The storm that filled Conemaugh Lake and burst its bounds also wrought
sad havoc elsewhere. Williamsport, Pa., underwent the experience of
being flooded with thirty-four feet of water, of having the Susquehanna
boom taken out with two hundred million feet of logs, over forty million
feet of sawed lumber taken, mills carried away and others wrecked,
business and industrial establishments wrecked, and a large number of
lives lost. The flood was nearly seven feet higher than the great high
water of 1865.
Early on Friday news came of the flood at Clearfield, but it was not
before two o'clock Saturday morning that the swelling water began to
become prominent, the river then showing a rise averaging two feet to
the hour. Steadily and rapidly thereafter the rise continued. The rain
up the country had been terrific, and from Thursday afternoon,
throughout the night, and during Friday and Friday night, the rain fell
here with but little interruption. After midnight Friday it came down in
absolute torrents until nearly daylight Saturday morning. As a result of
this rise, Grafins Run, a small stream running through the city from
northwest to southeast, was raised until it flooded the whole territory
on either side of it.
Soon after daylight, the rain having ceased, the stream began to
subside, and as the river had not then reached an alarming height, very
few were concerned over the outlook. The water kept getting higher and
higher, and spreading out over the lower streets. At about nine o'clock
in the forenoon the logs began to go down, filling the stream from bank
to bank. The water had by this time reached almost the stage of 1865. It
was coming up Third Street to the Court-house, and was up Fourth Street
to Market. Not long after it reached Third Street on William, and
advanced up Fourth to Pine. Its onward progress did not stop, however,
as it rose higher on Third Street, and soon began to reach Fourth Street
both at Elmira and Locust Streets. No one along Fourth between William
and Hepburn had any conception that it would trouble them, but the
sequel proved they were mistaken.
Soon after noon the water began crossing the railroad at Walnut and
Campbell Streets, and soon all the country north of the railroad was
submerged, that part along the run being for the second time during the
day flooded. The rise kept on until nine o'clock at night, and after
that hour it began to go slowly the other way. By daylight Sunday
morning it had fallen two feet, and that receding continued during the
day. When the water was at its highest the memorable sight was to be
seen of a level surface of water extending from the northern line of the
city from Rural Avenue on Locust Street, entirely across the city to the
mountain on the south side. This meant that the water was six feet deep
on the floors of the buildings in Market Square, over four feet deep in
the station of the Pennsylvania Railroad and at the Park Hotel. Fully
three-quarters of the city was submerged.
The loss was necessarily enormous. It was heaviest on the lumbermen. All
the logs were lost, and a large share of the cut lumber.
The loss of life was heavy.
A general meeting of lumbermen was held, to take action on the question
of looking after the lost stock. A comparison as to losses was made, but
many of those present were unable to give an estimate of the amount they
had lost. It was found that the aggregate of logs lost from the boom was
about two hundred million feet, and the aggregate of manufactured lumber
fully forty million feet. The only saw-mill taken was the Beaver mill
structure, which contained two mills, that of S. Mack Taylor and the
Williamsport Lumber Company. It went down stream just as it stood, and
lodged a few miles below the city.
A member of the Philadelphia _Times_' staff telegraphed from
Williamsport:--
"Trusting to the strong arms of brave John Nichol, I safely crossed the
Susquehanna at Montgomery in a small boat, and met Superintendent
Westfall on the other side on an engine. We went to where the Northern
Central crosses the river again to Williamsport, where it is wider and
swifter. The havoc everywhere is dreadful. Most of the farmers for miles
and miles have lost their stock and crops, and some their horses and
barns. In one place I saw thirty dead cattle. They had caught on the top
of a hill, but were drowned and carried into a creek that had been a
part of a river. I could see where the river had been over the tops of
the barns a quarter of a mile from the usual bank. A man named Gibson,
some miles below Williamsport, lost every animal but a gray horse, which
got into the loft and stayed there, with the water up to his body.
"A woman named Clark is alive, with six cows that she got upstairs.
Along the edges of the washed-out tracks families with stoves and a few
things saved are under board shanties. We passed the saw-mill that, by
forming a dam, is responsible for the loss of the Williamsport bridges.
The river looked very wild, but Superintendent Westfall and I crossed it
in two boats. It is nearly half a mile across. Both boats were carried
some distance and nearly upset. It was odd, after wading through mud
into the town, to find all Williamsport knowing little or nothing about
Johnstown or what had been happening elsewhere. Mr. Westfall was beset
by thousands asking about friends on the other side, and inquiring when
food can be got through.
"The loss is awful. There have not been many buildings in the town
carried off, but there are few that have not been damaged. There is
mourning everywhere for the dead. Men look serious and worn, and every
one is going about splashed with mud. The mayor, in his address, says:
'Send us help at once--in the name of God, at once. There are hundreds
utterly destitute. They have lost all they had, and have no hope of
employment for the future. Philadelphia should, if possible, send
provisions. Such a thing as a chicken is unknown here. They were all
carried off. It is hard to get anything to eat for love or money. Flour
is needed worse than anything else.'
"I gave away a cooked chicken and sandwiches that I had with me to two
men who had had nothing to eat since yesterday morning. The flood
having subsided, all the grim destitution is now uncovered. Last night a
great many grocery and other stores were gutted, not by the water, but
by hungry, desperate people. They only took things to eat.
"A pathetic feature of the loss of life is the great number of children
drowned. In one case two brothers named Youngman, up the river, who have
a woolen mill, lost their wives and children and their property, too, by
the bursting of the dam. Everything was carried away in the night. They
saved themselves by being strong. One caught in a tree on the side of
the mountain across the river and remained there from Saturday night
until late Sunday, with the river below him."
Among the many remarkable experiences was that of Garrett L. Crouse,
proprietor of a large kindling-wood mill, who is also well known to many
Philadelphia and New York business men. Mr. Crouse lives on the north
side of West Fourth Street, between Walnut and Campbell. On Saturday he
was down town, looking after his mill and wood, little thinking that
there was any flood in the western part of the city. At eleven o'clock
he started to go home, and sauntered leisurely up Fourth Street. He soon
learned the condition of things and started for Lycoming Street, and
was soon in front of the Rising Sun Hotel, on Walnut Street, wading in
the water, which came nearly to his neck. Boats passing and repassing
refused to take him in, notwithstanding that he was so close to his
home. The water continued to rise and he detached a piece of board-walk,
holding on to a convenient tree. In this position he stayed two hours in
the vain hope that a boat would take him on.
At this juncture a man with a small boat hove in sight and came so close
that Mr. Crouse could touch it. Laying hold of the boat he asked the
skipper how much he would take to row him down to Fourth Street, where
the larger boats were running.
"I can't take you," was the reply; "this boat only holds one."
"I know it only holds one, but it will hold two this time," replied the
would-be passenger. "This water is getting unpleasantly close to my
lower lip. It's a matter of life and death with me, and if you don't
want to carry two your boat will carry one; but I'll be that one."
The fellow in the boat realized that the talk meant business, and the
two started down town. At Pine Street Mr. Crouse waited for a big boat
another hour, and when he finally found one he was shivering with cold.
The men in the boat engaged to run him for five dollars, and they
started.
It was five o'clock when they reached their destination, when they rowed
to their passenger's stable and found his horses up to their necks in
the flood.
"What will you charge to take these two horses to Old Oaks Park?" he
asked.
"Ten dollars apiece," was the reply.
"I'll pay it."
They then rowed to the harness room, got the bridles, rowed back to the
horses and bridled them. They first took out the brown horse and landed
her at the park, Mr Crouse holding her behind the boat. They returned
for the gray and started out with her, but had scarcely left the stable
when her head fell back to one side. Fright had already exhausted her.
They took her back to the house porch, when Mr. Crouse led her upstairs
and put her in a bed-room, where she stayed high and dry all night. On
Sunday morning the folks who were cleaning up were surprised to see a
gray horse and a man backing down a plank out of the front door of a
Fourth Street residence.
It was Garrett Crouse and his gray horse, and when the neighbors saw it
they turned from the scene of desolation about them and warmly applauded
both beast and master. This is how a Williamsport man got home during
the flood and saved his horses. It took him five hours and cost him
twenty-five dollars.
Mr. James R. Skinner, of Brooklyn, N. Y., arrived home after a series of
remarkable adventures in the floods at Williamsport.
"I went to Williamsport last Thursday," said Mr. Skinner, "and on Friday
the rain fell as I had never seen it fall before. The skies seemed
simply to open and unload the water. The Susquehanna was booming and
kept on rising rapidly, but the people of Williamsport did not seem to
be particularly alarmed. On Saturday the water had risen to such a
height that the people quit laughing and gathered along the sides of the
torrent with a sort of awe-stricken curiosity.
"A friend of mine, Mr. Frank Bellows, and myself went out to see the
grand spectacle, and found a place of observation on the Pennsylvania
Railroad bridge. Great rafts of logs were swept down the stream, and now
and then a house would be brought with a crash against the bridge.
Finally, one span gave way and then we beat a hasty retreat. By wading
we reached the place of a man who owned a horse and buggy. These we
hired and started to drive to the hotel, which is on the highest ground
in the city. The water was all the time rising, and the flood kept
coming in waves. These waves came with such frequency and volume that we
were forced to abandon the horse and buggy and try wading. With the
water up to our armpits we got to an outhouse, and climbing to the top
of it made our way along to a building. This I entered through a window,
and found the family in the upper stories. Floating outside were two
canoes, one of which I hired for two dollars and fifty cents. I at once
embarked in this and tried to paddle for my hotel. I hadn't gone a
hundred feet when I capsized. Going back, I divested myself of my coat,
waistcoat, shoes, and stockings. I tried again to make the journey, and
succeeded very well for quite a distance, when the canoe suddenly struck
something and over it went. I managed to hold the paddle and the canoe,
but everything else was washed away and lost. After a struggle in the
water, which was running like a mill-race, I got afloat again and
managed to lodge myself against a train of nearly submerged freight
cars. Then, by drawing myself against the stream, I got opposite the
hotel and paddled over. My friend Bellows was not so fortunate. The
other canoe had a hole in it, and he had to spend the night on the roof
of a house.
"The trainmen of the Pennsylvania road thought to sleep in the cars, but
were driven out, and forced to take refuge in the trees, from which they
were subsequently rescued. The Beaver Dam mill was moved from its
position as though it was being towed by some enormous steam tug. The
river swept away everything that offered it any resistance. Saturday
night was the most awful I ever experienced. The horrors of the flood
were intensified by an inky darkness, through which the cries of women
and children were ceaselessly heard. Boatmen labored all night to give
relief, and hundreds were brought to the hotel for safety.
"On Sunday the waters began to subside, and then the effects were more
noticeable. All the provision stores were washed out completely, and one
of the banks had its books, notes, and greenbacks destroyed. I saw rich
men begging for bread for their children. They had money, but there was
nothing to be bought. This lack of supplies is the greatest trouble that
Williamsport has to contend with, and I really do not see how the people
are to subsist.
"Sunday afternoon Mr. C. H. Blaisdell, Mr. Cochrane, a lumberman and
woodman, a driver, and myself started in a wagon for Canton, with
letters and appeals for assistance. The roads were all washed away, and
we had to go over the mountains. We had to cut our way through the
forests at times, hold the wagon up against the sides of precipices,
ford streams, and undergo a thousand hardships. After two days of travel
that even now seems impossible, we got into Canton more dead than alive.
The soles were completely gone from my boots, and I had on only my
night-shirt, coat, and trousers, which I had saved from the flood. A
relief corps was at once organized, and sent with provisions for the
sufferers. But it had to take a roundabout way, and I do not know what
will become of those poor people in the meantime."
Mr. Richard P. Rothwell, the editor of the New York _Engineering and
Mining Journal_, and Mr. Ernest Alexander Thomson, the two men who rowed
down the Susquehanna River from Williamsport, Pa., to Sunbury, and
brought the first news of the disaster by flood at Williamsport, came
through to New York by the Reading road. The boat they made the trip in
was a common flat-bottom rowboat, about thirteen feet long, fitted for
one pair of oars. There were three men in the crew, and her sides were
only about three inches above the water when they were aboard. The third
was Mr. Aaron Niel, of Phoenixville, Pa. He is a trotting-horse owner.
Mr. Thomson is a tall, athletic young man, a graduate of Harvard in '87.
He would not acknowledge that the trip was very dangerous, but an idea
of it can be had from the fact that they made the run of forty-five
miles in four and one-half hours.
"My brother, John W. Thomson, myself, and Mr. Rothwell," he said, "have
been prospecting for coal back of Ralston. It began to rain on Friday
just after we got into Myer's Hotel, where we were staying. The rain
fell in torrents for thirty-two hours. The water was four or five feet
deep in the hotel when the railroad bridge gave way, and domestic
animals and outhouses were floating down the river by scores. The bridge
swung around as if it were going to strike the hotel. Cries of distress
from the back porch were heard, and when we ran out we found a parrot
which belonged to me crying with all his might, 'Hellup! hellup!
hellup!' My brother left for Williamsport by train on Friday night. We
followed on foot. There were nineteen bridges in the twenty-five miles
to Williamsport, and all but three were gone.
"In Williamsport every one seemed to be drinking. Men waited in rows
five or six deep in front of the bars of the two public houses, the Lush
House and the Concordia. We paid two dollars each for the privilege of
sleeping in a corner of the bar-room. Mr. Rothwell suggested the boat
trip when we found all the wagons in town were under water. The whole
town except Sauerkraut Hill was flooded, and it was as hard to buy a
boat as it was to get a cab during the blizzard. It was here we met
Niel. 'I was a raftsman,' he said, 'on the Allegheny years ago, and I
may be of use to you,' and he was. He sat in the bow, and piloted, I
rowed, and Mr. Rothwell steered with a piece of board. Our danger was
from eddies, and it was greatest when we passed the ruins of bridges. We
started at 10.15, and made the run to Montgomery, eighteen miles, in one
and a quarter hours. In places we were going at the rate of twenty miles
an hour. There wasn't a whole bridge left on the forty-five miles of
river. As we passed Milton we were in sight of the race-track, where
Niel won a trot the week before. The grand stand was just toppling into
the water.
"I think I ought to row in a 'Varsity crew now," Mr. Thomson concluded.
"I don't believe any crew ever beat our time."