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P- SECOND PART.
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Johnstown as it Looks on
the First Anniversary
of the Flood.
A RESURRECTED CITT.
Beconstruction Progressing
Bapidly, but Not Half
Finished Yet.
A DAY OF SAD MEMOBIES.
Saturday Will Eecall the Scenes and
Incidents of Thai Eeign
of Terror
IS THE GREEN VALLEY OF DEATH.
Pictorial Remembrances of the Wrecked
Town, and Illustrations of.
Rebuilding.
THE PAST AXD PEESEXT COMPARED.
Descriptions cr Johnstown as It Was Effort the Flood,
the Day Atlcr the Deluge, and
as It Sow Is.
DETAILS OF THE SEW BCILDI5G0K EiCH STEEET
Saturday trill be the first anniversary of
the Johnstown food. It will be a day of
sad memories in the Coneinaugh Valley,
and its stricken people will again bend low
in their anguish. Thousands of aching
hearts will bleed anew. The wealth of a
universe was showered upon the survivors
of Johnstown, and kind hands have rebnilt
many a dwelling, but nothing of all this
will bring relief to the multitude of hearts
that still pkad
For the touch of a Tanlshed hand,
Tbe sound of a voice that is still.
Sunshine may make Saturday a beautiful
day, but no sunbeam will quite pierce the
somber shades of a grief such as wells up
from the souls of hundreds of bereaved fam
ilies. The flowers of spring are painting
the word "Besergam" all over the Cone
maugh hills, but deeper yet are planted the
weeds or mourning. Birds of the neighbor
ing mountains may make the air noisy
with their blithe melody, but even that very
air will be resonant with a more sorrowful
cadence. It will be the sigh of this orphan,
tbat widow. Ton lonely father, or the soli
tary sister. From 20,000 relatives of nearly
3,000 dead these sighs will come on Satur
day. What a heartrending rythm the air
of heaven would contain if they were all
audible !
Could Memory be No More!
"Forget! Forget! Forget!" Everyman,
woman and child in Johnstown is saying
that. And a merciful Providence is help
ing them to forget it all. Human happiness
would be forever wrecked if the survivors of
the Conemaueh Valley walked from day to
day with the living picture of the flood's
ruin be tore them. To this end those re
markable scenes of bustle and activity com
mon in Johnstown the past seven or eight
months will go right on uninterruptedly on
Saturday. There will be no cessation of
toil. If possible, the people will work all
the harder.
"Why not stop work for the day, and go to
their homes to spend the hours in quiet?
vou ask. Homes! There were no homes
left the great mass of the people. Every
hour, every minute, spent in their new
dwellings, amid the new things, only shows
more plainly the empty chairs and the loss
of all that was near and dear.
Then why not go to the graves of the lost
ones and spend the day in planting flowers
there? Graves! "Why in Grandview Ceme
tery to-day there are nearly 800 people
buried who were unknown victims of the
flood. Several hundred more victims were
never found. Their bones are still beneath
the sand of the treacherous rivers. There
are practically but few known tombs to
plant flowers upon !
Toll That Help Obliterate.
""Work! "Work! "Work! Forget! Forget!"
"When people awake in Johnstown on
Saturday morning that is what they will
repeat to themselves.
And again the world reaches out 'its hand
to Johnstown this time to drop low about
sacred thoughts and memories the veil of
human sympathy.
And the people in striving to "forget"
have wrought a great change in Johnstown
in one year's time. Their work shows good
results. In reviewing the events of tbe ter
rible disaster and the work of rebuilding
the wrecked city, The Dispatch this
morning separates the article on the subject
in three parts, viz Johnstown as it was
prior to the flood, Johnstown as it was the
day after the calamity, and Johnstown as it
stands to-day. L. E. Stofiel.
IN ITS ZENITH.
THE PROSPERITY OF JOHNSTOWN BE
FORE THE CALAMITY.
A City of Wonderful Growth An Industrial
Gateway to Pittsburg How the Pur
roDBdlnff Boroughs Thrived Substantial
Buildings and a Large Population.
Johnstown was always a marvel. It was
a city built in a mountain fastness. There
were no wide plains on which its streets
could be laid out in checker-board fas'jion,
broad acreage for its easy expansion in after
years. The little delta upon which it was
founded lay helplessly locked among tower
ing hills. It was almost entirely hemmed
in by these great rock-ribbed heights.
Approached from any point of the com
pass, it was a revelation to strangers.
Bound eastward, the tourist, first passing
through the gorge of the Conemaugh as it
forms the Packsaddla in Chestnnt TIM.
thenlplnnging into the shades of Laurel I
Hilif isied with wonder if that could be an I
iron mill, pointing to the black Cambria
smokestacks as he caught a glimpse of them
from the gap at Sang Hollow, where the
train comes out of the mountain.
A Gateway to Pittsburg.
Descending the Allegheniesthe traveler
from the East watched the tortuous wind
ings of the Little Conemaugh as it dashed
and foamed westward down the great mouuJf
ain slope. Nothing can be wilder than the
valley below where South Fork creek enters
the river, and there, within a few miles of
Johnstown, the traveler's first thoughts
were about fishing and hunting. He least
expected to find there a bustling, prosperous
city, and presently, when, from the gap at
Mineral Point, he saw church steeples a
score of them large business blocks and
monster manufacturing establishments, as
tonishment was his only expression. To
create and rear a metropolis there in that
wild, and, lrom its geographical environ
ments, almost impenetrable region, has
struck many a man as a triumph.
"Why, I thought the first iron mills we
would see were at Pittsburg," an English
tourist was once heard to say as the train
stopped at Johnstown, "and here they are
planted down among these mountains."
"Aye," was the reply, "but Johnstown is
the gateway to Pittsburg."
How Is Mad Grown.
On Friday morning, May 31, 1889, Johns
town was tbe center of population of about
30,000. The town was incorporated in 1831,
and started out with less than 700 residents.
From its very inception it was an important
place in the affairs of Pennsylvania. The
eligible passes of the mountains which sur
rounded it made it the basis of operations
in bnilding the old State canal and the cele
brated Allegheny Portage Eailroad. When
these joint enterprises began running they
brought mnch of the through travel of the
United States through Johnstown. The
town was where the Portage railroad ended
and the western division of the canal com
menced. It thus became the depot of traffic
and travel. Nor was this condition of things
changed much after the Pennsylvania Bail
road was built and the canal abandoned.
The projectors of the new railroad enterpfise
believed they would lose nothing by leaving
Hollidaysburg to the south and Ebensburg
to the north of their main line, but they
could not afford to slight Johnstown in this
manner. That town had too much business
and had become too powerful to be passed
by.
An Impetus to Industry.
From the building of the Cambria Iron
Works in 1853 dates the genuine progress of
Johnstown. The surrounding mountains
were rich in coal, ore and limestone, and the
beginning of the work of constructing the
Pennsylvania Eailroad gave an immense
impetus to this industry. It was evidently
foreseen what the influence of railroads on
the iron business would be, and Johnstown
proposed to be ready for the iron age. In-
ripprl far Tl!llr n IRAQ tliA nnil nfttio
mountains in that neighborhood had been
--, - .. . wv ...w v.wv v. .u
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'
lOtVEE END OF JOHNSTOWN AFTEE THE FLOOD.
worked by charcoal furnaces. It was in
1852 that the Cambria Iron Company was
chartered, but it was a kw years before such
an immense establishment as the projectors
proposed could be made to run smoothly and
with any reasonable promise of financial re
turn. The man who finally did make the
enterprise a success was Hon. Daniel J.
Morrell. It was while servinc at its head
that he was elected to Congress, and after
ward to the Presidency of the American
Iron and Steel Association.
A Great Enterprise.
By 1871 the Cambria works was not sur
passed in size by any of the mills at Pitts
burg. Since then it has steadily grown.
At the time of the flood the concern covered
dozens of acres of ground, operated 35 miles
of railroad tracks about its buildings,
worked its own coal mines and coke works
ovens, and owned 1,500 cars on which to
move raw and finished materials. More
than 7,000 men were in the company's em
ploy at this date one year ago. Nearly a
mile above their main factories the company
also operated the Gauticr Steel Works, and
tbe buildings were enormous in size.
With such an army of workmen, and with
nearly 1,000 tenement houses owned
by the company and rented to their em
ployes, this cornapation of course contrib
uted immeasurably to the growth of Johns
town. Owing to the extreme narrowness of
the valley at this point, and the smallness
of the delta on which the business portion
of Johnstown is built, thepopulation spread
to the neighboring hillsides lor homes. Then
they crossed over the summits of some of
these hills and built their houses in the ad
jacent valleys.
Snrronndlna; Boroughs Created.
Thus were the surronnding boroughs
created. They grew and flourished. Cluster
ing all abont Johnstown they made the
parent city their market place. Though
different in name, they were all one at heart.
Cambria's men lived in all of the boroughs,
and though the separate town Councils re!
fused to consolidate, that pretty little pnrk
on Johnstown's main street was the prome
nade and common property of all the 30,000
people in the eight or ten miles of Cone
maugh Valley.
Of these surrounding boroughs Conemaugh
borough was the most prosperous. It was
incorporated in 1849 and was thickly settled
up to Green Hill. The population at the
time of the flood was supposed to be about
3.200 souls. Still hisher up the river iB
Woodvale. It was laid out in 1854. Here
were located the works of the Johnstown
Manufacturing Company, and the Chemical
Company. People lived
Iu 300 Mine Homes.
East Conemaugh and Franklin, half
a mile farther up the river, were in turn
suburbs for Woodvale. Coming back to
Johnstown we find Kernsville on the south
shore of Stony creek. It was verv thickly
populated at the time of the flood, Morris
street being a business thoroughfare, with
all its cross streets thickly settled. Kerns
ville was to Johnstown proper what Alle
gheny City is to Pittsburg. Below Johns
town city was Millville, incorporated in
1658. Here are the rolling mills and the
foundry. On Prospect Hill $re located
hundreds of workmen's homes. On the
western bank of Conemaugh river lay Cam
bria, which was surveyed in 1853 and incor
porated in 1862. Its residences were made
up entirely of the company's employes.
Cambria was reputed to have had at the time
THE PITTSBURG
of the flood a population of 2,200. That in
cluded Morrellville.
Jobnstown's Substantial Character.
As the market place for this large
population the heart of Johnstown was
most substantially built up. Large stores
lined Washington, Main and Clinton
streets. The iron company put up large
brick buildings as offices. Opposite
stood the Cambria Library, a gift to the citi
zens in 1881. It was fitted up elegantly, had
commodious reading rooms and 8,000 vol
umes of standatd books. Close by stood the
Cambria Club House, another handsome in
stitution of the iron company. In the li
brary and club house was inaugurated a
system of popular education in 1881 for the
benefit of the workmen. Competent in
structors taught free classes of mechanical
and free-hand drawing, writing, mathemat
ics, chemistry, geology and political econ
omy. Prosperity took many other forms. A
hospital was erected on Prospect Hill in
1886. Large, handsome store blocks, were
built three and four stories high, and some
of the stateliest residences of which Western
Pennsylvania could boast ornamented that
part of to wn known as the Point. Hundreds
of th2 smaller artisans had got to that point
where they had built and now owned their
own homes. A degree of thrift and prosper
ity marked the whole population. Several
banks were snpported, and back of the busi
ness men was a solidity that promised much.
Ann thia WIB
day May 31, 1889.
Jinu mis was tionnstown at tne dawn of
THE DESTROYING GIANT.
THE TREMENDOUS POWER THAT LURKED
IN SOUTH FORK RESERVOIR.
Weight nnd Velocity of the Vast Body of
Water Greater Than Nlnsara Dow it
Crashed Woodrnlo Out of Existence und
Descended Upon Johnstown.
For several days there had been heavy
rains in the Allegheny Mountains. But on
Thursday night, May 30, began that phe
nomenal rainfall which, lasting several
hours, resulted in swelling -every mountain
stream to enormons proportions. The old
canal reservoir, known as Lake Conemaugh,
lay close to the water-shed, and into it
poured all the surplus of the week's rain.
The lake, although discharging its best
through a contracted spill-way, gradually
arose at the rate of a loot an hour for several
hours before the break. The water at its
normal level lay seven or eight feet below
the crest of the dam, so that by 2:30 on
Friday afternoon the stream was level with
the crest of the dam and began to flow over
the top of it. Calamity then seemed certain.
It was apparent that no earth dam was
capable of sustaining such a vast body1 of
water, or oj long remaining solid with
streamlets running over it.
Tbe Giant Unchanged.
The great dam gave way at 3 o'clock.
Eye witnesses say tbat it burst with a loud
report like thunder.
-A year has passed, and the grass is now
! "l' '' ' "'i miTi ni-- urn m - r i . i.mi .,i ...- . : r. - . r.. .
PITTSBURG-, THURSDAY, MAT 29, 1890.
growing on the bed of that reservoir. Walk
ing quietly over it, it is almost impossib.2
to conceive the gigantic power which was
set loose from its forest-clad sides that
afternoon. At its normal condition this
basin held 480,000,000 cnbio feet of water,
but at the break it contained nearly 640,
000,000 cubic feet, or say 20,000t000 net
tons. How vast a bodv of water this is will
be better appreciated by comparing it with
Niagara Falls. The discharge over the falls
is in the neighborhood of 18,000,000 cubic
feet per -minute.
An Awful Force,
It would therefore take nearly 35 minutes
for Niagara Falls to discharge an equal
body of water. The reservoir was emptied,
all but the last harmless drippings, in .just
about that time, so that during its continu
ance a body of water substantially equal to
the vast flood of Niagara Falls was pouring
through the 429 feet gap in the dam. The
to'al energy communicated to the water,
Which had to eTMPnd Unslf in onmn wav
before the water could come to rest, and
which was in fact nearly all expended be-
BAFT OF "WRECKAGE ABOVE THE STONE BRIDGE.
Sketched by The Dispatch Artist Saturday, June 1, 1889.
tween the dam and Johnstown bridge, was
the inconceivably vast aggregate represented
by 20,000,000 tons falling 400 feet.
The Destruction Beelns.
With every inch and foot of progress this
terrible force increased. Engineers say that
under this theory the water would have had
a velocity of about 100 miles an hour. That,
due to tbe 160-leet fall of Niagara Falls, is
about 70 miles per hour. So that, allowing
for all frictional losses, the man who re
ceived the direct blow of water had about
the same chances of escaping alive as he
would have had had he received a blow
from Niagara Falls itself.
Down the valley of the Conemaugh it
swept. Mineral Point was entirelvwiped out.
East Conemaugh was almost depopulated
and every building swept away. Of the
300 or 400 houses in Woodvale but one was
left, that bein thejarge flouring mill. The
whole end of it" was wrecked. Over 200
dwellings and two scores of stores in Cone
maugh borough were picked up and dashed
to pieces. Intermingled with all this wreck
age were the fragments of half a dozen rail
road bridges, the iron from several freight
carsj whole sections of passenger coaches,
while the water had actually played "foot
ball" with 30 locomotives. In and among
all this ruin hundreds of people struggled
for their lives. And every minute marked
a dying gasp of some.
Bearing on its breast this awfnl mass of
debris and carrying to death these hundreds
of human beings, the flood reached Johns
town proper at either 4 o'clock or 4:10. And
in 15 minutes Johnstown too was a wreck.
Street after street succumbed. Block after
block went to pieces. The gloom of night
settled down upon a ruined city.
What the dawn of day on Saturday dis
closed is given in another section of this ar
ticle. THE EAILROAD BEBOTLT.
Tho Qnlck Kocovery or tbe P. E. K., From
Its Losses Along the Concmnugb.
A million dollars would hardly cover the
loss of the Pennsylvania Eailroad between
SouthFork station and Sang Hollow. Tracks,
it will be remembered, were washed away by
the mile, costly bridges were broken to
CLEARING AtVAY THE WEECE: AT THE STONE BRIDGE.
Sketched by The Dispatch Artist Thursday, Juno 6, 1889.
pieces, and hundreds of cars smashed to
splinters and more than 30 locomotives
ruined. The traffic of the line was delayed
for nearly one month.
All this damage has been repaired. The
bridges between Johnstown and South Fork
station have been constructed entirely of
stone, in design and shape much like the
great stone bridge which withstood the
flood at Johnstown. New roadbeds have
been built, and much of the land, filled in
several feet deep by the sand of the inunda
tion, has been reclaimed with steam shovels.
The Pennsylvania Eailroad in that region
is solider than it ever was. It took nearly
all year, however, to effect this change, and
the tents and huts of the hundreds of labor
ers grew to be a familiar sight along the
Conemaugh. ,
THE AWFUL BLIGHT.
Johnstown as it Appeared on the
Morning After the Flood.
DESOLATION ON EVERY BIDE.
Two-Thirds of the City Bereft of Its
Homes and Business Blocks.
A BARREN WASTE D0WH AT THE P0IHT.
The Blockade of Wreckage oa llain Street aaa the
Knln Eierywhere.
Washington street parallels the river.
Originally there stood between it and the
I stream the B. & O. freight yards, storage
depots and freight sheds, besides a couple of
small hotels, the Opera House, and Wood,
Morrell & Co.'s big store. They weie all
washed away except the store, and as shown
by illustrations, that was partially de
stroyed. Not a vestige was left on the street
of Turner Hall or the Mansion House.
Three squares of this street, from Clinton to
Walnut, were densely populated, but its
70 saloons, its many Bhops, its neat
little restanrants, and all the dwellings were
swept away. Nothing was left of the Pub
lic Library but a heap of jumbled bricks.
All the books were destroyed, and the li
brarian, Mrs. Hirst, was lost. The Western
Union telegraph office hard by was obliter
ated, and its heroine, Mrs. Ogle, went down
with it. The iron bridge to the Pennsylva
nia Eailroad and the wooden bridge behind
the company store were both snapped asun
der as though made of paper. From this
place clear down to the Point all was a chaotic
level of wreckage on the morning after the
flood,
AT THE FABE.
Locust street presented an odd appearance
on the Saturday morning succeeding the
deluge. It parallels Washington street one
square farther bactc. A large number of its.
own buildings withstood the shock, but the
thoroughfare was literally jammed with the
wreckage from other streets, and this more
than anything else damaged the houses
along Locust. Yet in Harry Zimmerman's
livery stable here 30 horses perished. Two
or three wooden houses opposite were miss
ing, and a large one leaned for many months
at a dangerous angle. The group of brick
residences in the rear of the Methodist
church were badly knocked in and scraped.
They nearly all lost bay windows orporches.
Mr. Frohneizer s home across the street was
demoralized in the front, and several more
gaps and breaks in the line of dwellings
bring the visitor to what was once the city
park. Here stood 35 trees once, the trunks
of which were as large around as a big
man's body. Everyone was wrenched out
by the roots. None were left, and the
grassy plot was covered deep with wreck
age. Not a building was left standing on
the north side of the park, and from Frank
lin street to Locust is only a remembrance
so far
cerned.
as the original buildings are con-
an Awful spectacle.
Main street was an awful spectacle on
Saturday morning, June 1. East of the
park the business buildings on this thor
oughfare remained standing, with the ex
ception of here and there where a weaker
structure had departed, leaving a gap to tell
the story. But it seemed as though the
street had become a vast and ghastly sewer.
Wreckage lay along its whole length.packed
in solidly from sidewalk to sidewalk, walled
tightly against the buildings on either side,
and rising in its ugly mass to the middle of
the second-story windows, in some instances
being level with the eaves of the smaller
houses. In other words, when you walked
over the surface of the debris on Main
street, yon walked at such an elevation that
DISPATCH
to look in any of the, second-story windows
of the remaining tiuildings beside you, it
was necessary to stoop; while here and
there, branching suddenly to the right or
left, you could continue to promenade, upon
the housetops. "Under this mountain of
spars, timbers, iron rods and beams, broken
furniture, pianos, stoves, freight cars, etc.,
there lay corpse upon corpse. Here pro
truded from the ruin a human arm, there a
foot, and early on that Saturday morning it
required care to keep from crushing in the
blackened head of some body with, your
feet. Walking, jumping, climbing and
hopping over this uneven flooring, 10, 12
and 15 feet above the buried pavement, it
was possible on that sorrowing morning to
see what Main street looked like.
ACEES OF DEBRIS.
Beginning at Adams street, 'where Main
street starts, the view may extend westward.
Feeder is the first cross street. Here and
there a frame building is lying on its side or
twisted completely around. Under your
feet are sectional parts of houses, which
drifted up into the street from the back
water of last night- Eailroad street, as seen
from the corner, is a mere shadow on one
side and nothing on the other. A hiatus of
many acres is literally stocked with debris.
Henderson &Anderson'B fnrniture store,
Cover's livery stable and a score of pretty
homes and neat shops are in the ruin at
this point. This street was in the direct
path of the flood, and on all sides of Main
street houses were literally hewn down. At
the corner of Main and Bedford streetsstood
Swank's brick block, four stories high. It
was filled with agricultural implements and
hardware. A two-story brick was mortised
in the north end, where the streets form an
acute angle. A grocery occupied the ground
floor and the Eerald was printed upstairs.
Both of these substantial brick buildings
were razed to the ground.
STOBES ALL OtTTTED.
The roof of the Swank block was splin
tered all over the site of Daniel McLaugh
lin's mansion. On the southwest corner of
these two streets was a frame house which
its taller brick neighbors crushed into a
jelly, a family under it all.
Louther & Green's block opposite had a
corner knocked out from pavement to cor
nice, the break enlarging the higher It got,
laying bare the exhibits of McMullin's bil
liard rooms and Burgraff 's photograph gal
lery on the top stories. The Hager block,
straight across Main street, was only fin
ished and occupied the previous March,
and the flood left one-third of it in ruins,
This, falling, destroyed Geis & Schry's new
store. Farther along the Merchants' Hotel
is reached. Part of the rear was thrown
down, tatting with it the porch and two
guests. The entire building had to be torn
down, so badly damaged was it. The next
building'was also
DAMAGED BEYOND BKDEMPTION,
and Luckhardt's frame close by was almost
completely demolished. The south side of
the street had the largest stores in Johns
town. The walls were left solid, but owing
to the height of the driftwood all plate
glass fronts were crushed in, and the water
and wreckage freely floated in through store
rooms and second-story apartments. Thus
every store establishment was wrecked. If
stocks were not swept entirely out of exist
ence, they were too badly water-soaked to
be of any value afterward. There was no
HO"W THE
such thing as salvage in Johnstown, as
there often is in cases of big conflagrations
or explosions. The destruction was com
plete to a nicety.
IN AN AVBT SHAPE.
John Thomas' building at this point de
fied the elements and its roof furnished a
substantial perch for 100 people on the black
Friday night. All around it, the wreckage
piled to the depth of 25 feet. On the corner
of Main and Franklin streets the Opera
House rested in an awry position. It had
floated there clear from Washington street.
Back of this lot is the postoffico on Franklin
street. The lront was knocked out of it.
The Tribune office in the second story had a
bit of sidewalk hustled out. type pied and
presses damaged. John Dibert & Co.'s
bank on the sonthwestern corner stood. The
park beginn at the northwest corner of the
street here, and Frazier's drug store, which
faces it, lost a part of its walls. On tbat
morning after the disaster a box car and an
old frame house occupied the middle of the
street. They had been driven there by the
watery catapult from South Fork. A few
doors lower down the First National Bank
stood staunchly against the pressure.
THE nEABT OF TOWN.
Here is Alma Hall, four stories in
height, a store and gas office below, law
offices and the lodge rooms higher up. On
the night of the flood over 300 refugees
found shelter in this building, and the
thrilling story of their awful suspense
there, put in amidst utter darkness, has be
come familiar to the whole world. It was
perhaps1 the second strongest building in
town, and was not damaged except by mud
and water staining the walls and furniture.
From Dr. Lohman's residence, at the park
corner, to Market street, the north side of
Main was left a blank. The doctor's hand
some residence was only slightly disfigured,
although at the time it looked bad enough.
John Fulton's spacious residence on tbe
next lot was entirely demolished. The pub
lic building which contained Council cham
bers, an office for the burgess, the head
quarters of the Police Department and the
lockup, was leveled to the ground, even
the bricks never having been found. Twenty
feet of watJer in the lockup strangled the
only prisoner there, a man named John Mc
Kee. Then came another extensive blank
on either side of the street, where a large
nnmber of substantial houses were swept
away.
BEAUTIFUL HOMES BUINED.
The remaining squares along Main street
comprised the finest brick house" which
Johnstown, or even Western Pennsylvania,
outside the large cities, could boast of. A
rod of the back wall of the large Cambria
Clubhouse wandered away. Jacob Freund'a
mansion lost the rear end nnd a quarter sec
tion of the upper side. At least 20 of these
beautiful homes in the immediate vicinity
passed down into the creat raft of wreckage
at the stone bridee. A picture of Colonel
J. P. Linton's ruined home is printed with
this article to illustrate tbe character of the
losses in this end of town. It was left stand
ing utterly alone, houses by tbe score having
been swept away lrom all its sides.
Here the sweep of the flood was greatest.
Look around you, and on Saturday morning
you would have seen nothing but acres and
acres of open territory. They were carpeted
with a single layer of bricks, or else piled
several feet deep with' the sand that came
down with both Conemaugh river and Stony
SQ0P iWfci Jkm$rr
creek, which here at the Point form a con
fluence. A PICTURE OF CHAOS.
Not a building or landmark remained to
show where thousands lived the prrvioos
day. From the Point at tbe stone bridge
east for many squares the scene was squalid
in the extreme. Fires usually leave charred
walls to mark the spot, and even earth
quakes left the tall chimneys of Lisbon
standing. But here on the lower end of
Johnstown nothing was left. The vast void
made one ache. Whole blocks of buildings
had been swept away. Then the sand filled
JReporUn' Tenit a Tear Ago.
ud the streets, and even paved roadways
could not be found for months afterward.
Elsewhere in this Johnstown anniversary
article is reproduced a photograph of a
bird's eye view of this lower section of the
city as it stands to-day, rebuilt and rebuild
ing with a large number of frame dwellings.
To get a more forcible realization of the
resurrection there, remember, while you are
looking at the picture, that on the morning
after the flood the whole territory included
in the picture was as level as your tennis
conrt or croquet ground, except a ragged
fringing of shanties and frame structures
along the bank of Stony creek, which in
some manner bad been spared, while solid
brick palaces melted down to doom.
CLINTON STREET SCABS.
Clinton street was built up principally
of stores from Washington to Main. The
upper floors of most of these were occupied
by families. In their midst was the princi
pal hotel of Johnstown, the Hnlbert House.
It was an imposing brick structure, but it
was picked up by the seething torrent and
dashed so completely to atoms that nothing
but a piece of the roof remained lying across
the cellar to notify visitors where the hos
telry formerly stood. Fifty-one guests and
attaches perished in the house, it will be re
membered. The falling and floating ruins
of this immense building sweeping against
others in the neighborhood is known to have
demolished half a dozen more structures.
One of these was McAteer's Hotel. The
loss of these buildings created a big gap on
Clinton street, on one side of which other
buildings, not so strong, remained standing.
Thus did some very strange things happen
in the Johnstown flood. Yet, all these
fi
LAND LAYS.
standing houses had their fronts knocked in
and goods destroyed.
BLIGHTED KERNVTLLE.
Go to the other side of Main street and
travel toward Kernville. There, hundreds
of houses left their moorings and floated
away. The destruction was great here
because the community is built along the
bank of Stony creek, and the houses are
mostly frames. The wreckage covered
acres there that morning. The "Unique
Eink was carried three-quarters of a mile
away from its foundations. Disleveled
trees, fragments of railroad cars, sections of
bouses, and a vast amount of drift of every
description lay scattered among the tombs of
Sandyvale Cemetery up here. Monuments
were broken down, headstones, landed in
the fojiage of treetops and the built mounds
over each and every grave leveled in com'
mon dust.
The architectural beauty of a town and
city layB as much in its churches as in other
public buildings or business blocks. Twenty
or more congregations had edifices of their
own in Johnstown. Many of them were
TfTier The DUpaich JVittcs Fas Wired From.
beautiful, several imposing in design and
symmetry. The First M.E.Church, being a
lofty strncture entirely ot stone, stood like
a bulwark against the water, and saved the
parsonage, just adjoining, with ten or 15
persons enclosed, including the pastor and
his family.
CHURCHES LITTERALLY ANNIHILATED.
The German Lutheran Church, worth $30,
000, was totally annihilated. Not even a
shingle of it was left within a mile of its
foundations, Eev. J. P. Lichtenburg and
his family of four went down with their
home, and it was months before their bodies
were found. They lived in Johnstown only
a month.
The briok house of David Cover was
driven against the St. John's Catholic
Church on Locust street. Mrs. M. Woolf,
who occupied half of the dwelling, was
baking bread at her stove at the time. The
house took fire, and the church was ignited.
There with the water surging half way up
to the roof the two buildings were actually
consumed bv fire. The parochial residence
which adjoined was also destroyed by the
conflagration which lasted until midnight
Some days later the charred walls of the
church had to be blown up with dynamite
to keep the building from falling on people.
The church was elegantly furnished, and
a loss of $150,000 was the result. The con
vent at tbe corner of Clifton and Locust
streets, which was an adjunct to this church,
was almost whollv demolished. The escape
of the Slaters of Charity from this structure
Continued on Twtfth Page,
PAGES9T0I2.
THOSE WHO PERISHED
List of the Dead "Who Have Been
Identified Up to Date.
UNKNOWN COUNTED BY HUNDREDS
The Estimate oftneioss of Life Will Hot
Fall Bhori of 3,000.
H0WH0EGUE EEC0KDS AEB C0HTIHUED
Eednctta la tls Wortinj Pores of tat Cambria Irsa
WorbSererelyFelt.
Even a year after the flood, it is impossible
to state exactly how many people perished.
The official records do not tell the tale, for
in the first few days of the intense excite
ment many persons recovered bodies of
their relatives, buried them themselves
and then moved to distant places without
reporting the facts. In other instances
whole families of foreigners were lost, and
being comparatively unknown in a
large manufacturing community like
Johnstown, nobody has since inquired
how many were in the family or
how many of their bodies are yet
undiscovered. The fact that bodies
are still being dug out of the
sand and debris every week shows
that there are very many bones yet
unearthed. Many people believe that scores
and hundreds of corpses still lay buried by
the five and seven feet or mud which has
filled in the bed of Conemaugh river and
Stony creek.
ITEABLY 3,000 DROWNED.
Eev. D. J. Beale, D. D., one of the his
torians of Johnstown's calamity, says in his
book that nearly 4,000 persons were drowned.
J. J. McLaunn, of Hamsburg, the
author of a magnificent vol
ume describing Jobnstown's woe, puts
the total about 3,200. He adds: "The official
report of the 8 morgues show 2,253 bodies
were handled. Another basis of comparison
is the membership of the churches, The pas
tor of one church with 600 communicants
counted the loss at 200, another with a mem
bership of 300 gave 100 as lost. This is not
counteracted by the estimate of several of
tbe Cambria Iron Company's foremen that
1,000 of the 5,000 employes on the rolls were
drowned. They were mostly strong men, and
a loss of one in five in such a class might
mean a much greater loss in the general
population. There were only 3,000 ot the
5,000 former employes of the Cambria Iron
Company remaining. Some of the host pre
sumed to have gone away immediately after
the calamity to other places may, like Ten
nyson's mute-steered dead, have gone 'up
ward with the flood.' "
The new directory of Johnstown, pub
lished in September, by C. B. Clark, of Al
toona, is not far off this estimate. At the
timeof the flood the whole edition, which
was in a book bindery, was lost. From the
proof sheets the names were obtained and
printed as they were before the flood, with a
special record ot those lost. The number of
drowned is put at 3,500.
Messrs. Gibbs and Akers, of the Johns
town Tribune, believe the number of dead
will be under 3.000.
State Commissioner J. B. Scott says only
2,200 perished.
THE UNKNOWN DEAD.
The number of unknown dead Is still
large. Last November the work of raising
the corpses from temporary graveyards all
along the Conemaugh "Valley was completed
and the bodies reinterred in Grandview
"Cemetery at Johnstown. Up to this time
about 800 unknown dead are buried in this
cemetery. In June the last morgue was
closed. Since then "Undertaker John Hen
derson has continued the record of bodies
recovered. As each body comes to him he
enters a full description on the public
record, numbers the description in numeri
cal order, then buries the body, and on the
grave plants a stake bearing a number tally
ing with the book number. In this way a
complete description has been preserved of
most bodies, and with each grave numbered
it is possible to still reclaim lost ones.
Many bodies, however, were too far decayed
to give any description, and plenty of grave3
will never be aught else than "unknown."
But now, after a year's time, it is not likely
tbat many ol tne ouu unknown ones will ne
identified.
NAMES OF THE KNOWN DEAD.
A list of the known dead, corrected np to
this week with additions from Mr. John
Henderson's official list, is as follows:
ANDERSON, JOHN; Adams, Henry Clay;
Alexander, John G.: Alexander, Mrs. John
U.: Andrews, John, Sr.; Abler, August; Abler,
Miss Louisia; Abler, George: Alberter. Annie;
Alt, George;Alt.Mrs. George; Allison, Florence;
Alexander, Aurailar;; Akers, Alrar; Arthur,
Mrs. William; Albetter, Miss; Atkinson. John;
Auburey, Thomas; Abler. Louis; Abler, Lain;
Abler. Lena; Anderson, Samuel; Aubler. Kato;
Alberter, Mrs. Teresa: Amps. Mr.; Amps, Mis.;
Amps. Mary; Aaron, Mrs. H-B.; Aaron, son of
MM.H.B.
BRINKET, ELMER: Burns, John; Baldwin,
George; Barbor, Harry 8.; Brown. Peter.
Brown, Sadie; Brown, Emma; Butler, Sarah A.:
Bouus. William; Bending. Jessie; Bending;
Elizabeth; Barrett, James; Benford, Mrs. E. E.. .
Brennan, ; Brennan. ; Brennan, ; I
Bowman. Nellie; Brady, John; Bantly. William;-'
Bryan. William; Barnes. Lizzie; Brinker. Miss?
Bricker. Henry; Bickley, D. E,; Bnnkey, Dr. G;
C; Benshoff, Arthur; Benson, son of Reuben.
Boyle, Thomas-Bishop, Julius; Bagley, Will;
lam: Bradley, Thomas; Baumer, Little; Ben
shoff, Adam; Bantly. Mrs. William; Bantly:
child of William; Bowman. Charles;
Brindle. Mollle: Byrne. Ella; Brawler, Maggie.
Benford, son of Mrs. E. ,; Benford, Jennie or
Jessie; Brown, Mrs. (colored); Bruhm, Clans.;
Bryan. Elizabeth M.: Burkhart. Ma Mollle:
Boyer, Solomon; Blongh, Emanuel; Buchanan,
John R.; Bnchanan, R. L.; Beam, Cbarles;
Beam. Dr. L. T.; Bi-hof, Cbarles; Barley. Viola;
Bowman. .; Baker, Mrs. Notion; Brennan.
Mrs. Edward; Brennan, Mary: Brennan, ;
Benshoff, J. Q. A; Blair, Mrs.: Refiuke,
Cbarles: Beam. Dr. W. C; Beam. Mrs; W. C:
Batter. Charles F.; Benrord. Maria; Benford,
May: Bates, Mrs. Annie; Beck. Mrs. William;
Bracken, Kate; Bracken, Minnie; Bopp, Mamie;
Bitner, A. B.; Bowers, George; Balr, Rosa;
Bridgss, Emma; Bovle. Charles. Brawley, John;
Brawley, George; Brawley, Jacob; Buchanan,
Kate J.; Bending. Mrs.; Byers, Catberine; Bnr
ket, Frank;Brown, Peter: Barley, Mrs.:Bradly,
Mrs. Eliza; Beam, Roscoe: Bopp. Jacob;BIocn,
Louisa; Benicb, John C: Bairg. Charles; Boeh
ler, Annie: Barker, Mrs. Ed; Brady, Mrs. J.;
Bopp, Monacia; Bunting, Mrs.; Blough, 3. T.
CONSTABLE, PHILLIP; Clark, Mrs. J. B.;
Cronin, Daniel: Cox, James G.; Carlm,
Jonathan; Carroll, Thomas: Campbell, Peter;
Cbrlstman, Mrs. A. Cj Christie, A. C; Conmors,
Mrs. Mary; Craig. J. J.: Craig, Mrs. J. J.;
Cooper. Otbo; Cunz, Robbie; Cunzl Lydla; Coad,
John; Coad, Mrs. John; Coad. Willie; Carroll,
Rosie: Called, Annie; Clark, Thomas: Corniel
son, Maggie; Constable, JIrs.;CIark.Mrs. Owen;
Craig, Mrs. Catharine; Corr. Mrs. Sarah P.;
Creed. David; Cope, Mrs. Marcaret: Coleman.
Jessie; Craig. Christopher; Lraig. Annie: Cnl
llton, Mrs. Frank; Cooper, Mrs. (colored):Cush,
Mrs. P.; Cusb, P.. Sr.; Coutbamer, Mr.; Cosb.
Josepb: Cusb, J. Daniel; .Curry, Robert B.;
Coby, Mrs. Eliza; Chinaman; Chinaman: Casey,
William; Coster, W. II.: Clark. J. H.; Creed,
Eliza; Caduean. Mrs. William; Cadngan, Annie;
Cole, John; Conrad, Mrs. M.
DEVLIN, LIZZIE; Degnan, Mrs. John;
Davjs, Thomas: Driscoll, Jessie; Delancy,
Mrs.; Dougherty. Mary: Davis, Mrs. Aaron;
Davis, Mrs. Pblllio: Dobbins, Mrs. J. B: Davis,
M. L.: Davis, MaryiDimond. Frank; DeFranee,
Mrs. H. T.; Dunn, Mary; Diebl, Carrie: Dillon
James; Dibert, John: Dibert. Blanche; Downey,
Mrs. Mary: Davis, Frank: Drew, Mr. Mary,
Downs, Teresa: Dixon, Mrs. R.; Dyer, Mrs.;
Davis, Mrs. Walter: Davis. Miss Delia; Dernla,
August; Davis, William L.; Davis. Clara; De
Wald, Charles; Dimond, Mrs. Ann; Diller, Rev.
A. P.; Diller, Isaac; Diller, Mrs. Marlon; DW
nant, Lola; Daley, F. J.; Davis, Frederick;
Dowling. Mrs. M.: Dowlins; Catherine: Diller.
Jnlia: Duncan. Mrs. Dr.; Downs. Thomas,
Downs. Catberine: Dailey. Mrs. Ann; Dolau.
Micbael: Doyle, Maggie; Downs, Kate: Downs,
Teresa; Dorns, Ausust; Dnsrk. John; Dow, W,
F.: Day, John R.; Day, daughter of John B-,
Dorsey, John D.; Dougherty. Maggie; Dough,
erty, Mary; Davis, Mrs. Thomas; Davis. Beese-
h'uAJMoun, .-, .cans, mra. noan;,o- xvr:
!! vlfah Tnhn.W(ri Annio.lTlHi.. ft K .m. T.
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