch him ! ** was raised, and THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 141 ar num- in less time than It takes to tell it the man wis strung up to a tree in what was once about the central por- tion of Johnstown. Not content with this the Vigilance Committee riddled the man's body full of bullets. He remained hanging to the tree for several hours, when some person cut him down and buried him with the other dead. The stealing by Hung CHAPTER VII. Bv.rial of the Victims, Hundreds have been laid away in shallow trenches without forms, ceremonies or mourners. All day lonj.^ the work of burial has been going on. There was no time for religious ceremonies or mourning and many a manqrled form was coffrned with no sij^n of mournin< save the honest sympathy of the brave men who handled them. As fast as the wagons that are gather- ing up the corpses along the stream arrive with their ghastly loads they are emptied and return again to the banks of the merciless Conemaugh to find other victims among the driftwood in the underbrush, or halt buried in the mud. The coffins are now beginning to arrive, and on many streets on the hillside they are stacked as high as the second and third story windows. At Kernville the people are not so fortunate. It would seem that every man is his own coffin maker, and many a man can be seen here and there claiming the boards of what remains of his house in which per haps he has found the remains of a loved one, and busily patching them together with nails and hoops 01 any available thing to hold the body. When the corpses are found they are taken to ih nearest dead house and are carefully washed. The) are then laid out in rows to await identification. (140) THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 147 Cards are pinned to their breasts as soon as they are identified, and their names will be marked on the headboards at the graves. Wholesale Funerals. There were many rude funerals in the upper part of the town. The coffins were conveyed to the cem- eteries in wagons, each one carrying two, three or more. At Long View Cemetery and at one or two other points long trenches have been dug to receive the coffins. The trenches are only about three feet deep, it being thought unnecessary to bury deeper, as almost all the bodies will be removed by friends. Nearly three hundred bodies were buried thus to-day. There will be no public ceremony, no funeral dirge, and but few weeping rncurners. The people are too much impressed with the necessity of immediate and constant work to think of personal grief. The twenty-six bodies taken to the hose house in Minersville were buried shortly after ten o'ck)ck yes- terday morning. Of the twenty-six, thirteen were identified. Eight women, a baby and four men were buried without having been identified. All day yesterday men v^re engaged in burying the (lead. They ran shoi t of coffins, and in order to dis- pose of the rapidly decomposing bodies they built rough boxes out of the floating lumber that was caught. In rhis way they buried temporarily over fifty bodies in the :emetery just above the town. 'i^ijtrefaction of dead bodies threatens the health of i ¥ ;Ji 148 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. I the whole region. Now that the waters are fast shrink- ing back from the horrid work of their own doing and are uncovering thousands of putrid and ill-smellinc corpses the fearful danger of pestiler^e is espied, stalking in the wake of more violent destruction. The air is already reeking with infectious filth, and the alarm h\ widespread among the desolated and over- wrought population. Cremation Best. Incident to this phase of the situation the chief sen- sation of the morning was the imited remonstrance of the physivMans against the extinguishment of the burn- ing wreck of the demolished town which is piled up against the bridge. They maintain, with a philosophy that to anxious searchers seems heartless, that hun- dreds, if not thousands, of lifeless and decaying bodies lie beneath this mass of burning ruins. *Tt would be better," they say, "to permit Nature's greatest scavenger — the flames — to pursue his work unmolested than to expose to further decay the horde of putrefying bodies that lie beneath this debris. There can be but one result. Days will elapse before the rubbish can be sufficiently removed to permit the recovery of these bodies, and long before that every corpse will be a putrid mass, giving forth those fright- ful emanations of decaying human flesh that in a crowded community like this can have but one result — the dreadful tophus. Every battlefield has demon strated the necessity of the hasty interment of decay- ing bodies, and the stench that already ari^,es Is a fore- THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 149 4H|:|^ runner of impending danger. Burn the wreck, burn the wreck." Sorrow Rejects Safety. A loud cry of indignation arose from the lips of the vast multitude and the warnings of science were lost in the eager demands of those that sought the remains of the near and dear. The hose was again turned upon the hissing mass, and rapidly the flames yielded to the supremacy of water. It is almost impossible to conceive the extent of diese smoking ruins. An area of eight or ten acres above the dam is covered to a depth of forty feet with shattered houses, borne from the resident centre of Johnstown. In each of these houses, it is estimated, there were from one to twenty or twenty-five people. 7'his is accepted as data upon which to estimate the number that perished on this spot, and if the data be correct the bodies that lie beneath these ruins must run well up into the thousands. Members of the State Board of Health arrived in Nineveh this morning and determined to proceed at once to dredge the river, to clean it of the dead and prevent the spreading of disease. To this end they have wired the State Department to furnish them with the proper appliances. Drinking- Poisoned Water. From other points in this and connecting valleys che same fear of pestilence is expi Sised. The cities of Pittsburgh and Allegheny, which have a population of three hundred and fifty thousand and drink the ' i ^f ioO THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR, li waters of the Allegheny River, down which corpses iind debris from Johnstown must flow unless stopped above, are in danger of an epidemic. The water is to-day thick with mud, and bodies have been found as hi' south of here as Beaver, a distance of thirty miles below Pittsburgh. To go this distance the bodies followed the Conemaugh from Johnstown to the Kis- kiminetas, at Blairsville, joining the Allegheny at Freeport, and the Ohio here, the entire distance from this point being about one hundred and fifty miles. "This is a very serious matter," said a prominent Pittsburgh physician who is here to me to-day, "and one that demands the immediate attention of the Board of Health officials. The flood of water that swept through Johnstown has cleaned out hundreds of cesspools. These and the barnyards' manure and the dirt from henneries and swamps that were swept by the waters have all been carried down into the Alle- gheny River. In addition to this there are the bodies of persons drowned. Some of these will, in all likeli- hood, be secreted among the debris and never be found. Hundreds of carcasses of animals of various kinds are also in the river. Typhus Dreaded. " These will decay, throwing out an an^^.a! poison. 1 his filth and poisonous matter is being canted into the Allegheny, and will be pumped up into the reser- voir and distributed throughout the city. The result is a cause for serious apprehension. Take, for ex- ample, the town of Hazh-ton, Pa. There the fikh THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 161 from some outhouse was carried into the reservoir and listributed through the town. The result was a ty- phoid fever epidemic and hundreds of people lost their lives. The water that we are drinking to-day is some- thing fearful to behold." The municipal authorities of Pittsburgh have Issued a notice embodying the above facts. Sanitary Work. A message was received by the Relief Committee this morning confirming the report that for the health of the cities of Pittsburgh and Allegheny it is abso- lutely necessary that steps be taken immediately to re- move the bodies and drift from the river, and begging the committee to take early action. The contract for clearing the river was awarded to Captain Jutte, and he will start up the Allegheny this afternoon as far as Freeport, and then work dow^n. His instructions are to clear the river thoroughly of anything that might in any way affect the water supply. Hclplii'*' HandM. The work of relief at the scene of the great disaster is going on rapidly. The Alliance (Ohio) Relief Committee arrived here this morning on a special train with five carloads of provisions. The party is composed of the most prominent iron and steel mer- chants of Alliance. They have just returned from a tour of the ruined iu.vn They have been up to Stony Creek, a distance of five* miles anvi up the Conemaugh River toward Souih Fork, a distJince of two miles. m "1 ' 3 PiflwA,, ' 152 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR, In describing their trip, one of their number said:— **I tell you tlit^ half has never been told. It is impou* DISTRIBUTING SUPPLIED FROM THE RELIEF TRAIN. sibie to teii the terrible tale. I thought I had seen horrible sii^-hts, and I served five years in the War of 1 HE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 153 the ivebellloii, but in all my life it has never i)e jn my \oi 10 look upon such ghastly sights as I have wit- nessed to-day. "While making the circuit of the ruined places we saw 103 bodies taken out of the dobris alonijf the bank of tne river and Stony Creek. Of this number, we icli'.itificd six of the victims as our friends." A K. W' .*3 "V' *'•• -.-G ■,«..;l Ui SCENE ON SOUTH CLINTON STREET. i»# CHAPTER VIII. Jol^nstown and Its Indostrles. At this point of our narrative a sketch of Johnstown, where the most frightful havoc of the flood occurred, will interest the reader. The following description and history of the Cam. bria Iron Company's Works, at Johnstown, is taken from a report prepared by the State Bureau of Indus- trial Statistics : The great works operated by the Cambria Iron Company originated in a few widely separated char- coal furnaces, which were built by pioneer iron workers in the earlj years of this century. It was chartered under the general law authorizing the incor- poration of iron manufacturing companies, in the year 1852. The purpose was to operate four old-fashioned charcoal furnaces, located in and about Johnstown, some of which had been erected many years before. Johnstown was then a village of 1 300 inhabitants. The Pennsylvania Railroad had only been extended thus far in 1852, and the ear'y iron manufacturers righdy foresaw a great fuiure for ihe industry at this point. Iiniin'n*»c i'urnaccs. Coal, iron and limestone were abundant, and the new railroad v.ould enable them to find ready mar- kets for their products. In 1853 the construction of (154) THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 155 four coke furnaces was commenced, and it was two years before the first was completed, while some pro- ofrcss was made on the other three. EnMand was then shipi^ng" rails into this country under a low duty, and the iron industry, then in its infancy, was struggling for existence. The furnaces at Johnstown labored under greater difficulties in the years between 1852 and 1861 than am be appreciated at this late day. Had it not been for a few patriotic citizens in Philadelphia, who loaned their credit and means to the failing company, the city of Johnstown would possibly never have been built. Notwithstanding the protecting care of the Philadelphia merchants, the company in Johnstown was unable to continue in business, and suspended in 1854. Among its heaviest creditors in Philadelphia were Oliver Mar- tin and Martin, Morrell & Co. More money was sub- scribed, but the establishment failed again in 1855. D. J. Morrell, however, formed a new company with new credit. Recovery From n. Great Fire. The year of 1856, the first after the lease was made, was one of great financial depression, and the follow- ing year was worse. To render the situation still more gloomy a fire broke out In June, 1857, and in three hours the large mill was a mass of ruins. Men stood in double ranks passing water from the Cone- maugh river. 300 yards distant, with which to fight the f^iimes. So great was the energy, determination and iinanciai ability of the new company that in one week .„■ v'4'l j f Ih 166 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. after the fire the furnaces and rolls were once more in operation under a temporary structure. At this early stage in the manufacturing the management found it advisable to abandon the original and widely sep- arated charcoal furnaces and depend on newly con- structed coke furnaces. As soon as practicable after the fire a permane.it brick mill was erected, and the company was once more fully equipped. When the war came and with it the Morrill tariff of 1861 a broader field was opened up. Industry and activity in business became general ; new life was infused into every enterprise. In 1862 the lease by which the company had been successfully operated for seven vears expired, and by a reorganization the present company was formed. Advcut of Steel Rails. A new era in the manufacture of iron and steel was now about to dawn upon the American people. In this year 1870 vhere were 49,757 tons of steel pro- duced in the United States, while in 1S80 the produc- tion was 1,058,314 tons. Open hearth steel, crucible steel and blister steel, prior io this, had been the prin- cipal products, but were manufactured by processes too slow and too expensive to take the place of iron. The durability of steel over iron, particularly for rails, had long been known, but its cost of production pre- vented its use. In 1857 one steel r?il was sent ^o Derby, England, and laid down on die Midland Rail road, at a place where the travel was so great that ixon rails then in use had to be renewed sometlines a^ THf I ^o** 4 A,fit W « SancHo /-- THf 0/\M WHICH cowemaihTh ^f BURST T^ RESERVOIR v?;^;*^' ^^- -•^•■T^ ^ vMl.V, ^ ^' ** 4, "k^^.f^ 01' S(^''l ii>'' l« *J*^<* _::?v ''''S I .M' ^. '-'*'. m ^ ov^' f ^9 V iid! ^. ■^ ^ !0^ ,.r^ rtNC BU/LOIN&S t . , H MAP OF fHE CONEMAUGH VALLEY. ( 1^7) 158 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. H often as once in three months. In June, 1873, ^^cr sixteen years of use, the rail, being well worn, was taken out. During its time 1,250,000 trains, not to speak of the detached engines, etc., had passed ovfr it. This was the first steel rail, now called BesseiiK r rail, ever used. About ten years ago the Cambria Iron Compan) arranged with Dr. J. H. Gauticr & Sons, of Jersey City, to organize a limited partnership association under tlir name of " The Gautier Steel Company, Limited," to manufacture, at Johnstown, wire and various other forms of merchant steel. Within less than a mile from the main works extensive mills were erected and the business soon grew to great propor- tions. In a few years so much additional capital was required, owing to the rapidly increasing business, that Dr. Gautier, then far advanced in life, wished to be relieved of the cares and duties incident to the growing trade, and the Cambria Iron Company be- came the purchaser of his works. "The Gautier Steel Company, Limited," went out of existence and the works are now known as the "Gautier . Steel Department of Cambria Iron Company." Description of the Works. The blast furnaces, steel works and rolling mills of the company are situated upon what was originally a river flat, where the valley of the Conemaugh ex- panded somewhat just below the borough of Johns town, and now forming part of Millville Borough. The arrangement of the works has been necessarily gov- A: THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 169 •S >«rned by the fact that they have grackially expanded jTom the original rolling-mill and four old style blast furnaces to thci** present character and capacity of which some idea may be obtained by the condensed descri^:)tion given below. The Johnstown furnaces, Nos. i, 2, 3 and 4, form one complete plant, with stacks seventy-five feet high, sixteen feet diameter of bosh. Steam is generated in forty boilers, fired by furnace gas, for eight vertical di- rect-acting blowing engines. Nos. 5 and 6 blast fur- naces form together a second plant with stacks seventy-five feet high, nineteen feet diameter of bosh. No. 5 has Iron hot blast stoves and No. 6 has four Whitwell fire-brick hot blast stoves. The furnaces have together six blowing engines exactly like those at Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 furnaces. The engines are sup- plied with steam by thirty-two cylinder boilers. Miirvolous Maoliincry. The Bessemer plant was the sixth started in the United States (July, 1871). The main building is 102 feet In width by 165 feet in length. The cupolas are six in number. Blast Is supplied from eight Baker rotary pressure blowers driven by engines sixteen inches by twenty-four inches, at 1 10 revolutions per minute. The cupolas are located on eitiier side of die main trough. Into which they are tapped, and down which the melted metal is directed into a ten-ton ladle set on a hydraulic weighing platform, where it is stored until the converters are ready to receive it. There are two vessels of eight and a half tons If IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) V // ^^ 1.0 I.I 1.25 ■isnis 3.2 1.4 IIM 1.6 'c^l 9 -W ^^ Photographic Sciences Corporation ^ ■^ ^ ^^ N> € WV -^X ^^\ » % \,^ ro^^ 2.1 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 'Wf'''''mmmKm i 160 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. capacity each, the products being distributed by a hydraulic ladle crane. The vessels are blown by three engines. The Bessemer works are 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 Is 103 heats of eight and a half tons each for twenty-four hours. The best weekly record reached 1,847 tons of Ingots, the best monthly record of 20,304 tons, and the best daily output, 900 tons ingots. All grades of steel are made in the converters from the softest wire and bridge stock to spring steel. All the special stock, that is other than rails, is carefully analyzed by heats, and the physical properties are determined by a ten- sion test. Ponderous Stcam-Hammcrs. The open hearth building, 120 feet in width by 155 feet in length, contains three Pernot revolving hearth furnaces of fifteen tons capacity each, supplied with natural gas. A separate pit with a hydraulic ladle crane of twenty tons capacity Is located in front of each pan. In a portion of the mill building, originally used as a puddle mill, is located the bolt and nut works, wherein are made track bolts and machine bolts. This department is equipped with bolt-heading and nut making machines, cutting, tapping and facing machines, and produces about one thousand kegs of finished track bolts, of 200 pounds each, per month, besides machine bolts. Near this, also, are located the axle and forging shops, in the old puddle mill THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 161 building. The axle shop has three steam hammers to forge and ten machines to cut off, centre and turn axlc3. The capacity of this shop is loo finished steel axles per day. All axles are toughened and annealed by a patented process, giving the strongest axle pos- sible. In the forging plant, located in the same build- ing, there is an 18,000 j^ound Bement hammer, and a ten-ton traveling crane to convey forglngs from the furnaces to the hammer. There are two furnaces for heating large ingots and blooms for forgings. A ventilating fan supplies fresh air to the mills through pipes located overhead, and having outlets near the heating furnaces. One hundred thousand '.ubic feet of fresh air per minute is distributed throughout the mills. The mill has in addition to its boilers, over the heating-furnaces, a brick and iron building, located near the rail mill, 205 feet long and 45 feet wide, containing twenty-four tubular boilers, aggregating about 2000 horse-power. Tons of Barbed Wire. The " Gautier Steel Department " consists of a brick building 200 feet by 500 feet, where the wire is an- nealed, drawn and finished; a brick warehouse 373 feet by 43 feet ; many shops, offices, etc. ; the barb wire mill, 50 feet by 256 feet, where the celebrated Cambria Link barb wire is made ; and the main mer- chant mill, 725 feet by 250 feet. These mills produce wire, shafting, springs, plowshare, rake and harrow teeth and other kinds of agricultural implement steel. In 1887 they produced 50,000 tons of this U : . I material, which was marketed mainly in the Western states. Grouped with the' principal mills are the foundries, pattern and other shops, drafting offices, time offices, etc., all structures being of a firm and substantial character. The company (operates about thirt)'-five miles of railroad tracks, employing in this service twenty-four locomotives, and it owns 1 500 cars. In the fall o( t886 natural gas was introduced into the works Hiiildiii|i^ lip Joliiistuwii. Anxious tt) secure employment for die daughtc is and widows of the employees of the company who were willing to work, its management erected a woolen mill which now employs about 300 persons. Amusements were not neglected, and the people of Johnstown are indebted to the company for the erec- tion of an opera house, where dramatic entertainments are given. The company owns 700 houses, which are rented exclusively to employees. The handsome library erected by the company and presented to the town was stocked with nearly 7000 volumes. The CamJjria Hospital is also under the control of the benefjcial association of the works. The Cambria Clubhouse is a very neat pressed brick building on the corner of Main and Federal streets. It was first operated in 1 88 1, and is used exclusively for the entertainment of the guests of the company and such of their employees as can be accommodated. The store building occu THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 163 pied by Wood, Morrell & Co., limited, ii^ a four-story brick structure on Washington street, with three large store rooms on the first floor, the remainder of the building being used for various forms of merchandise. Including the surrounding boroughs, Kernville, Morrellville and Cambria City, all of which are built up solidly to Johnstown proper, the population is about 30,000. The Cambria Iron Company employs, in Johnstown, about 7500 people, which would cer- tainly indicate a population of not less than 20,000 depending upon the company for a livelihood. A large proportion of the population of Johnstown are citizens of foreign birth, or their immediate de- scendants. Those of German, Irish, Welsh and Eng- lish birth or extraction predominate, with a few Swedes and Frenchmen. As a rule the working people and their families are well dressed and order- ly ; in this they are above the average. Most of the older workmeii ^f the company, owing largely to Its liberal policy, own their houses, and many of them h'oe houses for rent III ffv 4 IM CHAPTER !X. View of tine Wreclc, Each visitor to the scene of the great disasto wit- nessed sights and received impressions different from all others. The following graphic account will thrill every reader : The most exaggerative imagination cannoi too strongly picture the awful harvest of death, the wreck which accompanied that terrible deluge last Friday afternoon. I succeeded in crossing from the north side of the Little Conemaugh, a short distance above the point, to the sandy muddy desert strewn v/Ith remnants of the buildings and personal prop(,;rty of those who know not their loss. It is almost an impossibility to gain access to the region, and it was accomplished only after much difficulty in crossing the swifdy running stream. Standing at a point in this abode of thousands of dead the work of the great flood can be more ade- quately measured than from any one place in the de- vastated region. Here I first realized the appalling loss of life and the terrible destruction of property. It was about ten o'clock when the waters of Stony Creek rose, overflowed their banks and what is known as the " flats," which includes the entire business por- tion of the city of Johnstown. The Little Conemaugh (164) THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 16^ was runningr high at the same time, and 't had al^^o overreached the Hmit of its banks. The water of both streams soon submerged tlie lower portion of the town. Up to this time there was no intimat'on that a terrible disaster was imminent. The water poured into the cellars of the houses in the lower districts and rose several inches in the streets, but as that had oc- curred before the people took no alarm. Shortly after twelve o'clock the first drowning oc- curred. This was not because of the deluge, it was simply the carelessness of the victim, who was a driver for the Cambria Iron Company, in stepping into a cellar which had been filled with water. The water continued to rise, and at twelve o'clock had reached that part of the city about a block from the point be- tween Stony Creek and the Little Conemaugh. Topography of the Place. The topography of Johnstown is almost precisely like that of Pittsburgh, only in a diminished degree. Stony Creek comes in from the mountains on the northeast, and the 'kittle Conemaugh comes in from the northwest, forming the Conemaugh at Johnstown, precisely as the Allegheny and Monongahela form the Ohio at Pittsburgh. On the west side of Stony Creek are mountains rising to a great height, and almost per- pendicularly from the water. On the north side of the Conemaugh River mountains equally as high as those on Stony Creek confine that river to its course. The hills in Johnstown start nearly a half mile from the business section of the city. This leaves a territory 166 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. between the two .ivers of about four hundred acres. This was covered by costly buildings, factories and other important manufactories. When the waters of South Fork and Little Cone- maugh broke over their banks into that portion of the city known as the " flats," the business community turned its attention to putting endangered merchan- dise in a place of safety. First Alarm. In the homes of the people the women began gathering household articles of any kind that may have been in the cellar. Little attention was paid to the water beyond this. Looking from the " flats" at Johnstown toward and following the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks, which wind along the Little Conemaugh, the village of Woodvllle stands, or did stand, within sight of the ** flats," and is really a continuation of the city at this point. The mountains on the south side of the Little Co- nemaugh rise here and form a narrow valley where Woodvllle was located. Next joining this, without any perceptible break In the houses, was the town of East Conemaugh. The extreme eastern limit of East Conemaugh is about a mile and a half from Johns- town "flats." A Narrow Chasm. The valley narrows as It reaches eastward, and in a narrow chasm three miles from Johnstown ''flats" Is the little setdement of Mineral Point. A few of the THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. ]«7 houses have found a place on the mountain side, out of harm's way, and so they still stand. At East Conemaugh there is located a roundhouse of the Pennsylvania Railroad, for the housing of loco- motives used to assist trains over the mountains. The inhabitants of this place were all employees of the Pennsylvania and the Gautier Steel Works, of the Cambria Iron Company. The inhabitants numbered about 1,500 people. Like East Conemaugh, 2,000 or 2,500 people, who lived at Woodville,were employees of the some corporation and the woolen mills located there. Just below Woodville the mountains upon the south bank of the Conemaugh disappear and form the com- mencement of the Johnstown ''flats." The Gautier Steel Works of the Cambria Iron Company are located at this point, on the south bank. The Penn- sylvania Railroad traverses the opposite bank, and makes a long curve from this point up to East Con- emaugh. Tjmely "Warning' to Escape. At what is known as the point where Stony Creek and the Little Conemaugh form the Conemaugh the mountains followed by Stony Creek take an abrupt turn northward, and the waters of the Little Cone- maugh flow into the Conemaugh at right angles with these mountains. 11 few hundred feet below this point the Pennsyl- vania Railroad bridge crosses the Conemaugh Riven The bridge is a massive stone structure. From the east end of the bridge there is a heavy fill of from :hj.; -s/;; r 1 1 :.■ m u n 168 THP: JOHNSTOWN HORROR. thirty to forty feet high to Johnstown Station, a dis tance of a quarter of a mile. Within a few feet of the station a wagon bridge crosses the Little Conemaugh, five hundred feet above the point connecting the "flats " and the country upon the north side of the river. The Cambria Iron Company's Bessemer department lies along the north bank of the Conemaugh, com- mencing at the fill, and extends for over two miles down the Conemaugh River upon its northern bank. Below the Cambria Iron Company's property Is Millville Borough, and on the hill back of Millville Borough is Minersville properly — the Second ward of Millville Borough. The First ward of Millville was washed away com- pletely. While the damage from a pecuniary sense was large, the loss of life was quite small, inasmuch as the people had timely warning to escape. Below the Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge at Johns- town, upon the south bank of the Conemaugh, was the large settlement of Cambria. It had a populadon of some five thousand people. At Cambria the moun- tain retreats for several hundred feet, leavino- a level of two or three hundred acres in extent. Just below the bridge the Conemaugh River makes a wide curve around this level. About eight or nine hundred houses stood upon this level. Below Cambria stands Morrellville, a place about equal in size to Cambria. THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 16d From this description of the location of Johnstown aiv-l neighboring" settlements the course of the waters may be better understood when described. It was about ten minutes to three o'clock Friday afternoon when Mr. West, of the local office of the Pennsylva- nia Railroad at Johnstown, received a dispatch from the South F'ork station, advising him to notify the in- habitants that the big dam in the South Fork, above the city, was about to break. He at once despatched couriers to various parts of the city, and a small sec- tion was notified of the impending danger. The messenger was answered with, " We will wait until we see the water." Others called "Chestnuts!" and not one in fifty of the people who received the warning gave heed to ir. The Debris of Three Towns. With the waters standing several inches deep in the streets of the " flats " of the city the deluge from South Fork Lake, burst the dam and rushed full upon Johns- town shortly after five o'clock on Friday afternoon the last day of May. First it swept the houses from Mineral Point down into East Conemai'.orh. When the flood reached East Conemaugh the town was wiped out. This mass of debris was borne on to Johnstown, reinforced by the material of three towns. The Gautier steel department of the Cambria Iron Company was the first property attacked in the city- proper Huge rolls, furnaces and all the machinery 3 , *i 170 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. in the great mills, costing ji6,ooo,ooo, were swept away in a moment, and to-day there is not the slightest evi> dence that the mill ever stood there. Swept From the KoofH. Westward from this point die flood swept over the flats. The houses, as soon as the water reached them, were lifted from their foundadon and hurled against their neighbors'. The people who at the first crash of their property managed to reach the roof or some other floating material were carried on until their frail support was driven against the next obstruction, when they went down in the crash together. The portion of the "Hats" submerged is bounded by Clinton street to the Little Conemaugh River, to the point at Stony Creek, then back to Clinton street by way of Bedford. This region has an area of one mile squai e, shaped like a heart, and in this district there are not more than a dozen buildings that are not total wrecks. Ten per cent, of this district is so covered with mud, stones, rocks and other material, where cosdy buildings once stood, that it will require excavating from eight to twenty feet to reach the streets of the city. Remnants of the City. Of the houses standing there Is the Methodist church, the club house, James McMillen's residence, the Morrell mansion, Dr. Lohman's house and the First ward school building. The Fourth ward school house and the Cambria I: THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 171 Irufj Works' general office building" die the only build- ings standing" on the north side of the river from the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge to the limits of the "flats." The Pennsylvania Railroad, fron; its station in Johns- town City nearly to Wilmore, a distance of seven miles, had a magnificent road bed of solid rock. From East Conemaugh to the point in Johnstown opposite the Gautier Steel Works, this road bed, ballast and all arc; gone. Only a few rails may occasionally be seen in the river below. I'^rcjiks of the Flood. When the crash came in Johnstown the houses were crushed as easily by the huge mass as so many build- ings of sand, making much the same sound as if a pen dl were drawn over the slats of a shutter. Houses were torn from their foundations and torn to pieces before their occupants realized their danger. Hun- dreds of these people were crushed to death, while odiers were rescued by heroic men ; but the lives of the majority were prolonged a few minutes, when they met a more horrible death further down the stream. There is a narrow strip extending from the club house to the point which, in some singular manner, escaped the mass of filling that was distributed on the flats. This strip is about 200 feep wide, 300 long and from 3 to 20 feet deep. What queer turn the flood took to thus spare this section, when the surrounding territory was covered with mud, stones and other ma- terial, is a mystery. It is, however, one of the remark- able turns of the flood. n.. n a f 172 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. i .^I^IhH. t Wm I ,_i^i^B ^^lltii The German Catholic Church is standing, but is in an exceedingly shaky condition and may fall at any minute. This and Dr. Lohman's residence are the only buildings on the plot standing between Main street, Clinton street, Railroad street and the Litde Conemaugh. The destruction of life in this district was too awful to contemplate. It is estimated that not more than one thousand people escaped with their lives, and It h believed thai there were fully five thousand persons remaining in the district when the flood came down. The flood wiped out the " flat " with the exception of the buildings noted. The water was twenty feet high here and hurled acres upon acres of houses against the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge which held It and dammed the water up until it was forty feet high. The mass accumulated until the weight became so great that it broke through the fill east of the bridge and the debris started out of the temporary reservoir with an awful rush. It was something near five /clock when the fill broke. The water rushed across the Cambria flats and swept every house away with the exception of a portion of a brewery. There is nothing else standing in this district which resembles a house. The Johnstown Post Office Building, with all the office money and stamps, was carried away in the flood. The Postmaster himself escaped with great difficulty. The dam broke in the centre at three o'clock on i THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 173 persons ame so ^servoir Friday afternoon, and at four o'clock It was dry. That great body of water passed out in one hour. Park & Van Buren v^ho are building a new draining system at the lake, tried to avert the disaster by dig- ging a sluiceway on one side to ease the pressure on the dam. They had about forty men at work and did all they could, but without avail. The water passed over the dam about a foot above its top, beginning at about half-past two. Whatever happened in the way of a cloud burst took place during the night. There had been but little rain up to dark. When the work- men woke In the morning the lake was very full and was rising at the rate of a foot an hour. It kept on rising until at two o'clock it first 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. The Break Two Hundred Feet Wide. When the final break came, at three o'clock, there was a sound like tremendous and continued peals of thunder ; rocks, trees and earth were shot up into mid-air in great columns, and then the wave 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 upon the hillside, but his wife and two children were killed. At the present time the lake looks like a cross between the crater of a volcano and a huge mud puddle with stumps of trees and rocks scattered over it. There Is a small stream of muddy GiEf;^ 174 THr JOHNSTOWN HORROR. Li I f. '> If) ■fU water running through the centre of the lake site. 'I'lie dam was seventy feet high and the break is about two hundred feet wide, and there is but a small portion of the dam left on either side. No damage was done to any of the buildings belonging to the club. The whole south fork is swept, with not a tree standing. There are but one or two small streams showing here and there in the lake. A great many of the workmen carried off baskets full offish caught in the mud. Three Millions Iiideniiiity. It is reported that the Sportsman's Association, which owned the South Fork dam, was required to file an indemnity bond of J^3, 000,000 before their charter was issued. When the bill granting them these privi. leges was before the Legislature the representatives from Cambria and Blair counties vigorously opposed its passage and only gave way, it is said, upon con- dition that such an indemnifying bond was filed. This bond was to be filed with the prothonotary of Cambria county. Father Boyle, of Ebensburg, said the records at the county seat had no trace of such a bond. He found the record of the charter, but nothing about the bond. As the association is known to be composed of very wealthy people, there is much talk here of their being compelled to pay at least a part of the damages. The Rain Did It. It begins to daw-n on us that the catastrophe was brought about not merely by the bursting of the dam if the old canal reservoir, but by a rainfall exceeding THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 176 in depth and area all previously recorded phenomena of the kind. The whole drainage basin of the Kiski- minetas, and more particularly that of the Conemaugh, was affected. An area of probably more than 600 square miles poured its precipitation through the nar- row valley in which Johnstown and associate villages are located. It is easy to see how, with a rainfall similar to that which caused the Butcher Run disas- ter of a few years a^^o, fully from thirty to fifty times as much water became destructive. The w-hole of the water of the lake would pass Suspension Bridge at Pittsburgh inside of from seven to ten minutes, while the gorge at Johnstown, narrowed by the activity of mines for generations past, was clearly insufficient to allow a free course for Stony Creek alone, which is a stream heading away up in Somerset county, twenty- five or thirty miles south of Johnstown. That the rain- fall of the entire Allegheny Mountain system was un- precedented is clearly demonstrated to any one who has watched the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers for the past three days, and this view may serve to correct the impression in the public mind that would localize the causes of the widespread disaster to the bursting of any single dam. Danger Was Anticipated. Charles Parke, of Philadelphia, the civil engineer in the employ of the South Fork Fishing Club, in com- pany with George C. Wilson, ex-United States District Attorney, and several other members of the club, reached Johnstown and brought with them the firsi iT^e THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. . 1 batch of authoritative news from Conemaugh Lake, the bursting of which, it is universally conceded, caused the disaster. Mr. Parke was at first averse to talking, and seemed more interested in informing his friends in the Quaker City that he was still in the land of the living. On being pressed he denied most emphatically that the dam had burst, and proceeded to explain that he first commenced to anticipate danger on Friday morning, when the water in the lake commenced to rise at a rapid rate. Immediately he turned his force of twenty- five Italians to opening an extra waste sluiceway in addition to the one thac had always answered before. The five members of the club on hand all worked like horses, but their efforts were in vain, and at three o'clock the supporting wall gave way with a sound that seemed like distant thunder and the work was done. The Governor's Appeal. Harrisburg, Pa., June 3, 1886. — The Governor issued the following : — " Commonwealth of* Pennsylvania, ''Executive Chamber, "Harrisburg, Pa., June 3, 1889. ■•To THE People of the United States: — "The Executive of the Commonwealth of Pennsyl- vania has refrained hitherto from making any appeal to the people for their benefactions, in order that he might receive definite and reliable information from the centres of disaster during the late floods, which ^^■r^. THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 177 rovernor have been unprecedented in the history of the State or nation. Communication by wire has been estab- lished with Johnstown to-day. The civil authorities are in control, the Adjutant General of the State co- operating with them ; order has been restored and is likely to continue. Newspaper reports as to the loss of life and property have not been exaggerated. "The valley of the Conemaugh, which is peculiar, has been swept from one end to the other as with the besom of destruction. It contained a population of forty thousand to fifty thousand people, living for the most part along the banks of a small river confined widiin narrow limits. The most conservative esti- mates place the loss of life at 5,000 human beings, and of property at twenty-five millions. [The reader will understand that this and previous estimates were the first and were far too small.] Whole towns have been utterly destroyed. Not a vestige remains. In the more substantial towns the better buildincrs, to a certain extent, remain, but in a damaged condition. Those who are least able to bear it have suffered the loss of eveiything. "The most pressing needs, so far as food i? con- cerned, have been supplied. Shoes and clothing of all sorts for men, women and children are greatly needed. Money is also urgently required to lemove tlie debris, bury the dead, and care temporarily for the widows and orphans and for the homeless gener- ally. Other localities have suffered to some extent in the same way, but not in the same degree, 12 jii'i'i 178 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. f \ 1^ i iv I ,1 ' " Late advices seem to Indicate that there is great loss of life and destruction of property along the west branch of the Susquehanna and in localities from which we can get no definite information. What does come, however, is of the most appalling character, and it is expected that the details will add new horrors to the situation. Generous Responses. " The responses from within and without the State have been most generous and cheering. North and South, East and West, from the United States and from England, there comes the same hearty, generous response of sympathy and help. The President, Gov- ernors of States, Mayors of cities, and individuals and communities, private and municipal corporations, seem to vie with each other in their expressions of sympathy and in their contributions of substantial aid. But, gratifying as these responses are, there is no danger of their exceeding the necessities of the situation. Orsranizccl Distribution. " A careful' organization has been made upon the ground for the distribution of whatever assistance is furnished. The Adjutant General of the State is there as the representative of the State authorities and giv- ing personal attention, in connection with the Chief Burgess of Johnstown and a committee of relief to the' distribution of the help which is furnished. "A large force will be employed at once to remove the debris and bury the dead, so as to avoid disease and epidemic. THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 179 "The people of the Commonwealth and others whose unselfish generosity is hereby heartily apprecia- ted and acknowledged may be assured that their con- tributions will be made to bring their benefactions to the immediate and direct relief of those for whose benefit they are intended. "James A. Beaver. " By the Governor, Charles W. Stone, Secretary of the Commonwealth." Alive to the Situation. The Masonic Relief Committee which went from Pittsburgh to Johnstown telegraphed President Har- rison,, 'irging the appointment of a national com- mission to take charge of sanitary affairs at the scene of the disaster. It was urged that the presence of so many decaying corpses would breed a pestilence there, besides polluting the water of the streams affecting all the country between Pittsburgh and New Orleans. The disasters in Pennsylvania were the subject of a conference at the White House between the President, General Noble, the Secretary of the Interior, and Sur- geon General Hamilton. The particular topic which engaged their attention was the possibility of the pol- lution of the water-supply of towns along the Cone- maugh river by the many dead bodies floating down the stream. The President was desirous that this new source of danger should be cut off, if any measures which could be taken by the government could accomplish It. It I'' 180 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. was suggested that the decomposition of so much human flesh and the settling of the decomposing frag- ments into the bed of the stream might make the water so foul as to breed disease and scatter death in a new form among the surviving dwellers in the valley. Not Afraid of a Plague. Surgeon General Hamilton expressed the opinion that the danger was not so great aj might be supposed. There would be no pollution from those bodies taken from the river before decomposition set in, and the force of the freshet would tend to clear the river bed of any impurities in it rather than make new deposits. The argument which had the most weight, however, with the President was the efficiency of the local authorities. Pennsylvania has a State Board of Health and is a State with ample means at her disposal, both in money and men, and if there is any danger of this sort her local officials were able to deal with it. This was practically the decision of the conference. The gentlemen will meet again, if necessary, and stand ready to render every assistance which the situation calls for, but they will leave the control of the matter with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania until it ap- pears that she is unable to cope with it Crovemor Beayei' to the President. The following telegram was received by President Harrison from Governor Beaver, t ho made his way from York to Harrisburg : — THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 181 ••Harrisburg, Pa., June 3, 1889. 'To the President, Washington : — "The Sheriff of Cambria county says everything is quiet and that he can control the situation without the aid of troops. The people are fairly housed and good order prevails. The supply of food so far is equal to the demand, but supplies of food and clothing are still greatly needed. " Conservative estimates place the loss of liie at from five thous«?,iid to ten thousand, and loss of prop- erty at from J2 5.000,000 to ^40,000,000. The people are at work heroically, and will have a large force to- morrow clearing away the debris. *• The sympathies of the world are freely expressed. One telegram from England gives J 1,000. I will is- sue a general appeal to the public to-night. Help comes from all quarters. Its universality greatly en- courages our people. I will communicate with you promptly if anything unusual occurs. *' James A. Beaver." I i ' {» k i 1 f i 1 f^ |! I '. 'i r ll! \h. Ul II ■ ) /A ■ M . 1 CHAPTER X. TU^iliirig Experienoes, Johnstown, Pa., June 3, 1889. — Innumerable tales of thrilling individual experiences, each one more hor- rible than the others, are told. Frank McDonald, a conductor on the Somerset branch of the Baltimore and Ohio, was at the Penn- sylvania Railroad depot in this place when the flood came. He says that when he first saw the flood it was thirty feet high and gradually rose to ai: least forty feet. "There is no doubt that the South Fork Dam was the cause of the disaster," said Mr. McDonald. " Fif- teen minutes before the flood came Decker, the Penn- sylvania Railroad agent read me a telegram that he had just received saying that the South Fork Dam had broken. As soon as he heard this the people ii) station, numbering six hundred, made a rush for a hill. I certainly think I saw one thousand bodies go ovei the bridge. The first house that came down struck the bridge and at once took fire, and as fast as the others ("ame down they were consumed. Saw a Thousand Persons, Bum. " I believe I am safe in saying that I saw one thous and 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. (182) le tales .>re hor- Driierset i Penn- le flood d it was rty feet, am was - Fif. ^ Pcnn- that he •k Dam iople JT) r a hill, tro ovei struck ; as the t thous flies on and no (im 184 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. Hi f. Pf •' 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 out, for the waters came so fast that no one could have done it. "I saw fifteen to eighteen bodies go over the bridge at the same time. •' I offered a man $20 to row me across the river, but could get no one to go, and finally had to build a boat and get across that way." It required some exercise of acrobatic agility to get into or out of the town. A slide, a series of frightful tosses from side to side, a run and you had crossed the narrow rope bridge which spanned the chasm dug by the waters between the stone bridge and Johns- town. Crossing the bridge was 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 guide one 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 accom- plished by a skiff ferry. The ferryman clung to a rope and pulled the load over. Confusion Worse Confounded. It is Impossible to describe the appearance of Main street. Whole houses have been swept down this one THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 185 street and become lodged. The wreck is piled as high as the secor.d story windows. The reporter could step from the wreck into the auditorium of the Opera House. The ruins consists of parts of houses, trees, saw logs, reels from the wire factory. Many houses have their side walls and roofs torn up, and you 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. The best way to get an idea of the wreck is to take a number of children's blocks, place them closely to- gether and draw your hand through them. At the commencement 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. As Seen by an Eye -Witness. 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 to- ward him. He saw that it was made up of houses. On they came like the hand of a giant clearing off his tables. High in the air would be tossed a log or beam, which fell back with a crash. Down the valley it moved sedately 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. 186 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. >,■ J The pillaging of the houses in Johnstown is some- thing awful to contemplate and describe. It makes one feel almost ashamed to call himself a man and know that others who bear the same name have con- verted themselves into human vultures, preying on the dead. Men are carrying shotguns and revolvers, and woe betide the stranger who look^ even suspiciously at any article. Goods of great value were being sold in town to-day for a drink of whiskey. A supply store has been established in the Fourth ward in lohnstown. A line of men, women and chil- dren, extending for a square, waited patiently to have their v/ants supplied. An Improvised Morgue. The school house has been converted into a morgue, and the dead are being buried from this place. A hospital has been opened near by and is full of pa- tients. One of the victims was removed from a piece of wreckage in which he had been imprisoned three days. His leg was broken and his face badly bruised. He was delirious when rescued. In some places it is said the railroad tracks were scooped out to a depth of twenty feet. A train of cars, all loaded, were run on the Conemaugh bridge. They with the bridge, now lie in the wreckage at this point. The Pennsylvania Railroad loses thirty-five engines and many cars. Fire Still H&ging, The cling-cling-clang of the engines has a homelike sound. The fire has spread steadily all day and the THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 187 Upper part of the drift is burning to-night. The fire engine is stationed on the river bank and a line of hose laid far up the track to the coal mine. The flames to-night are higher than ever before, and by its FIREMEN ON DUTY AT THE BRIDGE. [ight long lines of the curious can be seen along the banks. The natural gas has been shut off, owing to the many leaks in Johnstown. No fire is allowed in the (fli ! i m ii ft ■ ;- ■•*« ""VtC^' 188 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. «^< , city. The walls of many houses are falling. Their crash can be heard across the ri<^er, where the newspa- per men are located. In the walk through the town today the word "danger," could be noticed, painted by the rescuers on the walls. Cremated. One of the Catholic churches in the town was burned on Saturday. A house drifted down against it and set it on fire. A funeral was beincr held at the church at the time of the flood. The conofreo-ation de- serted the church and the body was burned with the building. Two large trees passed entirely through a brick Catholic church located near the centre of the town. The building still stands, but is a total wreck. Colonel Norman M. Smith, of Pittsburgh, while re- turning from Johnstown after a visit to Adjutant Gen- eral Hastings, was knocked from the temporary bridge into the river and carried down stream a couple of hundred yards before he was able to swim ashore. He was not hurt. A liUcky Escape. O. J. Palmer, travelling salesman for a Pittsburgh meat house, was on the ill-fated day express, one car of which was washed aw ly. He narrowly escaped drowning, and tells a horrible tale of his experience on that occasion. The engineer, the fireman and himself, when they saw the flood coming, got upon the top of the car, and when the coach was carried away they caught the driftwood, and fortunately it was car- ried near the shore and they escaped to the hills; Mr. THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 189 vn was Palmer walked a distance of twenty miles around the flooded district to a nearby railroad station on this side. Freaks of the Disaster. A novel scene was witnessed yesterday near Johns- town borough. Some women who managed to escape from the town proper had to wear men's clothes, as their own had been torn off by the flood. The force of the flood can be estimated by the fact that it carried three cars a mile and a half and the tender of an engine weighing twelve tons was carried fourteen miles down the river. A team of horses which was standing on Main street just before the flood was found a mile and a quarter below the town yesterday. ^ The damage to the Cambria Iron Works was not so great as at first reported. The ends of the blooming mill and open hearth furnace buildings were crushed in by the force of the flood. The water rushed through the mill and tore a great pile of machinery from its fastenings and caused other damage. The Bessemer steel mill is almost a ruin. The rollinof and wire mills and the six blast furnaces were not much damaged. This morning the company put a large force of men at work and are making strenuous efforts to have at least a portion of the plant ■ i oper- ation within a few weeks. This has given encourage- ment to the stricken people of Johnstown, and they now seem to have some hope, although so many of their loved ones have met their death. The mill yard, % It' ili' 1 I f 1 I m' i 190 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. with its numerous railroad tracks, is nothing but a waste. Large piles of pig metal were scattered in every direction. All the loose debris is being gath- ered into heaps and burned. Hurled to a Place of Safety. * A pitiful sight was that of an old, gray haired man named Norn. He was walking around among the mass of debris, looking for his family. He had just sa» 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. Heroism in Bright Relief. A Paul Revere lies somewhere among the dead. Who he is is now known, and his ride will be famous in history. 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 ! " A Cloud of ICuin. The people crowded out of their houses along the thickly settled streets awestruck and wondering. No one knew the man, and some thought he was a maniac and laughed. On and on, at a deadly pace, he THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 191 rode, and shrilly rang out his awful cry. In a few mo- ments, however, there came a cloud of ruin down the broad streets, down the narrow alleys, grinding, twist- ing, hurling, overturning, crashing — annihilating the weak and the stronjy. It was the chargfe 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 warninnr 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 Pennsylva- nia Railroad train from Pittsburgh were caught up and hurried into the caldron, and the heart of the town was reached. The hero had turned neither to right nor left for himself, but rode on to death for his townsmen. He was overwhelmed by the current at the bridge and drowned. A party of searchers found the body of this man and his horse. He was still in the saddle. In a short time the man was Identified as Daniel Periton, son of a merchant of Johnstown, a young man of re- markable courage. He is no longer the unknown hero, for the name of Daniel Periton will live in fame i'r" Bt. 192 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. as long as the history of this calamity is remembered by the people of this country. A Devoted Operator. Mrs. Ogle, the manager of the Western Union, 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, send- ing 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. Another Hero. A telegraph operator at the railroad station above Mineral Point, which is just in the gorge a short dis- tance below the dam, and the last telegraph station above Conemaugh, had seen the waters rising, and had heard of the first break in the dam. Two hours before the final break came he sent a message to his wife at Mineral Point to prepare for the flood. It read : " Dress the three children in their best Sunday clothes. Gather together what valuables you can easily carry and leave the house. Go to the stable on the hillside. Stay there until the water reaches it; THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 193 then run to the mountain. The dam Is breaking. The flood is coming. Lose no time." His wife showed the message to her friends, but they laughed at her. They even persuaded her to not heed her husband's command. The wife went home and about her work. Meanwhile the telegraph opera- tor was busy with his ticker. Down to Conemaugh he wired the warning. He also sent it on to Johns- town, then he ticked on, giving each minute bulletins of the break. As the water came down he sent message after message, telling its progress. Finally came the flood. He saw houses and bodies swept past him. His last message was : "The water is all around me ; I cannot stay longer, and, for God's sake, all fly." Then he jumped out of his tower window and ran up the mountain just In time to save himself. A whole town came past as he turned and looked. Great masses of houses plunged up. He saw people on roofs yelling and crying, and then saw collisions of houses, which caused the buildings to crush and crumble like paper. Racing with Death. All the time he felt that his family were safe. But it was not so with them. When the roar of approach- ing water came the people of Mineral Point thought of their warning. The wife gathered her children and started to run. As she went she forgot her husband's advice to go to the mountain and fled down the street to the lowlands. Suddenly she remembered she had left the key of her home in the door. She took the 13 i. ' I' 1 1. t : i i i* h 194 THE JOHNSTOWN IIORROR. ^'f i I If/ \i I children and ran back. As she neared the house the water came and forced them up between the two houses. The only outlet was toward the mountain, and she ran that way with her children. The water chased her, but she and the children managed to clamber up far enough to escape. Thus it was that an accident saved their lives. Only three houses and a school-house were saved at Mineral Point. A Dangerous Venture. 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 I earine 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 temporaiy raft, and clinging to it as close as a cat to the sice of a fence, he pushed his frail craft out Into 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." ** Don't attempt It," he persevered. As the raft struck the current he pulled off his coat and in his shirt sleeves braved the stream. Down plunged the boards and down went Leonard, but as it arose he was seen still clinging. A mighty shout arose from the throats of the hundreds on the banks, who were now deeply interested, rnestly 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 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 195 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 last seen of him he was making his way down' a mountain road in the oirection of the spot where his house had lately stood. His family consisted of his wife and three children. A Thrilling' Escape. Henry D. Thomas, a v/ell-known dry goods mer- chant, tells the following story: "I was caught right between a plank and a stone wall and was held in that position for a long time. The water came rushing down and forced the plank against my chest. I felt as if it were going through me, when suddenly the plank gave way, and I fell into the water. I grabbed the plank quickly and in some unaccountable way managed to get the forepart of my body on it, and In that way I was carried down the stream. All around me were people struggling and drowning, while bodies floated like corks on the water. Some were crying for help, others were praying aloud for mercy and a few were singing as If to keep up their courage. A large raft which went by bore a whole family, and they were singing, ** Nearer my God to Thee." In the midst of their song the raft struck a large tree and went to splinters. There were one or two wild cries and then silence. The horror of that time is with me day and night. It v^ould have driven a weak-minded person crazy. 196 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 1 . t J' 1 • s «> ^ff '• The true condition of things that night can never be adequately described in words. The water came down through a narrow gorge, which in places was hardly two hundred feet wide. The broken dam was at an elevation of about five hundred feet above Johns- town. The railroad bridge across the Conemaugh River is at the lower side of Johnstown, and the river is joined there by another mountain stream from the northeast. It was here that the debris collected and caught fire, and I doubt if it will ever be known how many perished there. The water came down with the speed of a locomotive. The people there are abso- lutely paralyzed — so much so that they speak of their losses in a most indifferent way. I heard two men in conversation. One said : * Well, I lost a wife and three children.* 'That's nothing,' said the other; *I lost a wife and six children.' The Sudden Break. A man named Maguire was met on his way from South Fork to Johnstown. He said he was standing on the edge of the lake when the walls burst. Th2 waters were rising all day and were on a level with a pile of dirt which he said was above the walls of the dam. All of a sudden it burst with a report like a cannon and the water started down the mountain side, sweeping before it the trees as if they were chips. Bowlders were rolled down as if they were marbles. The roar was deafening. The lake was emptied in an hour THE JOHNSTOW^N HORROR. 197 emntiea in At the time there were about forty men at work up there, building a new draining system at the lake for Messrs. Parke and Van Buren. They did all they could to try and avert the disas er by digging a sluice- way on one side to ease the pressure on the dam, but their efforts were fruitless. " It was about half-past two o'clock when the water reached the top of the dam. At first it was just a narrow white stream trickling down the face of the dam, soon its proportions began to grow with alarm- ing rapidity, and in an extremely short space of time a volume of water a foot in thickness was passing over the top of the dam. " There had been little rain up to dark. Whatever happened in the way of a cloud burst took place dur- inor the ni of thunder. The earth seemed to shake and vibrate beneath O'r* feet " There was a rush of wind, the trees swayed to and fro, the air was full of fine spray or mist : then looking down just In front of the dam we saw trees, rocks and earth shot up into mid-air in great columns. It ff fc ; 11 ! il VI I fi 198 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. seemed as though some great unseen force was at work wantonly destroying everything ; then the great wave, foaming, boiling and hissing, dashing clouds of spray hundreds of feet in height as it came against some obstruction in the way of its mad rush, clearing everything away before it, started on its terrible death-dealing mission down the fatal valley." Engineer Henry's Awful Race. Engineer Henry, of the second section of the ex- press train. No. 8, which was caught at Conemaugh, tells a thrilling story. His train was caught in the midst of the wave and were the only cars that were not destroyed. " 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 fo^'mer belief To see that im- mense 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 JoliPGtown about 10.15 in the morning. We arrived tnere safely, and were told to follow the first section. When we arrived at Conemaugh the first sec- tion and the mail were there. Washouts further up the mountain prevented our going, so we could do nothing but sit around and discuss the situation. The creek at Conemaugh was swollen high, almost over- flowing. The heavens werr pouring rain, but this did THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 199 not prevent nearly all the inhabitants of the town from gathering along its banks. They watched The Waters Go Dashliifir by and wondered whether the creek could 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 some- thing 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 swelled 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 3 o'cluck Friday afternoon I went into the train despatcher'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 con- tinued whistling had made every one feel that some- thing serious was going to happen. In a few mo- ments I could hear a train rattling down the mountain. About five hundred yards above Conemaugh the tracks make a slight cui-ve and we could not see be- yond this. The suspense was something awful. We did not know what was coming, but no one could get 200 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR, '■''-I f:|}i 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 tram, as there was a dull, rumb- ling 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 tear- ing, came an engine and several gravel cars. The train appeared to be putting forth every effort to go /aster. Nearer it came, belching forth smoke and whistling long and loud. But The Most Terrible Siglit 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 be- fore 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 mean*: 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. *T 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 your- 2 R R w ^ at the owever. indering 1 to be 1, rumb- le train. t and it re burst rt stand nd tear- 's. The rt to go oke and surging h. Like effort to ever be- seemed It to do, d^s delay y rushed Most of l^ere safe, in. The In these rushed ve your- (201) I 202 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. :| < i I r I 4 !l selves ! ' 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 highlands. 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 dc'bris. 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 ofl", but crushed them 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 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 fifty persons had re- mained 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 oui 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 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 203 train was standing. This, of course, let the floods pass out. It was only 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 4 o'clock in the afternoon had reached Conemaugh fur- nace, 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 photo- graph. It was probably a picture of the drowned woman." Over the Bridge. Frank McDonald, a railroad conductor, says : '* I certainly think I saw 1,000 bodies go over the bridge. The first house that came down struck the bridge and at once took fire, and as fast as they came down they were consumed. I believe I am safe in saying I saw 1,000 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 I I 204 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 1.1)1 any less. They woud have floated a lltde 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. I saw fifteen to eighteen bodies go over the bridge. At the same time I offered a man twenty dollars to row me across the river, but could get no one to go, and I finally had to build a boat and get across that way." Nothinof seems to have withstood the merciless sweep of the mighty on-rush of pent-up Conemaugh. As for the houses of the town a thousand of them lie piled up in a smouldering mass to the right of Cone- mauofh bridofe. At the present moment, away down in its terrible depths, this mass of torn and twisted timbers and dead humanity is slowly burning, and the light curling smoke that rises as high almost as the mountain, and the sickeninor smell that comes from the centre of this fearful funeral pile tell that the unseen fire is feeding on other fuel than the rafters and roofs that orice shel- tered the population of Johnstown. A Ghastly Scene. The mind is filled with horror at the supreme deso- lation that pervades the whole scene. It is small wonder that the pen cannot in the hands of the most skillful even pretend to convey one-hundredth part of what is seen and heard every hour in the day in this fearful place. At the present moment firemen and others are out on that ghastly aggregation of wood- THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 205 m. work and human kind jammed against the unyielding mass of arched masonry. Round them curls the white smoke from the smould- ering interior of the heaped up houses of Johnstown. Every now and then the gleam of an axe and a group of stooping forms tell that another ghasdy find has been made, and a whisper goes round among the hundreds of watchers thpt other bodies are being bi'ought to light. How many hundreds or thousands there are who found death by fire at this awful spot will never be known, and the people are already giving up hopes of ever reaching the knowledge of how their loved and lost ones met their doom, whether in the fierce, angry embrace of tb'" waters of Conemaugh, or in the deadly grip of the fire tiend, who claimed the homes of Johns- town for his own above the fatal bridge. Every hour it becomes mere and more apparent that the exact number of lives lost will never be known. Up to the present time the disposition has been to un- der rather than overestimate the number of lives sacrificed. A Mother Rescued by Her Daughter. A daughter of John Duncan, superintendent of the Johnstown Street Car Company, had an awful strug- gle in rescuing her mother and baby sister. Mrs. Duncan and family had taken refuge on a roof, when a large log came floating down the river, striking the house with immense force, knocking Mrs. Duncan and daughter into the fast running river. Seeing what had 206 THE JOHNSTOWN HOP p OR. l« Ail'- happened, Alvanla, her fifteen-year-old daughter, leaped Into the water, and after a hard struggle landed both on the roof of the house. The members of the Cambria Club tell of their bat- tle for life in the following manner : They were about to sit down to diimer when they heard the crash, and knowing what had occurred they started for the attic just as the flood was upon them. When the members were assured of their safety they at once commenced saving others by grasping them as they floated by on tree tops, houses, etc. In this manner they saved seventy persons from death. The Clock Stopped at 5.20. One of the queerest sight in the centre of the town is a three-story brick Ksidence standing with one wall, the others having disappeared completely, leaving the floors supported by the partitions. In one of the up- per rooms can be seen a mantel with a lambrequin on it and a clock stopped at twenty minutes after five. In front of the clock is a lady's fan, though from the marks on the wall-paper the water has been over all these things. In the upper part of the town, where the back water from the flood went into the valley with diminished force, there are many strange scenes. There the houses were toppled over one after another in a row, and left where they lay. One of them was turned completely over and stands with its roof on the foun- dations of another house and Its base in the air. The owner came back, and getting into his house through THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 207 the windows walked about on his celling. Out of this house a woman and her two children escaped safely and were but little hurt, although they were stood on their heads in the whirl. Every house has its own story. From one a woman shut up in her garret es- caped by chopping a hole in the roof. From another a Hungarian named Grevlns leaped to the shore as it went whirling past and fell twenty-five feet upon a pile of metal and escaped with a broken leg. Another is said to have come ail the way from very near the start of the flood and to have circled around with the back water and finally landed on the flats at the city site, where it is still pointed out r.'tM ■^ 4 ':! F) i t CHAPTER XI. New Tales of Horror. The accounts contained in the foregoing chapters bring this appalling story of death down to June 4th. We continue the narrative as given from day to day by eye-witnesses, as this is the only method by which a full and accurate description of Johnstown's unspeakable horror can be obtained. On the morning of June 5th one of the leading journals contained the following announcements, printed in large type, and preceding its vivid account of the terrible situation at Johnstown. Death, ruin, plague ! Threatened outbreak of dis- ease in the fate stricken valley. Awful effluvia from corpses ! Swift and decisive means must be taken to clear away the masses of putrefying matter that un- derlie the wreck of what was once a town. Proposed use of expk)sives. Crowds of refugees are already attacked by pneumonia and the germs of typhus pervade both air and water. Victims yet unnum- bered. Dreadful discoveries hourly made ! Heaps of the drowned, the mangled and the burned are found in pockets between rocks and under packed accumulations of sand ! Pennsylvania regiments ordered to the scene to keep ward over an afflicted and heart-broken people. Blame where it belongs, (208) THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 20?) The cars of the inhabitants were dulled to fear by warnings many times repeated — forty-two years ago the dam broke — vivid stones of witnesses of the great tragedy — the owners of the lake must bear a gigantic burden of remorse — sufferings of survivors ! These v/ere the terrible headings in a single issue of a newspaper. A registry of the living who were residents of Johns- town prior to the flood was begun to-day. Out of a total population of 39. 400 the names of only 10,600 have been recorded. This may give an approximate idea of the number of those who lost their lives. Gaunt Menace of Pestilence. The most important near fact of to-day is the increasing danger of pestilence. As the work of disenofacfinof the bodies of the dead progresses the horrible peril becomes more and more apparent. There is need of the speediest possible measures to offset the gravity of the sanitary situa- tion. From every part of the stricken valley the same cry of alarm arises, for at every point where the dead are being discovered, as the waters continue to abate, the same peril exists. The use of explosives, especially dynamite, has been discussed. There is some opposition to it, but it may yet be resorted to. The great mass of ruins at the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge, which is still smoking and smouldering, is a ghastly mine of human flesh and bones in all sorts of hideous shapes, and unless 14 /^; I. i Jl ■?! li 210 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. desperate means are employed, cannot be cleared away in weclis to come. Still, vigorous work in that direction is being per- READING THE HORRIBLE NEWS. formed, and explosives will be used m a limited degree to further it. This great work may be divided into two parts — the clearing away of the mass of debris lodged against the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge, and the ex- THE JOMXSTOVVN HORROR. 211 :leared ig per- d degree into two s lodged the ex- amination and removal of the many wrecked buildings which mark the site of Johnstown. Order Out of Chaos. Slowly something lil c order is bei^inning to appear in the chaos of destruction. Kw )ugh mihtia came to- day to put the town under strict martial law. P'our hundred men of the Fourteenth regiment, of Pitts- burgh, are here. There will be no more tramping over the ruins by ungoverned mobs. There will be no more fears ol rioting. The supplies of food are constantly growing. T!ie much needed money is beginning to come i'l, though not at all needless relief committees are be'^innintr to go out. Better quarters for the sufferers are being provided. Be:ter arrangements for systematic relief are made. Something of the deep gloom has been dispelled, though Johnstown is still the saddest spot on earth. The systematic attempt to clear up the ruins at the gorge and get out the bodies imprisoned there began to-day. The expectations of ghastly discoveries were more than realized. Scores of burned and mangled bodies were removed. Freaks of the Torrent. ^ The great waste where the city stood looked a little different to-day. Some attempt w-as made to clear up the rubbish, and fires were burning in a dozen places to get rid of it. Tents for the soldiers and some of the sufferers were put up in the smooth stretch of sand where a great, five story hardware store used to 212 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. F. I stand. The dead animals that were here and there in the debris were removed, to the benefit of the towns- people's health. Curious things come to light where the rubbish was cleared away. 1 he solid cobblestone pavement had been scooped up by the force of the water and in some places swept so far away that there was not a sign of i^ Behind a house that was resting on one corner was found a wickerwork baby carriage full of mud, but not injured or scratched in the least nor yet buried in the mud, but looking as if it had been rolled there and left. Very close to it was a piece of railroad iron that must have been carried half a mile, bent as if it were but common wire. Exactly on the site of a large grocery store was a box of soap and a bundle of clothespins, while of all the brick and stone, of which the store was built, and all the heavy furniture it con- tained there was not the sliijhtest trace. Many articles of wearing apparel w-ere found here, but no bodies could be discovered in the whole stretch of the plain, from which it is inferred that most of the deaths occurred at the gorge or else the flood swept them far away. Keminclcrs of a Broken Home. One of the few buildings that are left in this part of town is the fine house of Mr. Geranheiser, of the Cam- bria Iron Company. It presents a queer spectacle — • that is common here but has not often been seen be- fore. The flood reached almost to the second floor and was strong enough to cut away about half the THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 2ia house, leaving the rest standing. The whole intenor ol the plate can be seen just as the frightened inmates left it. The carpets are torn up from the first floor, but the pictures are still hanging a . lui walls and an open piano stands against the n.ii lull of mud; a Brussels carpet being halfway outct the second story on the side where the wreck was and showing e.xactly how hioh the water came. There was a centre table in die room and an open book on it. Chairs stood about the room and the pictures were on the walls, and half of the room was gone miles away. Seven Acres of Wreckaj?c. Just below the bare plain where the business block of Johnstown stood, and above the stone arch bridge on which die Pennsylvania Railroad crossed tlie river, are seven acres of the wreckage of the ilood. The horrors that have been enacted in that spot, the horrors that are seen there every hour, who can attempt to describe ? Under and amid that mass of conirlomerate rubbish are i.he remains of at least one thousand persons who died the most iVigluful of deaths. Th.is is the place where the Hrc broke out within twenty minutes after the flood. It li.is buniccl ever since.- The stone arch bridge acted as a d am to the flood, and five tov/ns were crushinLf each other af^ainst o o it. A thousand h.ouses came down on the crreat wave cf water, and were held there a solid mass in tlie jaws of a Cyclopean vise. A kitchen stove upset. The m.ass took fire. A I r^ 214 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 4H' m tf-ri thousp.id people were imprisoned in these houses. A thousand more were on the roofs. For most of them there was no escape. The fire swept on from hoyse to house. The prisoners saw it coming and shrieked and screamed widi terror, and ran up and down their narrow quarters in an agony of fear. Sights to Freeze Their Bloml. Thousands of people stood upon the river bank and saw and heard it all and still were powerless to help. They saw people kneeling in the flames and praying. They saw families gathered together with their arms arov ad each other and waiting for death. They saw people going mad and tearing their hair and laughing. They saw men plunge into the narrow crevices be- tween the houses and seek death in the water rather than wait its coming in the flames. Some saw their friends and some their wives and children perishing before them, and some in the awful agony of the hour went mad themselves and ran shrieking to the hillsides, and stronger men laid down on the ground and wept. All that night and all the next day, and far into the morning of Monday, these dreadful shrieks re- sounded from that place of doom. The fire burned on, aided by tlie fire underneath, added to by fresh fuel coming down the river. All that time the people. stood helpless on the bank and heard those heartrending sounds. What could they do? They could not fight the fire. Every fire engine in the town lay in that mass of rubbish smashed to bits. For hours they had to wait until they could get telegraph word to surround* THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 215 ing towns, 4nd hours more until the fire engines ar- rived at noon on Monday. Wrecks ot Five Iron Bridgfcs. The shrieks ceased early in the morning. Men had began to search the ruins and had taken out the few that still lived. The fire engines began to play on the still smouldering fire. Other workmen began to remove the bodies. The fire had swept over the whole mass from shore to shore and burned it to the water. A great field of crushed and charred timbers was all that was left. The flood had gorged this in so tightly that it made a solid bridge above the water. A tremendous, irresistible force had ground and churned and macerated the debris until it was a con- fused, solid, almost welded, conglomerate, stretching from shore to shore, jammed high up against the stone bridge and extending up the river a quarter of a mile, perhaps half as wide. In this tangled heap and crush of matter were the twisted wrecks of five iron bridges, smashed locomotives, splintered dwell- ings and all their contents ; human beings and domes- tic animals, hay and factory machinery ; the rich con- tents of stores and brick walls ground to powder — all the products of human industry, all the elements of human interests, twisted, turned, broken in a mighty mill and all thrown together. A Sickening' Spectacle. I walked over this extraordinary mass this morning and saw the fragments of thousands of articles. In one place the roofs of forty frame houses were packed in to- M ■ . • llhi, i 216 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. geiher 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 streaminor out of it. From under the trunk men were lifting the body of its owner, perhaps, so burned, so horribly mutilated, so torn from limb to limb, that even the workmen, who have seen so many of tlieoG frightful sights that they have begun to get used to them, turned away sick at heart. I saw in one place a wrecked grocery store — bins of coffee and tea, Hour, spices and nuts, parts of the counter and safe mino;led toorether. Near it was the pantry of the house, siill partly intact, the plates and saucers regularly piled up, a waiter and a teapot, but not a siifn of the woodwork, not a recoijnizable outline of a house. In another |>iace a halter, with a prrt of a horse's head tied to a bit c^f a manger, and a mass of hay and straw about, but no other signs of the stable in which the horse was burned. Two cindered towels, a cake of soap in a dish, and a bit of carpet were taken to indicate the location of a hotel. I saw a child's skull in a bed of ashes, but no sign of a body. Kccojjiiized by Frag-uicnts. In another place was a human foot and crumbline indications of a boot, but no signs of a body. A ha;, rick, half ashes, stood near the centre of the gorge. Workmen who du^^ about it to-day found a chicken coop, and in it two chickens, not only aiive but cluck- THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 217 en so many ing happily when they were released. A woman's hat, half burned ; a reticule, with a part of a hand still clinging to it ; two shoes and part of a dress told the story of one unfortunate's deadi. Close at hand a commercial traveller had perished. There was his broken vali?'?, still full of samples, fragments of his shoes and some pieces of his clodiing. 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 iden- tification, except by guesswork, or th( 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 widi one j)icture 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. Dead Bodies Caressed. Poor old John Jordan, of Conemaugh ! Many a tear ran over swarthy cheeks for him to-day. All his family, his wife and children, had been swei)t from his sight in the flood. He wandered over the gorge yesterday looking for them, and last night the police could not bring him away. At daylight he found his wife's sewing machine and called the workmen to help him. P'irst tluy found a little boy's jacket that he i 218 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 1:1: fl recognized and then they came upon the rest of them all buried together, the mother's burned arms still clinging to the little children. Then the white headed old man sat down in the ashes and caressed the dead bodies and talked to them just as if they were alive until some one came and led him quietly away. With- out a protest he went to the shore and sat down on a rock and talked to hims If, and then got up and dis- appeared on the hills. To Blow Up the Gorge. Was this the only such scene the day saw ? There were scores like it. People worked in ruins all day to find their relatives and then went home with horrible uncertainty. People found what they were looking for and fainted at the sight. People looked and cried aloud and came and stood on the banks all day, afraid to look and still afraid to go away. The burned bodies are not the only ones in the gorge. Under the timbers and held down in the water there must be hundreds that escaped the fire, but were drowned. To get at these the gorge is to be blown up with dynamite. The sanitary reasons for such a step are becoming hourly more apparent. It is the belief of the physicians that a pestilence will be added to the other horrors of the place if such a thing is not done. All day the bodies have been brought to shore. Those that were not recognized were carried on stretchers to the Morgue. One hundred and twenty of the identified bodies were carried over the bridge in one procession. n THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 219 ^h'Hk Relief work for the suffering goes on at the head- quarters of the Relief Committee on that little, muddy, rubbish-filled street which escaped destruction at the edge of the flood. The building is a wretched shanty, once a Hungar- ian boarding-house, and a long line of miserable women stretches out in front of it ail day waiting for relief. They are the unfortunate who have lost every- thing in the flood. Quarters for five thousand of these people are pro- vided in tents on the hillside. For provisions they are dependent on the charity of the country. Bread and meat are served out to them on the committee's order. They are the most mournful and pitiable sight There was not one in the line who had not lost some one dear to her. Most of them were the wives of merchants or laborers who went down in the disaster. They were the sole survivors of their families. Very few had any more clothes than they wore when their houses were washed aw^iy. They stood there for hours in the rain yesterday without any protection^ soaked with the drizzle, i quaild and utterly forlorn — a sight to move a heart of stone. Silent Sufferers. They did not talk to one another as women gener- ally do even when they are not acquainted. They got no words of sympathy fi'om any one, and they gave none. Not a word was spoken along the whole line. They simply stood and waited. In trutlx there is nothing about the survivors of the disaster that ■'f,? ¥'-■■ : is 220 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. lip-: !" W ^i ii strikes one so forcibly as their evident inability to comprehend their misfortune and the absence of sym- pathetic expressions among" them. It is not because they are naturally stolid, but tlie whole thing is so vast and bears upon them so heavily tliey cannot grasp it. People in California know much more about the disaster than any resident of Johnstown knows ; more information about it can be gotten from towns-people forty miles away than from those who saw it. The people here are not at all lacking in sympathy or kindliness of heart, but what words of sympathy would have any meaning in such a tremendous catas- trophe ? Every person of Johnstown has lost a rela- tive or a friend, and so has every other resident he meets. They seem to see instinctively that con- dolence would be meaningless. Famine Happily Averted. On the west side of the lower town one or two little streets are left from the flood. They are crowded all the time with the survivors. As I have gone among them I have heard nothing but such conversations this, which is literally reproduced : — " Hello, Will ! Where's Jim?" "He's lost." **Isdiatso! Goodby." Another was : — "Good morning, Mr. Holden ; did you sav Holden?" " No ; she went with the house boys, didn't you?" 1 (» Q3 Mrr. You lost your tv/o THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 221 )u save Mrs. "Yes. Good morning." Two women met on the narrow rope bridge which spans the creek. As they passed one said: — *' How abo Jt Aunt Mary ? " "Oh, she's lost ; so is Cousin Hattie." It gives an outside Hstener a strange sensation to hear people talk thus with about as little emotion as they would talk about the weather. But the people of Johnstown had so much to do with death that they think about nothing else. I will undertake to say that half the people have not the slightest idea what day of the week or month this is. A Rope Bridge of Sigrlis. To get from one part of the town to another it is necessary to cross the river or creek which is now flowin^r over the sites of business blocks. Of course every vestige of a bridge was swept far away, and to take their places two ropes have been hung from high timbers built upon the sandy island that was the city's site. On these ropes narrow boards are tied. The whole structure is not more than four feet wide, and it hangs trembling over the water in a way that makes nervous people shudder. Over this frail thing hun- dreds of people crowd every hour, and why there has not been another disaster is something no one can un- derstand. The river is rising steadily, and all the afternoon the middle of the bridge sagged down into the water, but the people kept on struggling across. Many of them carried coffins containing bodies from the Morgue. -If* 222 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. •1 I 1! 1 ' r There are no express wagons, no hearses — scarcely any vehicles of any kind in the town — and all the coffins have to be carried on the shoulders of the men. Coffins are a dreadfully common sight. It is im- possible to move a dozen steps in any direction without meeting one or very likely a procession of of them. One hundred of them were piled up in front cf the Morgue this morning. Twice as many more were on the platform of the Pennsylvania station. Carloads of coffins were beincr unloaded from freiirht cars below town and carried along the roads. Almost every house has a coffin in it. Every boat that crosses the river carries cnc, and rows of them stood by the bank to receive the bodies. McToAy a Mud Plain. There is a narrow ftinore of houses on each side of the empty plain, which escaped because they were built on higher ground. Fine brick blocks and paved streets filled the business part of the town, which was about a mile long and half a mile wide. Where these blocks stood mud is in some places six feet deep. Over and through it all is scattered an extraordinary collection of rubbish — boilers, car wheels, fragments of locomotives, household furniture, dead animals; clothing, sewing machines, goods from stores, safes, passenger and street cars, some half buried in the sand, some all exposed, helter-skelter. It is simply impossible to realize the tremendous force exercised by the flood, though the imagination is assisted by the presence of heavy iron beams twisted i^h i THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 223 e tremendous and bent, railroad locomotives swept miles away, rails torn up, the rocks and banks slashed away, and brick walls carried away, leaving no traces of their founda- tions. The few stone houses that resisted the shock were completely stripped of all their contents and filled four feet deep with sand and powdered debris. A Glimpse from a Window. As I write this, seated within a curious circular affair, which was once a mould for sewer pipe, are two oper- ators busy w'th clicking instruments. The floor is a foot deep with clay. There are no doors. There are no windows which boast of glass or covering of any kind. The lookout embraces the bulk of the devas- tated districts. Just below the windows are the steep river banks, covered with a miscellaneous mass thrown up by the flood. The big stone bridge is crowded with freight cars loaded with material for repairing the structure and with people who are eager to see some- thing horrible. Tliat Funeral Pyre. The further half of the bridge which was swept away has been replaced by a trembling wooden affair, wide eiiough only for two persons to walk abreast. To the left of the bridge and across the river are the great brick mills of the Cambria Iron and Steel Com- pany, crushed and torn out of a semblance to work- shops. Just in front of the office is what has been called the *' funeral pyre," and which threatens to be- come a veritable breeding spot of pestilence. Just before me a group of red-capped firemen are 221 THK JOHNSTOWN HORROR. i I I III ■i;' m i directing" a stream of water upon sucli portions of the mass as can be .cnchcJ from the shore. WJi "e Death AVas Busiest. Over to the right, at the edge of a muddy lagoon which marks the Hmit of the le/clHn'^ rush of the mad torrent, there are dozens and dozens of buildings lean- ing against each other in the oddest sort of jumble. The spectacle would be ludicrous if it were not so aw- fully suggestive of the tragic fate of the inmates. Be- hind this border land are the reirions where death was wofully busy. In some streets a mile from any rail- road track locomotives and cars are scattered amon? the smouldering ruins. In the river the rescuers are busy, and so are the Hungarians and native born thieves. Men take queer souvenirs away sometimes. One came up the bank a short time ago with a skull and two leg bones, all blackened and burned by the fire. There is, of course, no business done, and those who have been spared have little to do save watch for a new phase of the greatest tragedy of the kind in modern history. On Prospect Mill is a town of tents where the homeless are housed and fed, and where also a formidable city of the dead has been just pre- pared. Such are some of the scenes visible from the window. The Skeleton of Its Former Self. The water has receded in the niofht almost as rapidly as it came, and behind it remains the sorriest sight imaginable. The dove that has come has no THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 225 (Ttlons of the jTreen leaf n( promise, for its wings are draped vith th(* hue of mourning and desolation. There now lies the ereat skeleton of dead lohnstown. The ■.. m I'if: Relief Corps of the Johnstown sufferers to furnish no further provisions to the Hun^^arians and Poles of this city and vicinity excejjt in payment of services ren dered by them for the reHef of their unfortunate neighbors. " Jicsohed, Further, that in case of their refusal to render such service they be driven from the doors of the relief trains and warned to vacate the premises." Hospitals and Morijiics. Those who doubt that many thousands lost their lives in this disaster have not visited the morgues. There are three of these dreadful places crowded so full of the unidentified dead that there is scarcely room to move between the bodies. To the largest morgue, which I visited this morning, one hundred and sixty bodies have been brought for identification. When it is remembered that most of the bodies were swept below the limits of Johnstown, that many more found here have been identified at once by their friends and that it is certain that many bodies were consumed en- tirely in the fire at the gorge, the fact gives some idea of the extent of the calamity. The largest morgue is at the Fourth ward school- house, a two-story brick building which stands just at the edge of the high mark of the flood. The bodies were laid across the school children's desks until they got to be so numerous that there was not room (or them, excepting on the floor. Soldiers with crossed bayonets keep out the crowd of curious people who have morbid appetites to gratify. None of these THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 2aa people are of Johnstown. People of Johnstown do not have time to come to look for friends, and they give the morgue a wide berth. Those who do come have that dazed, miserable look that has fallen to all the residents of the unhappy town. They walk through slowly and look at the bodies and go away looking no sadder nor any less perplexed than when they came in. One of the doctors in charge at the morgue told me that many of these people had come in and looked at the bodies of their own fathers and brothers and gone away without recognizing them, though not at all disfigured. * That's Jim." In some instances it had been necessary for other persons, who knew the people, to point out the dead to the living and assure them positively of the iden- tification before they could be aroused. I saw a rail- road laborer who had come in to look for a friend. H^' walked up and down the aisles like a man in a trance. He looked at the bodies, and took no appar- ent interest in any of them. At last he stopped before one of them which he had passed twice before, muttered, ** That's Jim," and went out just as he had come in. Two other identifications I saw during the hour I was there were just like this. There was no shedding of tears nor other showing of emotion. Ihey gazed upon the features of their dead as if they were totally unable to comprehend it all, and reported their identification to the attendants and watched th« body as it was put into a coffin and went away. 236 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. ■}f ■ i m ^|:ri'. LA Many came to look for their loved ones, but I did not see one show more grief or realization of the dreadful character of their errand than this. Arrangements with the morgues are complete and efficient. The bodies are properly prepared and embalmed and a description of the clothing is placed upon each. Hospital Arrangements. The same praise cannot be given the hospital ar- ran^'-cments. The only hospital is a small wooden church, In which apartments have been roughly impro- vised, with blankets for partitions. Only twenty pa- tients can be cared for here, and the list of wounded is more than two hundred. The rest have been taken to the private houses that were not over-crowded with the homeless survivors, to farmers in the coun- try and to outlying towns. Two have died. It did not occur to any one until lately to get any nurses from other places to take care of the patients, and even now most of the nurses are Johnstown people who have lost relatives and have their own cares. These persons sought out the hospital and volunteered for the work. A Procession of Coffins. A sight most painful to behold was presented to view about noon to-day, when a procession of fifty unidentified coffined bodies started up the hill above the railroad to be buried in the improvised cemeler)' there. Not a relation, not a mourner was present. In fact, it is doubtful if these dead have any surviving relatives. Ih THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 237 The different graveyards are now so crowded that it will take several days to bury all the bodies that have been deposited in them. This was the day apj.. inted by the Citizens* Committee for burying all the uniden- tified dead that have been laying in the different morgues since Sunday morning, and about three hun- dred bodies were taken to the cemeteries to-day. It was not an unsual sight to see two or three cofims going along, one after another. It is impossible to secure wagons or conveyan :s of any kind, conse- (jiiendy all funeral processions a ' on foot. Several yellow flags were noticed sticking up from the black wreckage above the >tone bridge. This was a new plan adopted by the ^anitary corps to indicate at what points bodies had been located. As it grows dark the flags are still up, and another day will dawn upon the imprisoned remains. People who had lost friends, and supposed they had drifted into this fatal place, peered down into the charred mass in a vain en- deavor to recognize beloved features. Unrecognizable Victims of Fire. There are now nearly two thousand men employed in different parts of the valley clearing up the ruins and prosecuting diligent search for the undiscovered dead, and bodies are discovered with undiminished fre- quency. It becomes hourly more and more apparent that not a single vestige will ever be recognized of hundreds that were roasted in the flames above the bridge. A party of searchers have just unearthed a charred 238 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. ■i ' , n f I -* and unsightly mass from the smouldering debris. The leader of the gang pronounced the remains to Vjc a blackened leg, and it re(]uired the authoritative verdict of a physician to demonstrate that the ghastly dis covery was the charred remains of a human being. Onlv the trunk remained, and that was roasted beyond all semblance to flesh. Five minutes' search revealed fragments of a skull that at once disintegrated of its own weight when exposed to air, no single piece being larger than a half dollar, and the whole resembling; the remnants of shattered charcoal. Within the last hour a half dozen discoveries in no way less horrifying than this ghastly find have been made by searchers as they rake with sticks and hooks in the smouldering ruins. So difficult is It at times to determine whether the remains are those of human beings that it is apparent that hundreds must be burned to ashes. The number that have found a last resting place beneath these ruins can at the best never be more than approximated. A Vast Cliarnel House. Every moment now the body of some poor victim is taken from the debris, and the town, or rather the remnants of it, is one vast charnel house. The scenes at the extemporized morgue are beyond powers of description in their ghastliness, while the moans and groans of the suffering survivors, tossing in agony, with bruised and mangled bodies, or screaming in a delirium of fever as they issue from the numen^us temporary hospitals, make even the stoutest henrted ^. THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 239 ng debris. The remains to Vjc a oritative verdict the ghastly dis a human beinor. roasted beycml search revealed ntegrated of its ngle piece being lole resembllnt" quail with terror. Nearly two thousand bodies have already been recovered, and as the work of examining the wreckage progresses the conviction grows that the magnitude of the calamity has not yet been approx- imated. The Pile of Debris Still Biiniiiij;. The debris wedged against the big Pennsylvania Railroad stone bridge is still burning, and the efforts of the firemen to quench or stay the progress of the flames are as futile as were those of Gulliver's Lilli- putian firemen. The mass, which unquestionably forms a funeral pyre for thousands of victims who lie buried beneath it, is likely to burn for weeks to come. The flames are not active, but burn away in a sullen, determined fashion. There are twenty-six firemen here now — all level- headed fellows — who keep their unwieldy and almost exhausted forces under masterful control. Although they were scattered all over the waste places to-day, the heavy work was done in the Point district, where a couple hundred m.nsions lie in solid heaps of brick, stone and timbers. One Corpse Every Five Minutes, Here the labors of the searchers were rewarded by tlie discovery of a corpse about every five minutes. As a general thing the bodies were mangled and unre- cognizable unless by marks or letters on their persons. In every case decomposition has set in and the work of the searchers is becoming one that will test their stomachs as well as their hearts. Wherever one turns 240 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. .' i Pitttburghers of prominence are encountered. They are busy, ^letermined men, rendering valuable ser- vice. Chief Evans, of the Pitsburgh F'ire Department, was hustling around with a force of twenty-four more fire- men, just brought up to relieve those who have been working so heroically since Saturday. Morris M. Mead, superintendent of the Bureau of Electricity, headed a force of sixteen sanitary inspectors from Pittsburgh, who are doing great work among the dead. IIow Bodies are Treated. There are six improvised morgues now in Johns- town. They are in churches and schoolhouses, ihe largest one being in the Fourth Ward schoolhouse, where planks have been laid over the tops of desks, on which the remains are placed. A corpse is dug from the bank. It is covered with mud. It is taken to the anteroom of the school, where it is placed iin* der a hydrant and the muck and slime washed off. With the slash of a knife the clothes are ripped open and an attendant searches the pockets for valuables or papers that would lead to identification. Four menj lift the corpse on a rude table, and there it is thor- ougiily washed and an embalming fluid injected in , ^el arm. With other grim bodies the corpse lies in a larger room until it is identified or becomes offensive. In the latter case it is hurried to the large grave, a grave that w^iii hereafter have a monument over itj bearing the inscription "Unknown Dead.'* ' lUE iohnstown HOKROK. 241 The number of the hitter is growing hourly, be- cause pestilence stalks in Johnstown, and the bloated, disfigured masses of llc^sh cannot be held much longer. Lcvc'lU'd by Dt'tUli. Bodies of stalwart workmen lie beside the remains .t' refmed ladies, many of whom are still decked with c-stly earrings and have jewels glittering on the ii.igers. Rich And poor throng these quarters and gaze with awe-struck faces at the masses of mutila- tions in the hope of recognizing a missing one, so as to accord the body a decent burial. Fmin Death's Onpiii^ Jaws. We eive here the awful narrative of Georije Irwin's experience. Irwin is a resident of Hillside, Westmore- land county, and was discovered in a dying condition in a clump of bushes just above the tracks of the Penn- sylvania Railroad, about a mile below Johnstown. When stretched upon two railroad ties near the track his tongue protruded from his mouth and he gasped as if death was at hand, Widi the assistance of brandy and other stimulants he was in a dei^ree revived. lie tlien told the followin<{ storv : '• I was visiting friends in Johnstown on bViday .vhen the flood came up. We were submerged with ut a moment's warning. I was taken from the win- dow of the house in which I was then a prisoner by Mr. Hay, the druggist at Johnstown, but lost niy foot- ing and was not rescued. I clung to a r ;.w log until [1 struck the works of the Cambria Ir<>r Company, I when I caught on the roof of the building. I re- 16 242 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 'I Pi !' "« mained there for nearly an hour, when I was knocked again from my position by a piece of a raft. I floated on top of this until I got clown here and I stuck in an apple tree. Preferred Death to Such Sights. " I saw and heard a number of other unfortunate victims when swept by me appealing for some one to save them. One woman and two children were float- ing along in apparent safety ; then they struck the corner of a building and all went down together. " I would rather have died than have been com- pelled to witness that sight. " I have not had a bit to eat since Friday night, but I don't feel hungry. I am afraid my stomach is gone and I am about done for." He was taken to a hospital by several soldiers and railroad men who rescued him. A Young Lady's Experiences. Miss Sue Caddick, of Indiana, who was stopping at the Brunswick Hotel, on Washington street, and was rescued late Friday evening, returned home to-day. She said she had a premonition of danger all day and had tried to get Mrs. Mu»'phy to take her children and leave the house, but the lady had laughed at her fears and partially dissipated them. Miss Caddick was standing ^.t the head of the second flight of stairs when the flood burst upon the house. She screamed to the Murphys — father, mother and seven children — to save themselves. She ran up stairs and got into a higher room, in which the THE JOHNSTOWN HUKKOK. 243 il soldiers and little children, the oldest of whom was fourteen years, also ran. The mother and father were caught and whirled into the Hood and drowned in an instant. The waters came up and the children clung to the youag lady, who saw that she must save herself, and she was compelled to push the little ones aside and cling to pieces of the building, which by this time had collapsed and was disintegrating. All of the children were drowned save the oldest boy, who caught a tree and was taken out almost unhurt near Blairsville. Miss Caddick clung to her fraction of the building, which was pushed into the water out of the swirl, and in an hour she was taken out safe. She said her agony in having to cut away from the children was greater than her f(;ar after she got into the water. An Old Lady's Great Peril. Mrs. Ramsey, mother of William Ramsey and aunt of Lawyer Cassidy, of Pittsburgh, was alone in her house when the flood came. She ran to the third story, and although the house was twisted off its foundation, it remained intact, and the old lady was rescued after being tossed about for twenty-four hours. James Hines, Jr., of Indian:- one of the survivors, to day said that he and twelve of the other guests took refuge on the top of the Merchants' Hotel. They were swept off and were carried a mile down the stream, then thrown on the shore. One of the party, James Ziegler, he said, was drowned while trying to get to the top of the building. One hundred and seventy-five of the corpses .'Il 244 THE JCJIINSTOWN HORROR. brought to Nineveli by the tlood were buried this afternoon and lo njcrht on the crest of a hill behind the town. Three trenche.^ were (hio- two hundred ieet long, seven feet wide ajid four feet deep. The coffins were packed in very much as grocers' boxes are stored in a warehouse. Of the two hundred bodies picked up in the fields after the waters subsided i 17 were un- identified and were buried marked "Unknown.' Twenty-five were shipped to relatives at outside points. In many cases friends of those who were recognized were unable to do anything to prevent their consign- ment to the trenches. /Mtogether twenty-seven were identified to-day. The bodies as fast as they were found were taken to the storehouse of Theodore F. Nimawaker, the station agent here, and laid out on boards. It was imj)ossible on account of their condi- tion to keep them any longer. The County Commis- sioners bought an acie of ground for ^roo, out of which they made a cemetery. By LKH'oniotive lleadliglitH. It was sad to see the coffins going up the steep hill on farm wagons, two or three on each wagon. I\u tender mourners followed the mud-covered hearses. Enough laboi sat on each load to handle it when it reached it>: dc^stination. The Commissioners of Cumberland county have certainly behaved very handsomely. The coflins ordered were of the best. Some economical citizens suggested that they f>uy an acre of marsh land by the river, which could } -^ had for a few dollars, but tiiey declared duit, ! THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 246 the remains should be placed in dr)- ground. The life- less clay reposes now far out of the reach of the deadly waters which go suddenly down the Cone:r.;iugh Val- ley. It is a pretty spot, this cemetery, and one that a poet would choose for a resting place. Mountains well wooded are on every hand ; no black factory smoke defaces the sky line. Two locomotive headlights shed iheir rays (jver the cemetery to-night and gave enougii light for the men to work by. The)' ra[>idly shoveled in the dirt. No priests were there to ccmsecrate the ground or say a prayer over the told limbs of the unknown. Upon the coffins I noticed such inscriptions as these : " No. 6i. unknown girl, aged eight years, supposed to be Sarah Windser." "No. 72, unknown man, black hair, aged about thirty-five years, smooth face." Some of the bodies were more specifically described as "fat," "lean," and to one I saw the term *Tusty" applied. iif ,-■ -< CHAPTER XII. Patlnetio Scenes. Some of the really pathetic scenes of the flood are just coming to the public ear. John Henderson, his wife, his three children, and the mother of Mrs. Hen- derson remained in their house until they were carried out by the flood, when they succeeded in getting upon some drift. Mr. Henderson took the babe from his wife, but the little thing soon succumbed to the cold and the child died in its father's arms. He clung to it until it grew cold and stiff and then, kissing it, let it drop into the water. His mother-in-law, an aged lady, was almost as fragile as the babe, and in a few minutes Mr. Henderson, who had managed to get near to the board upon which she was floating saw that she, too, was dying. He did what litde he could to help her, but the cold and the shock combined were too much. Assuring himself that the old lady was dead, Mr. Hen- derson turned his attention to his own safety and allowed the body to float down the stream. In the meantime Mrs. Henderson, who had become separated from her husband, had continued to keep her other two children for some time, but finally a great wave dashed them from her arms and out of her sight. They were clinging to some driftwood, how- ever, and providentially were driven into the very arnia (246) THK JOHNSTOWN HORROR. a4T of theJf* iather, who i^as some dictance c^ wYn the sueam quite unconscious of the proximity of his lo\ed ones. Another whirl of the flood and all were cArivcn over into some eddying water in Stony Creek and carried by backing water to Kernville, where all vv re rescued. Mrs. Henderson had nearly the same ex- perience. Dr. Holland** Awful Plunge. Dr. Holland, a physician who lived on Vine street, saw both of his children drown before his eyes, but they were not washed out of the building. He took both of them in his arms and bore them to the roof, caring nothing for the moment for the rising water. Finally composing himself, he kissed them both and watched them float away. His father arrived here to-day to assist his son and take home with him the bodies of the children, which have been recovered. Dr. Holland, after the death of his children, was carried out Into the flood and finally to a buil.'ing, in the window of which a man was standlnr^ Thj doctor held up his hands; the man seized i .v:;m and dex- trously slipping a valuable ring from the hnger of one hand, brutally threw him out into the curi-^^ht again. The physician was saved, however, and has been look- ing for the thief and would-be murderer ever since. Crushed in Mis Own House. David Dixon, an engineer in the employ of the Cambria Iron Works, was with his family in his house on Cinder Street, when the flood struck the city. Ths shock overturned his house against that of his nei^^i- " '^ :^'''. 248 TIIE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. ...I bor, Evans, and he, with his infant daughter, Edith, was pinned between the houses as a result of tlie up- turning. Both houses were carried down against the viaduct of the Pennsylvania Railroad and there, in sight of his wife and children, excepting a 15-ycar-old lad, he was drowned, the water rising and smothering hin because of his inability to get from between the buildings. His wife was badly crushed and it is thought will be an invalid the remaind V :1>^ :\ \ ^^^ '^(S"^ ^ > ^ <^ y "Water. " Iligher and higher rose the Hood, while our house was almost knocked from its founclations by the ever- increasing mountain of debris floating along. At last the bridge at Woodvalc, which had given way a short time before, struck the house and split it asunder, as a knife might have split a piece of paper. "The force of the shock carried us out upon the debris, and we floated around upon it for hours, fin- ally landing near the bridge. When we looked about for Jennie (here the old man broke down and sobbed bitterly) she was nowhere to be seen. She had obeyed the Master's summons." A Miraculous Kscape. The three little girls, to whom I have referred, were the children of Austin Lountz, a plasterer, living back of Water street. They were as happy as happy could be and cut up in childish fashion all the way down. Their good spirits were easily accounted for when it was learned that father, mother, children and all had a miraculous escape, when it looked as if all would be lost. The entire family floated about for hours on the roof of a house, finally landing high upon the hillside. THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 205 Elmer G. Speck, travelings lesmnn of Pittsbiircrh, was at the Merchants' Hotel when the flood occurred, having left the Hurlburt I louse but a few hours before. He said : "With a number of others I got from th- hotel to the hill in a wacjon. The sii^ht from our eminence was one that I shall never forget — that I can never fully describe. The whole world appeared to be topsy-turvy and at the mercy of an angry and destroying demon of the elements. People were floating about on house- tops and in wagons, and hundreds were clinging to tree-trunks, logs and furniture of every imaginable description. ** My sister, Miss Nina, together with my step- brother and his wife, whom she was visiting, drifted with the tide on the roof of a house a distance of two blocks, where they were rescued. With a number of others I built a raft and in a short time had pulled eleven persons from the very jaws of death." Con- tinuing, Mr. Speck related how a number of folks from Woodvale had all come down upon their house-tops. Mr. Curtis Williams and his family picked their way from house to house, finally being pulled ir, the Cath- olic church window by ropes. Three of a Family Drowned. William Hinchman, with his wife and two children, reached the stone bridge in safety. Here on*"^ of the babies was swept away through the arches. The others were also swept with the current, and when they came out on the other side the remaining child * li ■pi 266 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. •II :!• ■:.'ii; ,!! . ■. i was missing, while below Mrs Hinchman disappeared, leaving her husband the sole survivor of a family o( four. " Did your folks all escape alive ? " I asked of George W. Hamiiton, late assistant superintendent of the Cambria Iron Company, whom I met on the road near New Florence. "Oh, no," was his reply. " Out of a family of six- teen seven are lost. My brother, his wife, two chil- dren, my sister, her husband and one child, all are gone ; that tells the tale. I escaped with my wife by jumping from a second story window onto the moving debris. We landed back of the Morrell Institute safe and sound." Hairbreadth ^Escapes. The stories of hairbreadth escapes and the annihila- tion of families continue to be told. Here is one of them. J. Paul Kirchmann, a young man, boarded with George Schroeder's family in the heart of the town, and when the flood came the house toppled over and went rushing away in the swirling current. There were spven in all In the party and Kirchmann found himself wedged in between two houses, with his head under water. He dived down, and when he again came to the surface succeeded in getting on the roof of one of them. The others had preceded him there, and the house floated to the cemetery, over a mile and a half away, where all of them were rescued. Kirchmann, however, had fainted, and for seven or eight hours was supposed to be dead. He recovered, THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 267 and is now assisting to get at the bodies buried in the ruins. Saloon-keeper Fitzharris and his family of six had the lives crushed out of them when their house collapsed, and early this morning all of them, the father, mother and five children were taken from the wreck, and are now at the morgue. Emil Young, a jeweler, lived with mother, wife, three sons and daughter over his store on Clinton street, near Main. They were all in the house when the wild rush of water surrounded their home, lifted it from its foundation and carried it away. Young and his daughter were drowned and it was then that his mother and wife showed their hero- ism and saved the life of the other members of the family. The mother is 80 years of age, but her orders were so promptly given and so ably executed by the younger Mrs. Young that when the house floated near another in which was a family of nine all were taken off and eventually saved. Even after this trying or- deal the younger woman washed the bodies of her husband and nineteen others and pr^ p .red them for burial. The Whole Family Escaped. Another remarkable escape of a whole family was that of William H. Rosensteel, a tanner, of Woodvale, a suburb of Johnstown. His house was in the track of the storm, and, with his two daughters, Tillie and Mamie, his granddaughter and a dog, he was carried down on the kitchen roof. They floated into the Bon m m m -^^s:^*-i-f)iW;SKSK'r 268 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR, H?ll ■i,i i ,[ i ■■'I'l '1? :;ii' ,;'!;! Ton Clothing House, a mile and a half away, on Main street. Here they remained all night, but were taken off by Mrs. Emil Young and went to Pittsburgh. Jacob I. Horner and his family of eight had their house in Hornerstown thrown down by the water and took refuge in a tree. After awhile they returned to their overturned house, but again got into the tree, from which they were rescu'^d after an enforced stay of a number of hours. Charles Barnes, a real estate dealer on Main street, was worth $10,000 last Friday and had around him a family of four. To-day all his loved ones are dead and he has only $6 *n his pockets. The family of John HIgson, consisting of himself, wife, and young son, lived at 123 Walnut street. Miss Sarah Thomas, of Cumberland, was a visitor, and a hired man, a Swede, also lived in the house. The water had backed up to the rear second-story windows before the great wave came, and about 5 o'clock they heard the screaching of a number of whistles on the Conemausfh. Rushlnof to the windows they saw what they thought to be a big cloud ap- proaching them. Before they could reach a place of safety the building was lifted up and carried up Stony creek for about one-quarter of a mile. As the water rushed they turned into the river and were carried about three-quarters of a mile further on. All the people were in the attic and as the house was hurled with terrific force against the wreckage piled up against the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge HIgson M THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 269 called to tliem to jump. They failed to do so, but at the second command IMIss Thomas leaped through the window, the others followed, and after a danger- ous walk over rifty yards of broken houses safely reached the shore. m n CHILD FOUND THUMPING ON A WRECKED PIANO. '< : ',1! 1 i;l:j 1, f ■■ '■'} Hi ^^^^B 11 tM *i: I •il^^^t-:;:*: CHAPTER XIII. Digging for thie Dead. A party started in early exploring the huge mass of debris banked against the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge. This collection, consisting of trees, sides of houses, timber and innumerable articles, varies in thickness from three or four feet to twenty feet. It is about four hundred yards long, and as w^ide as the river. There are thousands of tons in this vast pile. How many bodies are buried there it is impossible to say, but conservative estimates place it at one thousand at least. The corps of workmen who were searching the ruins near the Methodist Church late this evening were hor- rified by unearthing one hundred additional bodies. The great number at this spot shows what may be expected when all have been recovered. When the mass which blazed several days was ex- tinguished it was simple to recover the bodies on the surface. It is now a question, however, of delving Into the almost Impenetrable collection to get at those lodged within. The grinding tree trunks doubtless crushed those beneath into mere unrecognizable masses of flesh. Those on the surface were nearly all so much burned as to resemble nothing human. Meanwhile the searchers after bodies, armed with (270') THE JOHNSTOWN HOKKOR. 271 spikes, hooks and crowbars, pry up the debris and un- earth what they can. Bodies, or rather fractions of them, are found in abundance near the surface. Tracing- Bodies by the Smell. I was here when the gang came across one of the upper stories of a house. It was merely a pile of boards apparently, but small pieces of a bureau and a bed spring from which the clothes had been burned showed the nature of the find. A faint odor of burned flesh prevailed exactly at this spot. " Dig here," said the physician to the men. ** There is one body at least quite close to the surface." The men started in with a will. A large pile of underclothes and household linen was brought up first. It was of fine quality and evidently such as would be stored in the bedroom ot a house occupied by people quite well to do. Shovels lull of jumbled rubbish were thrown up, and the odor of flesh became more pronounced. Presently one of the men exposed a charred lump of flesh and lifted it up on the end of a pitchfork. It was all that remained of some poor creature who had met an awful death between water and fire. . The trunk was put on a cloth, the ends were looped up making a bag of it, and the thing was taken to the river bank. It weighed probably thirty pounds. A stake was driven in the ground to which a tag was at- tached giving a descr.^tion of the remains. This is done in many cases to the burned bodies, and they la/ covered with cloths upon the bank until men came with coffins to remove them. Then the tag was taken from 1 ■?* 272 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. m I 1 s ■•' / '' ■ , l. f : I :■ ;..■ .-iij i ii ■ '' ii II 1; ■; vi the stakes and tacked on the coffin lid, which was immediately closed up, as identification was of course out of the question. Ther^ is a stack of coffins by the railroad bridge. Sometimes a coffin is carried to the spot on the charred debris where the find is made. Prpdding- Corpses with Canes. The searchers by thrusting down ii i:tick or fork are pretty sure to find a corpse, I saw a man run a cane in the debris down to ^the hilt and it came up witli human flesh sticking to it. Another ran a stick into the thoroughly cooked skull of a little boy two feet below the surface. There are bodies probably as far down as seventy feet in some cases, and it does not seem plain now how they are to be recovered. One plan would be to take away the top layers of wood with derricks, and of course the mass beneath VvlU rise closer to the surface. The weather is cold to-day, and the offensive smell that was so troublesome on the warm days is not noticeable at a distance. Saved From Disliguratiou. The workers began on the wreck on Main street just opposite the First National Bank, one of the busiest parts of the city. A large number of people were lost here, the houses being crushed on one side cf the street and being almost untouched on the other, a most remarkable thing considering the terrific force of the flood. Twenty-one bodies were taken out in the early morning and removed to the morgue. They were not very much injured, considering the weight of lumber above them. In many instances they were U THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 273 • i' ' ■ If t < .i. ^^H 1 1 m' 11 . B '^^B ^ ^H ^ h|, ■ 1 II ! Vm ' j^:'i ^ • ■, [&^H V ': '■ ■!'■': i Hi : 1i ■ ■<;'l'';' reared up like a thing of life, then it steadily rose inches at a time, flooding the whole town. But the people had had warning and saved themselves. Pitiful cries were heard soon from the river. People were floating down on barrels, roofs, beds, anything that was handy. There were pitiful shrieks from despair- ing women. The people of Nineveh could do nothing. No boat could have stemmed the cataract. During the night there were shrieks heard from the flooded meadows. Next morning at nine o'clock the flood had fallen three feet. Bodies could be seen on the trees by the Nineveh people, who stayed up all night in the hope of being able to do some act of hu- manity. The LiYingr and the Dead. Only twenty-five were taken alive from the trees and drift on this side. Across the stream a score were secured and forty-seven corpses taken out. This, with the 200 corpses here, makes a total of 300 people who are known to have come down to this point. There are perhaps a hundred and fifty bodies within a mile. Only a few were actually taken from the river bed. They sank in deep water. It is only when they have swollen by the effect of the water that they rise to the surface. Most of those recovered were found almost on dry land or buried in drift.' There are tons of wood, furniture, trees, trunks, and everything that is ever likely to float in a river, that must be '* dug over." It will be work of the hardest kind to get at the remaining corpses. I went over 11 i THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 297 idily rose But the 2s. Pitiful ople were thing that m despair- o nothing. . During he flooded : the flood en on the p all night act of hu- the trees Im a score aken out. |otal of 300 kvn to this Ififty bodies Itaken from It is only water that recovered ^d in drift.' |:runks, and river, that the hardest went over the whole ground along the river bank between here and Johnstown to-day. The Force of the Flood. The trees on the banks were levelled as if by bat tering rams, telegraph poles were snapped off as a boy breaks a sugar stick, and parts of the Pennsyl- vania Railroad track were wrenched, torn and de- stroyed. Jerry McNeilly, of this place, says he was at the Johnstown station when the flood came down, preceded by a sort of cloud or fog. He saw people smoking at their windows up to the last moment, and even when the water flooded their floors they laughed and seemed to think that the river had risen a few feet and that was all. Jerry, however, ran to the hills and saved himself while the water rose and did its awful work. Some houses were bowled over like ninepins. Some floated to the surface and started with the flood ; others stood their ground and were submerged inch by inch, the occupants climbing from story to story, from the top story to the roof, only to be swept away from their foothold sooner or later. The Dam's History. I asked a gathering of men here in what light they bad been accustomed to look upon the dam. They 3ay that from the time it was built, somewhere about 1831, by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to coL lect water for the canals, it has been the "bogie" of the district. Babies were frightened when naughty by being told the dam would break. Time and time again 298 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. ii t .; :!'■ i t the people of Nineveh have risen from their beds iti the night and perched upon the mountains through fear. A body of water seven miles or more long, from eighty to one hundred and twenty feet deep, and about a mile wide, was indeed something to be dreaded. This lake had a circumference of about eighteen miles, which gives some idea of the volume of w^ater that menaced the population. The dam was thick enouo^h for two carriacres to drive abreast on its top, but the people always doubted the stability of that pile of masonry and earth. Morrellville was for a few days in a state of starva- tion, but Sheridan, Sang Hollow and this town are in no distress. Nineveh has lost no life, although wild rumors said it had. Though the damage to property is very great, the Huns have been kept away, and robbers and marauders find nothing to tempt them. What <*Chal" Dick Saw. "Til kill the first man that dares to cross the bridge." *• Chal " Dick, lawyer, burgess and deputy sheriff and sportsman, sat upon his horse with a Winchester rifle across his saddle and a thousand or two of fiends dancing a war dance in his eyes. Down in Johnstown, proper they think "Chal" Dick is either drunk or crazy. Two newspaper men bunked with him last night and found he was not afflicted in either .sense. He is the only recognized head in the borough of Kernville, where every man, woman and child know him as *' Chal," and greet him as he passes by. THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. tn to cross the "Yes," he said to me last night, "I saw it all. My house was on Somerset street. On Thursday night it rained very hard. My wife woke me and called my attention to the vvay the water was cnming down. I said nothing, but I got up about five o'clock ard took ■I look around. In a little while Stony Creek had risen three feet. I then knew that we v/ere going to have a flood, but I did not apprehend any danger. The water soon flooded the streets, and boards and logs begtm coming down. Sport Before Sorrow. "A lot of us turned in to have sonie sport. I gave my watch and what money I had to a neighbor and began riding logs down the stream. I had lots of company. ( Ud men acted like boys, and shouted and shouted and splashed about in the water like mad. Finally the water began to rise so rapidly that I be- came ala/med. I went home and told my wife that it was full tim.e to get out. She was somewhat incredu- lous, but I made her get ready, and we took the chil- dren and we went to the house of Mr. Bergman, on Napoleon street, just on the rise of Kernville. I got wet from head to foot fooling in the water, and when I got to Bergman's I took a chill. I undressed and went to bed and fell asleep. The first thing I knew ! A'cis pulled out of bed on to the floor, by Mr. Berg- man, who yelled, ' the dam has burst.' I got up, pulled on my pantaloons and rushed down stairs. I got my youngest child and told my wife to follow witl^, the two others. This time the water was three feet i-^ 5 300 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. I I' 'i :|; ,] ■ ■■iv li i ill 1 'll ll! the house ana rising rapidly. We waded up to our waists out through it, up the hill, far beyond the reach of danger. A Stupendous Sight. "From the time I left Bergman's till I stopped is h. blank. I remember nothing. I turned and looked and may my eyes never rest on another such sight. The water was above the houses from the direction of the railroad bridge. There came a wave that appeared to be about twelve feet high. It was perpendicular in its face and moved in a mist. I have heard them speak of the death mist, but I then first appreciated what the phrase meant. It came on up Stony Creek carrying on its surface house after house and moving along f^.ster than any horse could go. In the water there bobbed up and down and twisted and twirled the heads of people making ripples after the manner of shot dropped into the water. The wave struck houses not yet submerged and cut them down. The frames rose to the surface, but the bricks, of course, were lost to sight. When the force of the water spent itself and began retracing its course, then the awfulness of the scene increased in intensity. I have a little nerve, but my heart broke at the sight. Houses, going and coming, crashed up against each other and began grinding each other to pieces. The buildings creaked and groaned as they let go their fastenings and fairly melted. "At the windows of the dwellings there appeared the faces of people equally as ill-fated as the rest THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 301 I as the rest God forbid that I should ever again look upon such intensity of anguish. Oh, how white and horror- stricken those faces were, and such appeals for help that could not come. The woman v/rung their hands in their despair and prayed aloud for deliverance, Down stream went houses and people at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour and stopped, a conglomerate mass, at the stone abutment of the railroad bridge. The first buildings that struck the bridge took fire, and those that came after were swept into a sea of flame. I thought I had already witnessed the greatest possible climax of anguish, but the scene that followed exceeded in awfulness anything I had betbre looked upon. The flames grew, hundreds of people were wedged in the driftwood and imprisoned in the houses. Rapidly the fire approached them, and then they began to cry for aid, and hundreds of others stood on the bank, powerless to extend a single comfort. Judg-nient Day. " Ao the fire licked up house after house and pile after pile, I could see men and women bid each other good- by, and fathers and mothers kiss their children. The flames swallowed them up and hid them from my view, but I could hear their shrieks as they roasted alive The shrieks mellowed into groans, and the groans into silence, only to be followed by more shrieks, more groans and more silence, as the fire caught up and destroyed its victims. Heavens ! but I was glad when the end came. My only anxiety was to have it come quickly, and I prayed that it might come, oh ! so 4%n "v 'I >•• 502 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. ' I I quick ! It was a splendid realization of the judgment day. It was a magnificent realization of the impotency of man in a battle with such a combination of fire and flood." Some Hav© Cause for Joy, In the midst of the confusion of the disaster and the strain of excitement which followed it was but natu- ral that every one who could not readily be found was reported dead. Amid the throng of mourners now an occasional soul is made happy by finding that some loved one has escaped death. To-day a few of the living had time to notify their friends throughout the country of their safety. General Lew Wallace, now at West Point, tele- graphed President Harrison, in response to an inquiry last night, that his wife was '• coming out of the great calamity at Johnstown safe." Several reports have been sent out from Johnstown, one as late as last night, to the effect that Mrs. Wallace was believed to be among the victims of the disaster. Prh'ate Secre- tary Halford received a telegram this afternoon from his wife at Altoona, announcing that Mrs. Lew- Wallace was with her and safe. Did. Not Lose Their Presence of Mind. A dispatch from Carthage, 111., says : — "Mrs. M. J. &nlth, a traveling saleslady for a book concern in New York city, was at Johnstown at the time of the flood and was swept away with others. Her brothers, Lieutenant P. and James McKee, received the follow- ing telegram at Carthage yesterday from Johnstown : •THE JCdNSTOWN HORROR. 30B *i'a^pair. It looked desolate enough to-day after the soaking downpour of last night, and groups of shivering moth- res, with their little ones, f - ,f ■ ■ % ;pfS^. f;.^ 326 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. t* i I ; ■ The big man sent out a terrible blow that would have left the Lieutenant senseless had not one of the privates dashed in between, receiving part of it and warding it off. The Lieutenant got out of his military coat. The privates seized the big man and with another, who ran to the scene, held him back. The Lieutenant put his hand to his pistol pocket, the deputy Fitzpatrick seized him and the struggle for the weapon began. For a mo:nent it was fierce and des- perate, then another private came to the deputy's assistance. The revolver was wrested from the drunken officer and he himself was pushed back pant- ing to the g^'jund. The Victor wa-4 Magnanimous. Deputy Fitzpatrick seized the military coat he had thrown on the ground, and with it and the weapon started to the regimental headquarters. Then ^he pri- vates got around him and begged him, one of them with tears in his eyes, not to report their officer, say- ing that he was a good man when he was sober. He studied a long while, standing in the road, while the officer slunk away over the hill. Then he threw the disgraced uniform to them, and said : '* Here, give them to him ; and, mind you, if he does not go at once to his quarters, I'll take him there, dead or alive." Sanitarians at Work. Dr. Benjamin Lee, secretary of the State Board of Health, has taken hold with a grip upon the handle. When he surveyed the ground to-day he found that there were no disinfectants in town, and no utensils in THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 827 which to distribute them had there been any disinfect- ants, so he sent a squad across the river to the svi[>- ply train, below the viaduct, and had all the copperas and chloride of lime to be had carried across the bridges in buckets. He sent another squad hunting ihe ruins for utensils, and in the wreck of a general S.ore on Main street they discovered pails, sprinkling pots and kettles. The copperas and chloride were promptly set heating in the kettles over the streets and in a short time a squad was out sprinkling the debris v*hich chokes Main street almost to the house- tops for three squares. The reason of this was that a brief inspection had satisfied Dr. Lee that under the wreckage were piled the bodies of scores of dead horses. Meantime other men were at work collecting the bodies of other dead horses, which were hauled to the fire and with the aid of rosin burned to the number of sixty. A large number of dead horses were buried yesterday, but this course did not meet the State Board's approval and Dr. Lee has ordered their exhumation for burning. Dr. R. Lowrie Sibbett, of Carlisle, was made med- ical inspector and sent up through the boroughs up the river. To-morrow a house-to-house inspection A'ill be made of the remaining and inhabited portion of the cities and boroughs. The overcrowding makes this necessary. *Tt will take weeks of unremitting labor and thousands of men," said Dr. Lee, " to remove the n ■ 328 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. !»•; /■ i ( ,;'* sources of danger to the public health which now exist. The principal danger to people living here is, of course, from the contamination of putrifying flesh. They have an excellent water-supply from the hills, uut there is a very grave danger to the health of all the people who use the Allegheny river as a water- supply. It is in the debris above the viaduct, which is full of decomposing animal matter. Every ripple of water that passes through or under it carries the germs of possible disease with it." At the Schoolhouse Morgrue. Away from the devastation in the valley and the gloomy scenes along the river, on Prospect Hill, stands the schoolhouse, the morgue of the unidentified dead. People do not go there unless they are hunting for a friend or relative. They treat it as a pest house. They have seen enough white faces in the valley and the living feel like fleeing from the dead. This afternoon at sunset every desk in every class- room supported a coffin. Each coffin was numbered and each lid turned to show the face within. On the blackboard in one of the rooms, between the pretty drawing and neat writing of the school children, was scrawled the bulletin "Hold No. '59' as long as possible ; supposed to be Mrs. Paulson, of Pitts- burgh." "But '59' wasn't Mrs. Paulson," said a little white-faced woman. "It is Miss Frances Wagner, of Market street, Johnstown." Her brother found her here. "Fifty-nine" has gone — one of the few identified to-day, and others had come to take its place. THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 329 which now ng here is, Tying flesh, n the hills, lealth of all as a water- jct, which is try ripple of carries the Hey and the ospect Hill, ; unidentified J are hunting a pest house, le valley and every class- as numbered iin. On the zn the pretty children, was as long as 3n, of Pitts- son," said a iss Frances Her brother )ne of the few take its place. Strongly appealing to the sympathies of even those looking for friends and relatives was the difference in the size of the coffins. There were some no lareer than a violin case hidden below large boxes, telling of the unknown babies perished, and there were coffins of children of all years. On the blackboards were written such sentences as "Home sweet home;' " Peace on earth, good will toward men." For all the people who looked at their young faces knew, they might have stood by the coffin of the child who helped to write them. The bodies found each day are kept as long as pos- sible and then are sent away for burial with their num- bers, where their names should be, on rough boards, their only tombs<"ones. Just as a black storm-cloud was driv'^cr hard from the West over the slope of the hills yesterday the body of young Henry G. Rose, the district attorney of Cambria County, was lowered into a temporary grave beside unknown victims. Three people at- tended his burial — his father-in-law, James A. Lane, who saw him lost while he himself was struggling for life in their floating house ; the Rev. Dr. H. L. Chap- man, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Rev. L. Maguire. Dr. Chapman read the funeral services, and while he prayed the thunder rumbled and the cloud darkened the scene. The coffins are taken there in wagonloads, lowered quickly and hidden from sight. Miss Nina Speck, daughter of Rev. David Speck, M i'-% ^T I 330 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 'J i I f fl ..■' w % ^IHH K. |te; '^^^^H III ^^; fl lil u ■ ■H pastor of the First United Brethren Church of Cham- bersburj;, was in Johnstown visiting her brother last week and narrowly escaped death in the flood. She arrived to-day clad in nondescript clothing, which had been furnished by an old colored washer- woman and told the following story of the flood ; "Our house was in Kernville, a part of Johnstown, through which Stony Creek ran. Although we were a square from the creek, the backwater from the stream had flooded the streets in the morning and was up to our front porch. At 4 o'clock on Friday after- noon we were sitting on the front porch watching the flood, when we heard a roar as of a tornado or mighty conflagration. " We rushed upstairs and got out upon the bay- window. There an awful sight met our eyes. Down the Conemaugh Valley was advancing a mighty wall of flame 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 sound- ing like a tempest among forest trees. At first we could see no water at all, but back of the mist and flames came a mighty wall of water. We started downstairs and through the rear of the house to escape to the hill-side nearby. 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 mto the house, which began to move off as soon as we were in it again. From the second- story window 1 saw a young man drifdng toward us. mm THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. .•531 ch of Cham- brother last Flood. ript clothing, ored washer- le flood ; .f Johnstown, jgh we were ter from the rningand was Friday after- watching the ido or mighty jpon the bay- eyes. Down a mighty wall Before it were tossing over le roar sound- first we could St and flames ed downstairs escape to the get there the ould make no ;e rally dashed gan to move m the second- g toward us. I broke the glass from the frames with my hands and helped him in, and in a few moments more I pulled in Af^ old man, a neighbor, who had been sick. Miraculous ^Escape. "Our house moved rr-jidly 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. '*Oui ;icuse 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 (-rifting by us were covered with people, nearly all p ^ying 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. A Sad Hospital Story. On a cot in the hospital on Prospect Hill there lies at present a man injured almost to death, but whose mental sufferings are far keener than his bodily pains. His name is Vering. He has lost in the flood his whole family — wife and five children. In an interview he said : *' I was at home with my wife and children when the ■fit »< fn" SI ■■t 832 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. alarm came. We hurried from the house, leaving everything behind us. As we reached the door a gentleman friend was running by. He grasped the two smaller children, one under each arm, and hurried on ahead of us. I had my arm around my wife, sup- porting her. Behind us we could hear the flood rush- ing upon us. In one hurried glance, as I passed a corner, I could see the fearful crunching and hear the crackling of the houses in its fearful grasp. I then could see that there was no possibility of our escape, as we were too far away from the hill-side. In a few moments it was upon us. In a flash I saw the three dear children licked up by it and they disappeared from sight as I and my wife were thrown into the air by the vanguard of the rushing ruins. We found our- selves in a lot of drift, driving along with the speed of a race-horse. In a moment or two we were thrown with a crash against a frame building whose walls gave way before the flood as easily as if they were made of pie-crust, and the timbers began to fall about us In all directions. Up to this time I had retained a firm hold upon my wife, but as I found myself pinned between two heavy timbers the agony caused my senses to leave me momentarily. I recovered instantly in time to see my ■wife's head just disappearing under the water. Like lightning I grasped her by the hair and as best I could, pinioned as I was above the water by the timber, I raised her above it. The weight proved too much and she sank again- Again I pulled her to the surface and THE JOnNSTOWN HORROR. 3.%3 again she sank. This I did again and again with no avail. She drowned in my very grasp, and at List she dropped from my nerveless hands to leave my sight forever. As if I had not suffered enough, a few mo- ments after I saw some objects whirling around in an eddy which circled around, until, reaching the current again, they floated past me. My God, man, would you believe me? it was three of my children, dead. Their dear little faces are before me now, distorted in a look of agony that, no matter what I do, haunts me. O, if I could only have released myself at that time I would have willingly died with them. I was rescued some time after, and have been here ever since. I have since learned that my friend who so bravely endeavored to save two of the children was lost with them." V'i I'l' a; ! «* f ! II i.i: CHAPTER XV. Terrible Pictures of Woe. The proportion of the living registered since th( f1ix)d as against the previous number of inhabitants i- even less than was reported yesterday. It was asccr tained to-day that many of the names on the list were entered more than once and that the total number of persons registered is not more than 13 ooo out of a former population of between 40,000 and 50,000. A now and more exact method of determining the number of the lost was inaugurated this mornin<:. Men are sent out by the Relief Committee, who will go to every abode and obtain the names of the sur- vivors, and if possible those of the dead. The lack of identification of hundreds of bodits strengthens the inference that the proportion of the dead to the living is appalling. It is argued that the friends who might identify these unclaimed bodies are themselves all gone. Another sio^nificant fact is that so lar^-c a number of those whom one meets in the streets or where the streets used to be are non-residents, strangers who have come here out of humane ^r less creditable motives. The question that is heard very often is. "Where are the inhabitants?" The town does not appear to have at present a population of more than 10,000, lii THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. It is believed that many of the bodies of the dead have been borne down into the Ohio, and perhaps into the Mississippi as well, and hence may finally be deposited by the waters hundreds of miles a[)art, per haps never to be recovered or seen by man again. Tlio General Situation. Under the blue haze of smoke that for a week ha.s hung over this valley of the shadow of death thv: ,'.ork which is to resurrect this stricken city has gone steadily forward. Here and there over the waste where Johnstown stood in its pride black smoke arises from the bonfires on which shattered house-walls, rafters, doors, broken furniture and all the flotsam and jetsam of the great floo.' is cast. Adjutant General Hastings, who believes in heroic measures, has been quietly trying to persuade the "Dictator" — that is, the would-be "Dictator" — to allow him to burn up the wrecked houses wholesale without the tedious bother of pulling them down and handling the debris. The timorous committees would not countenance such an idea. Nothing but piece- meal tearing down of the wrecked houses tossed together by the mighty force of the water and destruc- tion by never-dying bonfires would satisfy them. Yet all of them must come down. Most of the buildini/s reached by the flood have been examined, founv) unsafe and condemned. Can the job be done safely and successfully wholesale or not ? That is the real question for the powers that be to answer, and no sentiment should ent r into it. 'i "M &■ T' St 11 |j(.';jF| V*^ : m V -■■■1 S36 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. I ■\ ^ i;;:'«lii Four thousand workmen are busy to-day with ropes and axe, pick and shovel. But the task is vast, it is herculean, hke unto the cleaning of the Augean stables. **To clean up this town properly,'* said General Hastings to-day, '* we shall need twenty thousand workmen for three months." The force of the swollen river upturned the town in a half hour. These same timorous managers weak- ened to-day, after having the facts before their eyes brought home to their understanding by constant iter- ation. They have found out that they have, vulgarly speaking, bitten off more than they can chew. Poisons of the foulest kind pollute the water which flows down the turgid Conemaugh into the Allegheny River, whence is Pittsburgh's water-supply, and thence into the Ohio, the water-supply of many cities and towns. Fears of a pestilence are not to be pooh-poohed into the background. It is very serious, so long as the river flows through the clogged and matted mass of the bridge so long it will threaten the people along its course with pestilence. The committee confess their inability to do this needed work, and to-day voted to ask the Governors of the several States to co-operate in the establishment of a national relief committee to grapple with the situation. Acdon cannot and mast not be delayed. Hope Out of DCvSpair. The fears of an outbreak of fever or other zymotic diseases appear to be based on the alleged presence ^•\F,'": 3.y with ropes : is vast, it is the Augean said General ity thousand :d the town in nagers weak- >re their eyes constant iter- lave, vulgarly hew. Poisons ch flows down gheny River, d thence into is and towns, h-poohed into ) long as the atted mass of ^ople along its confess their -day voted to to co-operate committee to not and must other zymotic 2ged presence GENERAL HASTINGS DIRECTING THE POLICE. (387) 1 *1 338 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. U I n ^ U^ I! Ill Iff' ?! it i i|..'' of decomposed animal matter, human and of lower type, concealed amid the debris. The alleged cdor of burnt flesh coming from the enormous mass of con glomerated timber and iron lodged in the cul-de-sac formed by the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge is ex- tremely mythical. There is an unmistakable scent of burnt wood. It would not be strange if the carcasses of domestic animals, which must be hidden in the enormous mass, were finally to be realized by the olfactory organs of the bystanders. Blastingr Continues. All day long the blast of dynamite resounded among the hills. Cartridcres were let off in the debris, and a cloud of dust and flying spray marked the result of tbci mining operation. The interlaced timbers in the cul- de-.sac yielded very slowly even to the mighty force of dynamite. There were no finds of especial import. At the present rate of clearing, the cul-de-sac will not be free from the wreckage in two months. There was a sad spectacle presented this morning when the laborers were engaged In pulling over a vast pile of timber and miscellaneous matter on Main street. A young woman and a little puny baby giil were found beneath the mass, which was as Iv'gh 23 the second story windows of the houses near by. Togeilicr in Death, The girl must have been handsome when in the flush of youth and health. She had seized the help- less infant and endeavored to find safety by flight Her closely cut brown hair was filled with sand, and o THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. 339 id of lower cred cdor of tass of coil le cul-de-sac ridge is ex iblc scent ot he carcasses .dden in the .lized by the unded among debris, and a e result of th.^, ers in the cul- kighty force oi pecial import, lae-sac will not is. this morning ncT over a vast Iter on Main )uny baby girl as as h'gh as- near by. i when in the ilzcd the help- fcty by f.iglit ith sand, and o piece of brass wire was wound around tlie head and neck. A loose cashmere hv)use-go\vn was partially torn from her form, and one slipper, a little bead em- broidered affair, covered a silk-stockinijed foot. Each arm was tightly clasped around the bab)'. The rigidity of death should have passed away, but tht: arms were fixed in their position as if composed of an unbendable material instead of niiiscle ami bone. The fingers were imbedded in the .'^ides of the little baby as if its protector had made a fmal effort not to be separated and to rave if poss'ble the fragile hie. The faces of both were scarred and disfiguretl from contact with n >atinij: debris. The single LTarment ot the bab\' — a thin white slip — was rent afid ira\eil. 1 he body of the young woman was identified, but the babc! re- mained unknown. IVobably its father and mother were lost in the flood, and it will never be claimed by friendly hands. A Str:)iij;<' l>i>«<»voi j'. This is only one among tlu! manv pathetic incidents of the terrible disaster. There weie only nine un- idcntihed bodies at the Adams street morcrue this afternoon, and three ailditions to the number ^\ere made after ten o'clock. Two hundred and eight bodies iiave been received by the embalmers in charg^e. '1 he yard of the school house, vvhich was converted into a temporaay abode of deatli, contains large piles of coffins of the cheaper sort. They come from different cities within two or three hundred miles of Johnstown, and after being stacked up they are k: i? >i Hi 340 THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR. i pulled oiM a^ needed. Coiiiiis are to be seen every- where about th(r /alley, ready for use when a body is found. A trio of bodies was found near the Hurlbii