The Johnstown Flood (33 page)

In the
North American Review,
in August 1889, in an article titled “The Lesson of Conemaugh,” the director of the U. S. Geological Survey, Major John Wesley Powell, wrote that the dam had not been “properly related to the natural conditions” and concluded: “Modern industries are handling the forces of nature on a stupendous scale…. Woe to the people who trust these powers to the hands of fools.”

It was, however, understandably difficult for the people of Johnstown ever to feel, like Cyrus Elder, that they too had been even partly to blame. Practically everyone felt that he had foreseen the coming catastrophe, and if he had not, like John Fulton, actually put anything down on paper, he, nonetheless, had been equally aware of the troubles with the South Fork dam and every bit as dubious about its future. That the members of the club were never required to pay for their mistakes infuriated nearly everyone in Johnstown and left a feeling of bitter resentment that would last for generations.

As for the club people, their summers at South Fork were over. The cottages sat high and dry along the vast mud flat which had been Lake Conemaugh and where, here and there, like the remains of some prehistoric age, stood the stumps of great trees that had been taken down more than fifty years earlier just before the dam had been built. By July grass had sprung up along South Fork Creek where it worked its way through the center of the old lake bed, and deer left tracks where they came down to drink.

For some time several cottages were occupied by Johnstown people. James McMillan, the plumber, and six or seven other men moved their families into the biggest of the houses, apparently with the consent of the owners, and, according to a notice in the
Tribune
at the end of July, the accommodations were as elegant as ever. But the owners themselves never came back, except for one, Colonel Unger, who not only returned, but lived out the rest of his life on the farm just above the remains of the dam. All the other property was broken up and sold off at a sheriff’s auction.

In Johnstown the Cambria works had started up again by mid July. It would be a long time before the furnaces were working to capacity, but nearly the full pay roll was being met and slowly things began to return to normal. Estimates were made on the total property damage (about $17 million). The banks opened. The Quicksteps were playing again. By August the Saturday night band concerts had been revived and a piano tuner had come to town. There was ice cream for sale; Haviland china was back on the shelves of those few stores that had been spared. A camera club was started, and the plumbers and steam fitters organized a union.

In September Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Carnegie came to town to see the flood damage, and before he left Carnegie had agreed to build a new library where the old one had been. In late fall the schools reopened.

New houses and shops were going up all over town. People who had fled the valley began coming back again. The Quinns were back by October, astonished to find how much had been accomplished and how bad the place still smelled. There was plenty of work still to be done, of course, and plenty of jobs, and it would stay that way for a long time. Just getting the place back to where it had been before would take five years or more.

But there were many who would leave Johnstown after the flood. For hundreds of people, like Victor Heiser, the disaster had deprived them of every meaningful connection with the place. Suddenly they were alone and there seemed no very strong reason for staying any longer, and particularly if they had ever had an ambition to see something of the world. Had his mother and father survived, Victor Heiser would have remained in Johnstown, probably, he would later speculate, to become a watchmaker. As it was, he left the valley within a year, and after working his way through medical school, spent most of his life as a public-health officer and physician, fighting disease around the world. He would also write a best-selling book on his experiences,
An American Doctor’s Odyssey,
and would be credited with saving perhaps two million lives.

There were others who could stay no longer because of the memory of what had happened. And David Beale was among those who left out of bitterness over an experience during the frantic days which had followed the disaster. In Beale’s case it had been a falling out with some of his congregation over the fact that he had turned the church into a morgue without authorization from the elders. There were plenty who rose to his defense, saying it had been the only intelligent and Christian thing to do under the circumstances and that somebody had to make the decision, but there were enough hard words exchanged to send Beale on his way to another charge in another town.

For years, too, there would be much speculation on how many of those people listed among the unfound dead were actually very much alive in some faraway place. It seemed reasonable enough to figure that some men, suddenly, in the first dim light of that terrible morning of June 1, had decided that here was an opportune time to quietly slip away to a new and better life. And if one of those names on the unknown list was somebody you had been close to, it was a whole lot pleasanter to think of him living on an apple farm in Oregon or tending bar in a San Francisco saloon than rotting away beneath six feet of river muck somewhere below Bolivar. Furthermore, such speculation seemed well justified when, eleven years later, in the summer of 1900, a man by the name of Leroy Temple showed up in town to confess that he had not died in the flood but had been living quite happily ever since in Beverly, Massachusetts. On the morning of June 1 he had crawled out of the wreckage at the bridge, looked around at what was left of Johnstown, then just turned on his heels and walked right out of the valley.

Stories of the flood would live on for years, and in time they would take on more the flavor of legends, passed along from generation to generation. Each family had its tales of where they had been when the wall of water came, where they ran to, who shouted what to whom, who picked up the baby, who went back for the horse, or how they had survived the night. Children who were only four or five years old at the time would live to be old men and women who would describe in the most remarkable detail how they had watched the flood strike the city (from a place where it would have been impossible to have seen the water) or how they had looked at their wrist watch at that exact moment (there were no wrist watches in 1889) and read (at age five!) that it was exactly such-and-such time. There would be stories of how grandfather tried to save an ax handle (“of all things!”) or how Uncle Otto had thrown away his Bible when he saw what had happened. There would also be a great amount of durable gossip and some rather bad feelings about “certain people” who had somehow gotten their hands on more than their share of the relief money and how “their families are rich to this day because of it.” And at least one Irish undertaker from Pittsburgh was said to have made “a positive fortune” out of the disaster.

There would also, one day, be signs posted in saloons from one end of the country to the other saying: PLEASE DON’T SPIT ON THE FLOOR, REMEMBER THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD. At Coney Island and in Atlantic City re-creations of the great disaster would be major attractions for many seasons. And “Run for the hills, the dam has busted” would be a standard comedy line the country over for years.

In Johnstown three babies born on the fateful day would grow up with the names Moses Williams, Flood C. Raymond, and Flood S. Rhodes.

General Hastings would later be elected governor largely because of the name he had made for himself at Johnstown; and when William Flinn later became the Republican boss of Pittsburgh and a state senator, he made it a practice to remind election-year audiences of the job he had done at Johnstown.

Tom L. Johnson, who later gave up a lucrative business career to become the highly progressive (some said “socialistic”) mayor of Cleveland, would use the flood to make a case for his political philosophy. In his autobiography he would write at length about the disaster and its cause and how charity had vitiated local energies (he was still Moxham’s man in this regard). The flood, he would conclude, was caused “by Special Privilege,” and: “The need of charity is always the result of the evils produced by man’s greed.”

In after-dinner speeches at the Duquesne Club, Robert Pitcairn would recall the services rendered by the railroad and ask if a “heartless corporation” could have behaved so. Bill Jones never said much about what he did, though he was quoted as saying that perhaps Johnstown ought to rebuild on higher ground. When he returned to Pittsburgh from Johnstown, Jones had only two months to live. At the end of the summer he was killed when a furnace he was working on at the Braddock mill exploded.

The members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club remained silent. The matter of their part in the flood was simply not mentioned, and as the years passed less and less was heard of it. In another generation it would be just about forgotten in Pittsburgh.

The more or less agreed-to attitude of Johnstown’s business people was also that the flood should be forgotten as soon as possible. There was no sense dwelling on the thing. It was bad for the spirits, and it most certainly was harmful to business.

“It may be well to consider that the flood, with all its train of horrors, is behind us, and that we have hence forth to do with the future alone,” said George Swank in the
Tribune
on the morning of June 1, 1892. It was his conclusion to a long description of the ceremonies held the day before at Grandview Cemetery. The whole city had been shut down and close to 10,000 people had gone up to the new burying grounds.

Except for the plot for the flood dead, Grandview was still very sparsely occupied. It had been started by Cyrus Elder, John Fulton, and others only a few years before the flood and was laid out a good distance from town up on some of the highest land for miles around. The idea was that here the dead would be safe from spring floods. The view was very grand indeed, stretching off in every direction as far as the eye could carry; but the trees blocked a direct look back down into the great amphitheater among the hills where Johnstown lay, and so the city was wholly concealed, and except for the distant sound from the mills, it was almost as though there was nothing even like a city anywhere near.

On the afternoon of the 31st, with the new governor present, and with Johnstown’s first mayor, Horace Rose, officiating, a large granite monument was dedicated to the “Unknown Dead Who Perished in the Flood at Johnstown, May 31, 1889.”

Behind the monument, arranged very precisely row on row, were 777 small, white marble headstones.

The unknown plot had been purchased by the Relief Commission and the bodies moved there from Nineveh, Prospect Hill, and half a dozen other places during the early fall of 1889. It had taken the time since to raise money for the monument and the nameless headstones. Actually, there were not quite a full 777 bodies buried in the plot; someone had decided to set out a few extra stones just to make an even pattern. But the effect on the immense throng gathered in the warm afternoon sunshine was very great. Against the long sweep of grass and the darker green of the bordering trees, the people stood in their funeral best, clustered in a dark, tight mass, strangely motionless and silent beneath the veiled monument. A few steps beyond, the carriages for the dignitaries were drawn up.

There were several speeches, the longest and best of which was by the governor, Robert Pattison, who, in offering a lesson to be learned from the disaster, said, “We who have to do with the concentrated forces of nature, the powers of air, electricity, water, steam, by careful forethought must leave nothing undone for the preservation and protection of the lives of our brother men.”

Then the choir sang “God Moves in a Mysterious Way”; the monument was unveiled, and people started back along the winding road that led down into town.

Total Number Lost, 2,209

This list, dated July 31, 1890, is the one printed in the Johnstown
Tribune
fourteen months after the Flood.

GRAND VIEW CEMETERY.

[Buried in private lots in Grand View.]

Alexander, Arailia K., Broad street.

Andrews, John, Sr., 57, John street.

Arther, Mrs. Alice, 29, Water street.

Bantley, William G., 36, Third Ward.

Bantley, Mrs. Ella, 30, Third Ward.

Bantley, George L., 6 months, Third Ward.

Barbour, Mrs. Mary, 25, Woodvale.

Barbour, Florence, 4, Woodvale.

Barley, Mrs. Barbara, 56, Woodvale.

Barley, Nancy, 29, Woodvale.

Barley, Viola, 9, Woodvale.

Beam, Dr. Lemon T., 55, Market street.

Beam, Charles C., 4, Market street.

Beam, Dr. W. C., 35, Locust street.

Beam, Mrs. Clara, 32, Locust street.

Beckley, E. E., 23, Main street.

Bending, Mrs. Elizabeth, 48, Locust street.

Bending, Jessie, 24, Locust street.

Bending, Katie, 15, Locust street.

Beneigh, John C., 65, Cambria.

Benford, Mrs. E. E., 63, Hulbert House.

Benford, Maria, 34, Hulbert House.

Benford, May, 26, Hulbert House.

Benford, Louis, 30, Hulbert House.

Benshoff, J. Q. A., 62, Somerset street.

Benshoff, Arthur, 27, Somerset street.

Bowman, Nellie, 9, Haynes street.

Bowman, Charles H., 7, Haynes street.

Bowman, Frank P., 33, Woodvale.

Bowman, Emma, 28, Woodvale.

Brinkey, Dr. J. C., 28, Franklin street.

Brinkey, Elmer, 26, Hulbert House.

Buchanan, John S., 69, Locust street.

Buchanan, Mrs. Kate J., 63, Locust street.

Buchanan, Robert L., 20, Locust street.

Connelly, Maud, 6, Franklin.

Constable, Philip E., 60, Broad street.

Cope, Mrs. Margaret, 65, Conemaugh.

Cope, Ella B., 28, Conemaugh.

Cooney, Mrs. Elizabeth.

Davis, Mary Ann, 40, Woodvale.

Davis, Thomas S., 59, Locust street.

Davis, Mrs. Elizabeth.

Davis, Mrs. Susan, 27, Millville.

Davis, Clara, 8, Millville.

Davis, Willie, 3, Millville.

Davis, Eliza M.

Davis, Margaret, E.

Davis, Mrs. Cora B., 25, Water street.

Davis William L.

Davis, Willard G.

Davis, Mary G.

Delaney, Mrs. Jessie, 29, Vine street.

Delaney, Mrs. Ella A.

Dibert, John, 56, Main street.

Dibert, Blanche, 9, Main street.

Dixon, David, 40, Millville.

Diller, Rev. Alonzo P., Locust street.

Diller, Mrs. Marion, Locust street.

Diller, Isaac, Locust street.

Dinant, Lola, Locust street.

Dorris, August.

Drew, Mrs. Mark, 62, Millville.

Drew, Mollie, 8, Conemaugh street.

Duncan, Mrs. Sarah A., 23, Woodvale.

Dyer, Mrs. Nathan, 64, Somerset street.

Eck, Mary Ellen.

Edwards, Mrs. Annie R.

Eldridge, Samuel B., Apple Alley.

Eldridge, Abram S., 34, Merchants’ Hotel.

Etchison, John, 44, Napoleon street.

Evans, Mrs. William F., 63, Union street.

Evans, Maggie, 11, Lewis Alley.

Evans, Kate, 5, Lewis Alley.

Evans, Mrs. Josiah, 36, Vine street.

Evans, Maggie, 16, Vine street.

Evans, Lake, 6, Vine street.

Evans, Ira, 6 months, Vine street.

Evans, Mrs. Maggie, 37, Vine street.

Evans, Mrs. Ann.

Evans, Sadie, 8, Vine street.

Evans, Herbert, 3, Vine street.

Evans, Pearl, 1, Vine street.

Evans, Lizzie.

Fails, Francis.

Fenn, John, 35, Locust street.

Fenn, Genevieve, 9, Locust street.

Fenn Bismarck S., 3, Locust street.

Findlay, Lulu, 16. Woodvale.

Fisher, John H., 55, Main street.

Fisher Mary J., 46, Main street.

Fisher, Emma K., 23, Main street.

Fisher, Ida, 19, Main street.

Fisher, Madge, 10, Main street.

Fisher Minnie, 21, Main street.

Fisher, George 12, Main street.

Fisher, Frank, 9 months.

Fleck, Leroy Webster.

Fox, Martin 51, Conemaugh.

Frank, John, Sr., 58, Washington street.

Frank, Mrs. Eliza, 44, Washington street.

Frank, Katie, 19, Washington street.

Frank, Emma, 17, Washington street.

Frank, Laura, 12, Washington street.

Fredericks, Mrs. A. G., 45, Millville.

Fredericks, Mrs. Sarah A.

Frederick, Edmon.

Fritz, Maggie, 26, Conemaugh.

Fritz, Kate, 22, Conemaugh.

Fronheiser, Mrs. Kate, 33, Main street.

Fronheiser, Bessie, 8, Main street.

Fronheiser, Catherine, 3 months, Main street.

Gageby, Mrs. Rebecca, 74, Jackson street.

Gageby, Sadie, 27, Jackson street.

Gallagher, Prof. C. F., 34, Main street.

Gallagher, Lizzie, 29, Main street.

Gard, Andrew, Jr., 25, Main street.

Geddes, George, 47, Woodvale.

Geddes, Marion, 17, Woodvale.

Geddes, Paul, 15, Woodvale.

Gilmore, Mrs. Margaret, 40, Union street.

Gilmore, Anthony, 8, Union street.

Gilmore, Llewelyn, 6, Union street.

Gilmore, Willy, 4, Union street.

Gilmore, Clara, 2, Union street.

Golde, Mrs. Henry, 32, Walnut street.

Griffin, Mary, 47, Walnut street

Hager, Mary E., 33, Washington street.

Hager, Mrs. Emma.

Hamilton, Jacob, 70, Bedford street.

Hamilton, Jessie, 30, Bedford street.

Hamilton, Laura, 24, Bedford street.

Hamilton, Alex, Jr., 35, Locust street.

Hamilton, Mrs. Alex, 30, Locust street.

Hamilton, Marion, Locust street.

Hamilton, Louther J.

Hammer, George K., 19, Moxham.

Harris, Mrs. William T.

Harris, John, 3, Market street.

Harris, Margaret, 47, Market street.

Harris, Wm. L., 23, Market street.

Harris, Winnie, 21, Market street.

Harris, Maggie A., 19, Market street.

Harris, Sarah, 16, Market street.

Harris, Frank, 12, Market street.

Haynes, Walter B., 22, Horner street.

Haynes, Laura C., 20, Horner street.

Hennekamp, Rebecca, 24, Franklin street.

Hennekamp, Oscar E., 2, Franklin street.

Hennekamp, S. E., 27, Lincoln street.

Heidenthal, Harry R.

Heiser, George, 50, Washington street.

Heiser, Mrs. George, 48, Washington street.

Helsel, George, 16, Johns street.

Hite, Mrs. Ella, 37, Somerset street.

Hochstein, Henry, 30, Conemaugh.

Hoffman, Benjamin F., 56, Market street.

Hoffman, Mrs. Mary, 43, Market street.

Hoffman, Bertha, 19, Market street.

Hoffman, Minnie, 16, Market street.

Hoffman, Marion, 14, Market street.

Hoffman Florence, 10, Market street.

Hoffman, Joseph, 8, Market street.

Hoffman, Helen, 4, Market street.

Hoffman, Freda, 1, Market street.

Hoffman, Mrs. Mary, 41, Washington street.

Hohnes, Mrs. Ann, 24, Conemaugh.

Hohnes, Mrs. Elizabeth, 80, Lincoln street.

Hohnes, Julia, 18, Conemaugh.

Hollen, Charles.

Howe, Thomas J., Bedford street.

Howells, William, 59, Union street.

Howells, Maggie, 23, Union street.

Howells, Mrs. Ann.

Hughes, Maggie, 22, Sugar Alley.

Hughes, Evan, 57, Sugar Alley.

Humm, Geo. C, Merchants’ Hotel

Humphreys, William, 18, Levergood street.

Jacobs, Lewis, 41, Cambria City.

James, Mrs. Ellen M., 42, Main street.

James, Mollie, 13, Market street.

Jones, Mary J.

Jones, Reuben, 1, Main street.

Jones, James, 32, Conemaugh.

Jones, Ann, 9 Conemaugh.

Jones, Mrs. W. W.

Jones, Edgar R.

Jones, Mrs. Mary A., 52, Pearl street.

Jones, Eliza, 15, Pearl street.

Karns, Joseph, 50, Locust street.

Keedy, Harry C., 30, Millville.

Keedy, Mrs. Mary, 32, Millville.

Kegg, William E., 17, Locust street.

Keiper, Essie J., 24, Franklin.

Keiper, Ralph, 5 months, Franklin.

Kennedy, H.D., 32, Stonycreek street.

Keyser, Mrs. John.

Keyser, Ralph.

Keighly, Mary L., 52, Main street.

Kidd, Joshua, 65, Walnut street.

Kidd, Mrs. Sarah, 60, Walnut street.

Kirkbride, Mahlo’n, 33, Hager Block.

Kirkbride, Mrs. Ida, 30, Hager Block.

Kirkbride, Luida, 8, Hager Block.

Kirlin, Thomas, 40, Conemaugh street.

Kirlin, Eddie, 12, Conemaugh street.

Kirlin Frank, 5, Conemaugh street.

Knorr, Mrs. Mary, 45, Jackson street.

Knorr, Emma, 16, Jackson street.

Knorr, Bertha, 14, Jackson street.

Knox, Mrs. Thomas, 45, Somerset street.

Koenstyl, Samuel.

Kratzer, Mrs. Mary, Market street.

Kuntz, Wade, 21, Morris street

Lambreski, Mrs. Barbara, 35, Cambria.

Lambreski, Mary, 6, Cambria.

Lambreski, John, 4, Cambria.

Layton, Mrs. Elvira.

Layton, William, 58, Broad street.

Layton, Mrs. William, 53, Broad street.

Layton, May, 22, Broad street.

Layton, David, Broad street.

Layton, Ella, Broad street.

Lee, Dr. J. K., 48, Main street.

Leitenberger, Mrs. Leah, 68, Vine street.

Leitenberger, Nancy, 48, Vine street.

Leitenberger, Ella, 35, Vine street.

Leitenberger, Eliza, 46, Vine street.

Lenhart, Samuel, 58, Clinton street.

Lenhart, Mrs. Mary, 56, Clinton street.

Lenhart, Annie E., 20, Clinton Street.

Lenhart, Emma J., 17, Clinton street.

Lenhart, Katie M., 13, Clinton street.

Lewis, Mrs. Ann.

Lewis, Ananias, 41, Millville.

Levergood, Mrs. Jane, 75, Bedford street.

Levergood, Lucy, 45, Bedford street.

Lewis, Orrie P., 6, Millville.

Lewis James.

Linton, Minnie, 20, Lincoln street.

Litz, Mrs. John, 74, Morris street.

Llewellyn, Mrs. Margaret, 37, Walnut street.

Llewellyn, Annie, 5, Wainut street

Llewellyn, Sadie, 8, Walnut street

Llewellyn, Herbert, 3, Walnut street.

Liewellyn, Pearl, 1, Walnut street.

Luckhart, Louis, 69, Main street.

Luckhart, Mrs. Adolph, 26, Main street.

Ludwig, Charles.

Ludwig, Henry G., 34, Bedford street.

Ludwig, Mrs. Kate, 35, Bedford street.

Mangus, Martha.

Marbourg, Dr. H. W., 56, Market street.

McDowell, Geo., 29, Pearl street.

McDowell, Mrs. Agnes, 33, Pearl street.

McDowell, Lilly, 3, Pearl street.

McDowell, Georgia.

McClelland, Mrs. Jennie, 34, Sherman street.

McConaghy, Mrs. Kate, 68.

McConaughy, James P., 72, Walnut street.

McConaughy, Mrs. Caroline M., 65, Walnut street.

McConaughy, Wallace, 25, Walnut street.

McConaghy, Robert W.

McKee, John, 21, Bedford street.

McKinstry, Mrs. Mary C., 45, Hager Block.

McKinstry, Annie R., 14, Hager Block.

McVay, Lizzie, 20, Locust street

Merle, Elmer E.

Moore, Mrs. Charlotte L.

Meyers, Mrs. Elizabeth, 55, Washington street.

Meyers, Mary, 24, Washington street.

Meyers, Mrs Catherine, 31 Millville.

Meyers, John, 3, Millville.

Miller, Jessie B., 16, Somerset street.

Morgan, Mrs. Charlotte, 49, Millville.

Morgan, Martha, 13, Millville.

Morgan, Minnie, 4, Milliville.

Murr, Charles, 41, Washington street.

Murr, Maggie, 14, Washington street.

Musser, Charles, 23, Main street.

Nixon, Mrs. Elizabeth, 39, Woodvale.

Nixon, Emma R., 16, Woodvale.

Nixon, Eddie, 8, Woodvale.

Noro, Kate.

Owens, Gladies, 5 months, Conemaugh street.

Owens, Thomas, 10, Conemaugh street.

Owens, William, 65, Market street.

Owens, Annie.

Owens, Mrs. Mary Ann, 31, Conemaugh street.

Owens, Mary, 8, Conemaugh street.

Oyler, Mrs. Mary R., 27, Woodvale.

Oyler, John R., 6, Woodvale.

Parke, Mrs. Agnes J., 56, Bedford street.

Parke, William E., Bedford street.

Parsons, Mrs. Eva M., 23, Locust street.

Penrod, William H., 59, Conemaugh.

Peyton, John W., 65, Clinton street.

Peyton, George A., 19, Clinton street.

Peyton, Marcellus K., 16, Clinton street.

Peyton, Julia F., 13, Clinton street.

Phillips, Mrs. Jane M., 68, Market street.

Pike, William W., 50, Haynes street.

Pike, William W., 15, Haynes street.

Pike, S. Bowen, 10, Haynes street.

Poland, Walter, 5, Market street.

Poland, Frederik, 3, Market street.

Potter, Joseph R., 63, Woodvale.

Potter, Mrs. Sarah, 59, Woodvale.

Potter, Nora G., 17, Woodvale.

Potts, Miss Jane E., 47, Walnut street.

Powell, Richard, 4 weeks, Vine street.

Powell, George, 11/2, Vine street.

Pritchard, Henry, 62, Market street.

Prosser, Fannie, 22, Market street.

Prosser, Bessie, 19, Market street.

Prosser, Maria.

Purse, Mary L., Market street.

Raab, George, 44, Clinton street.

Rabb, Mrs. George, 88, Clinton street.

Rabb, Norma, 16, Clinton street.

Raab, Lizzie, 24, Washington street.

Raab, Emilia, 20, Washington street.

Raab, John C.

Raab, Ella.

Rainey, Mrs. Lizzie L., 25, Bedford street.

Rainey, Parke, 11/2, Bedford street.

Randolph, George F., 26, Beaver Falls.

Reibert, Julius, Washington street.

Reese, Sarah, 10, Conemaugh street.

Reese, John, 2, Conemaugh street.

Reese, Mrs. J. W.