Volumes might be written of the sufferings endured and valor exhibited
by the survivors of the flood, or of the heart-rending grief with which
so many were stricken. At Johnstown an utterly wretched woman named Mrs.
Fenn stood by a muddy pool of water trying to find some trace of a once
happy home. She was half crazed with grief, and her eyes were red and
swollen. As a correspondent stepped to her side she raised her pale,
haggard face and remarked:
"They are all gone. O God! be merciful to them! My husband and my seven
dear little children have been swept down with the flood, and I am left
alone. We were driven by the awful flood into the garret, but the water
followed us there. Inch by inch it kept rising, until our heads were
crushing against the roof. It was death to remain. So I raised a window,
and one by one, placed my darlings on some driftwood, trusting to the
great Creator. As I liberated the last one, my sweet little boy, he
looked at me and said: 'Mamma, you always told me that the Lord would
care for me; will He look after me now?' I saw him drift away with his
loving face turned toward me, and, with a prayer on my lips for his
deliverance, he passed from sight forever. The next moment the roof
crashed in, and I floated outside, to be rescued fifteen hours later
from the roof of a house in Kernsville. If I could only find one of my
darlings I could bow to the will of God, but they are all gone. I have
lost everything on earth now but my life, and I will return to my old
Virginia home and lay me down for my last great sleep."
A handsome woman, with hair as black as a raven's wing, walked through
the depot where a dozen or more bodies were awaiting burial. Passing
from one to another, she finally lifted the paper covering from the face
of a woman, young, and with traces of beauty showing through the stains
of muddy water, and with a cry of anguish she reeled backward to be
caught by a rugged man who chanced to be passing. In a moment or so she
had calmed herself sufficiently to take one more look at the features of
her dead. She stood gazing at the corpse as if dumb. Finally, turning
away with another wild burst of grief, she said: "And her beautiful hair
all matted and her sweet face so bruised and stained with mud and
water!" The dead woman was the sister of the mourner. The body was
placed in a coffin a few minutes later and sent away to its narrow
house.
A woman was seen to smile, one morning just after the catastrophe, as
she came down the steps of Prospect Hill, at Johnstown. She ran down
lightly, turning up toward the stone bridge. She passed the little
railroad station where the undertakers were at work embalming the dead,
and walked slowly until she got opposite the station. Then she stopped
and danced a few steps. There was but a small crowd there. The woman
raised her hands above her head and sang. She became quiet and then
suddenly burst into a frenzied fit of weeping and beat her forehead with
her hands. She tore her dress, which was already in rags.
"I shall go crazy," she screamed, "if they do not find his body."
The poor woman could not go crazy, as her mind had been already
shattered.
"He was a good man," she went on, while the onlookers listened
pityingly. "I loved him and he loved me."
"Where is he?" she screamed. "I must find him."
And she started at the top of her speed down the track toward the river.
Some men caught her. She struggled desperately for a few moments, and
then fainted.
Her name was Eliza Adams, and she was a bride of but two months. Her
husband was a foreman at the Cambria Iron Works and was drowned.
[Illustration: JOHNSTOWN--VIEW COR. MAIN AND CLINTON STS.]
The body of a beautiful young girl of twenty was found wedged in a mass
of ruins just below the Cambria Iron Works. She was taken out and laid
on the damp grass. She was tall, slender, of well-rounded form, clad in
a long red wrapper, with lace at her throat and wrists. Her feet were
encased in pretty embroidered slippers. Her face was a study for an
artist. Features clear cut as though chiseled from Parian marble; and,
strangely enough, they bore not the slightest disfigurement, and had not
the swelled and puffed appearance that was present in nearly all the
other drowned victims. A smile rested on her lips. Her hair, which had
evidently been golden, was matted with mud and fell in heavy masses to
her waist.
"Does any one know her?" was asked of the silent group that had gathered
around.
No one did, and she was carried to the improvised morgue in the
school-house, and now fills a grave as one of the "unidentified dead."
Miss Rose Clark was fastened in the debris at the railroad bridge, at
Johnstown. The force of the water had torn all of her garments off and
pinned her left leg below the water between two beams. She was more
calm than the men who were trying to rescue her. The flames were coming
nearer, and the intense heat scorching her bare skin. She begged the men
to cut off the imprisoned leg. Finally half of the men turned and fought
the fire, while the rest endeavored to rescue Miss Clark. After six
hours of hard work, and untold suffering by the brave little lady she
was taken from the ruins in a dead faint. She was one mass of bruises,
from her breast to her knees, and her left arm and leg were broken.
Just below Johnstown, on the Conemaugh, three women were working on the
ruins of what had been their home. An old arm-chair was taken from the
ruins by the men. When one of the women saw the chair, it brought back a
wealth of memory, probably the first since the flood occurred, and
throwing herself on her knees on the wreck she gave way to a flood of
tears.
"Where in the name of God," she sobbed, "did you get that chair? It was
mine--no, I don't want it. Keep it and find for me, if you can, my
album. In it are the faces of my husband and little girl."
Patrick Downs was a worker in one of the mills of the Cambria Iron
Works. He had a wife and a fourteen-year-old daughter, Jessie Downs, who
was a great favorite with the sturdy, hard-handed fellow-workmen of her
father.
She was of rare beauty and sweetness. Her waving, golden-yellow hair,
brushed away from a face of wondrous whiteness, was confined by a ribbon
at the neck. Lustrous Irish blue eyes lighted up the lovely face and
ripe, red lips parted in smiles for the workmen in the mills, every one
of whom was her lover.
Jessie was in the mill when the flood struck the town, and had not been
seen since till the work of cleaning up the Cambria plant was begun in
earnest. Then, in the cellar of the building a workman spied a little
shoe protruding from a closely packed bed of sandy mud. In a few moments
the body of Jessie Downs was uncovered.
The workmen who had been in such scenes as this for six days stood about
with uncovered heads and sobbed like babies. The body had not been
bruised nor hurt in any way, the features being composed as if in sleep.
The men gathered up the body of their little sweetheart and were
carrying it through the town on a stretcher when they met poor Patrick
Downs. He gazed upon the form of his baby, but never a tear was in his
eye, and he only thanked God that she had not suffered in contest with
the angry waves.
He had but a moment before identified the body of his wife among the
dead recovered, and the mother and child were laid away together in one
grave on Grove Hill, and the father resumed work with the others.
Dr. Lowman is one of the most prominent physicians of Western
Pennsylvania. His residence in Johnstown was protected partially from
the avalanche of water by the Methodist Church, which is a large stone
structure. Glancing up-stream, the Doctor saw advancing what seemed to
be a huge mountain. Grasping the situation, he ran in and told the
family to get to the top floors as quickly as possible. They had
scarcely reached the second floor when the water was pouring into the
windows. They went higher up, and the water followed them, but it soon
reached its extreme height.
While the family were huddled in the third story the Doctor looked out
and saw a young girl floating toward the window on a door. He smashed
the glass, and, at the great risk of his own life, succeeded in hauling
the door toward him and lifting the girl through the window. She had not
been there long when one corner of the building gave way and she became
frightened. She insisted on taking a shutter and floating down-stream.
In vain did the Doctor try to persuade her to forego such a suicidal
attempt. She said that she was a good swimmer, and that, once out in the
water, she had no fears for her ultimate safety. Resisting all
entreaties and taking a shutter from the window, she plunged out into
the surging waters, and has not since been heard from.
When the girl deserted the house, Dr. Lowman and his family made their
way to the roof. While up there another corner of the house gave way.
After waiting for several hours, the intervening space between the bank
building and the dwelling became filled with drift. The Doctor gathered
his family around him, and after a perilous walk they all reached the
objective point in safety. Dr. Lowman's aged father was one of the
party. When his family was safe Dr. Lowman started to rescue other
unfortunates. All day Saturday he worked like a beaver in water to his
neck, and he saved the lives of many.
No man returns from the valley of death with more horrible remembrance
of the flood than Dr. Henry H. Phillips, of Pittsburg. He is the only
one known to be saved out of a household of thirteen, among whom was his
feeble old mother and other near and dear friends. His own life was
saved by his happening to step out upon the portico of the house just as
the deluge came. Dr. Phillips had gone to Johnstown to bring his mother,
who was an invalid, to his home in the East End. They had intended
starting for Pittsburg Friday morning, but Mrs. Phillips did not feel
able to make the journey, and it was postponed until the next day. In
the meantime the flood began to come, and during the afternoon of Friday
the family retired to the upper floors of the house for safety. There
were thirteen in the house, including little Susan McWilliams, the
twelve-year-old daughter of Mr. W. H. McWilliams, of Pittsburg, who was
visiting her aunt, Mrs. Phillips; Dr. L. T. Beam, son-in-law of Mrs.
Phillips; another niece, and Mrs. Dowling, a neighbor. The latter had
come there with her children because the Phillips house was a brick
structure while her own was frame. Its destruction proved to be the more
sudden and complete on account of the material.
The water was a foot deep on the first floor, and the family were
congratulating themselves that they were so comfortably situated in the
upper story, when Dr. Phillips heard a roaring up toward the Cambria
Iron Works. Without a thought of the awful truth, he stepped out upon
the portico of the house to see what it meant. A wall of water and
wreckage loomed up before him like a roaring cloud. Before he could turn
back or cry out he saw a house, that rode the flood like a chip, come
between him and his vision of the window. Then all was dark, and the
cold water seemed to wrap him up and toss him to a house-top three
hundred yards from where that of his mother had stood. Gathering his
shattered wits together the Doctor saw he was floating about in the
midst of a black pool. Dark objects were moving all about him, and
although there was some light, he could not recognize any of the
surroundings. For seventeen hours he drifted about upon the wreckage
where fate had tossed him. Then rescuers came, and he was taken to safe
quarters. A long search has so far failed to elicit any tidings of the
twelve persons in the Phillips' house.
Mr. G. B. Hartley, of Philadelphia, was one of the five out of
fifty-five guests of the Hurlburt House who survived.
"The experience I passed through at Johnstown on that dreadful Friday
night," said Mr. Hartley to a correspondent, "is like a horrible
nightmare in a picture before me. When the great rush of water came I
was sitting in the parlors of the Hurlburt House. Suddenly we were
startled to hear several loud shouts on the streets. These cries were
accompanied by a loud, crashing noise. At the first sound we all rushed
from the room panic-stricken. There was a crash and I found myself
pinned down by broken boards and debris of different kinds. The next
moment I felt the water surging in. I knew it went higher than my head
because I felt it. The water must have passed like a flash or I would
not have come out alive. After the shock I could see that the entire
roof of the hotel had been carried off. Catching hold of something I
manged to pull myself up on to the roof. The roof had slid off and lay
across the street. On the roof I had a chance to observe my
surroundings. Down on the extreme edge of the roof I espied the
proprietor of the hotel, Mr. Benford. He was nearly exhausted, and it
required every effort for him to hold to the roof. Cautiously advancing,
I managed to creep down to where he was holding. I tried to pull him up,
but found I was utterly powerless. Mr. Benford was nearly as weak as
myself, and could do very little toward helping himself. We did not give
up, however, and in a few minutes, by dint of struggling and putting
forth every bit of strength, Mr. Benford managed to crawl upon the roof.
Crouching and shivering on another part of the roof were two girls, one
a chamber-maid of the hotel, and the other a clerk in a store that was
next to it. The latter was in a pitiable plight. Her arm had been torn
from its socket. I took off my overcoat and gave it to her. Mr. Benford
did the same thing for the other, for it was quite chilly. A young man
was nursing his mother, who had had her scalp completely torn off. He
asked me to hold her head until he could make a bandage. He tore a thick
strip of cloth and placed it round her head. The blood saturated it
before it was well on. Soon after this I was rescued more dead than
alive."