History of the Johnstown Flood Part 10

At 9.15 A. M., therefore, when the special train pulled out of the Baltimore and Ohio station, it had for pa.s.sengers only the _Sun_ men and _Harper's_ artist. As it started Acting Superintendent McIlvaine was asked:--

"How quickly can we make it?"

"Well, it's one hundred and forty-six miles," he replied, "and it's all kinds of road. There's an accommodation train that you will have to look out for until you pa.s.s it, and that will delay you. It's hard to make any promise about time."

"Can we make it in five hours?" he was asked.

"I think you can surely do that," he replied.

How much better than the acting superintendent's word was the performance of Engineer Scott and his crew this story shows. The special, after leaving Pittsburgh, ran wild until it got to McKeesport, sixteen miles distant. At this point the regular train, which left Pittsburgh at 8.40, was overtaken. The regular train was on a siding, and the special pa.s.sed through the city with but a minute's stop. Then the special had a clear track before it, and the engineer drove his machine to the utmost limit of speed consistent with safety. It is nineteen miles from McKeesport to West Newton, and the special made this distance in twenty minutes, the average time of over a mile a minute being much exceeded for certain periods. The curves of the road are frightful, and at times the single car which composed the train was almost swung clear off the track. The _Sun_ men recalled vividly the ride of Horace Greeley with Hank Monk, and they began to reflect that there was such a thing as riding so fast that they might not be able to reach Johnstown at all. From Layton's to Dawson the seven and one-half miles were made in seven minutes, while the fourteen miles from Layton's to Connellsville were covered in fourteen minutes precisely. On the tender of the engine the cover of the water-tank flew open and the water splashed out. Coal flew from the tender in great lumps, and dashed against the end of the car. Inside the car the newspaper men's grips and belongings went flying around on the floor and over seats like mad. The Allegheny River, whose curves the rails followed, seemed to be right even with the car windows, so that one could look straight down into the water, so closely to it was the track built. In Connellsville there was a crowd to see the special. On the depot was the placard:--

"Car will leave at 3 P. M. to-day with food and clothing for Johnstown."

In Connellsville the train stopped five minutes and underwent a thorough inspection. Then it shoved on again. At Confluence, twenty-seven miles from Connellsville, a bridge of a Baltimore and Ohio branch line across the river was washed away, but this didn't interfere with the progress of the special. For sixty miles on the road is up hill at a grade of sixty-five feet to the mile, and the curves, if anything, are worse, but there was no appreciable diminution in the speed of the train. Just before reaching Rockwood the first real traces of the flood were apparent. The waters of the Castlemore showed signs of having been recently right up to the railroad tracks, and driftwood and debris of all descriptions lay at the side of the rails. Nearly all bridges on the country roads over the river were washed away and their remnants scattered along the banks.

Rockwood was reached at 12.05 P. M. Rockwood is eighty-seven miles from McKeesport, and this distance, which is up an extremely steep grade, was therefore made in two hours, which includes fifteen minutes' stop.

The distance covered from Pittsburgh was one hundred and two miles in two hours. Rockwood is the junction of the main line of the Baltimore and Ohio road at its Cambria branch, which runs to Johnstown. The regular local train from there to Johnstown was held to allow the _Sun's_ special to pa.s.s first.

The _Sun's_ special left Rockwood at 12.20 in charge of Engineer Oliver, who a.s.sumed charge at that point. He said that the branch to Johnstown was a mountain road, with steep grades, very high embankments, and damaged in spots, and that he would have to use great precaution in running. He gave the throttle a yank and the train started with a jump that almost sent the newspaper men on their heads. Things began to dance around the car furiously as the train dashed along at a great pace, and the reporters began to wonder what Engineer Oliver meant by his talk about precautions. All along the route up the valley at the stations were crowds of people, who stared in silence as the train swept by. On the station platforms were piled barrels of flour, boxes of canned goods, and bales of clothing. The roads leading in from the country to the stations were full of farmers' wagons laden with produce of all kinds for the sufferers.

The road from Rockwood to Johnstown lies in a deep gully, at the bottom of which flows little Stony Creek, now swollen to a torrent. Wooden troughs under the track carry off the water which trickles down from the hills, otherwise the track would be useless. As it is there are frequent washouts, which have been partly filled in, and for ten miles south of Johnstown all trains have to be run very slowly. The branches of trees above the bank which have been blown over graze the cars on the railroad tracks. The _Sun's_ special arrived in Johnstown at two o'clock.

CHAPTER XX.

The experience of the newspaper correspondents in the Conemaugh valley was the experience of a lifetime. Few war correspondents, even, have been witnesses of such appalling scenes of horror and desolation. Day after day they were busy recording the annals of death and despair, conscious, meanwhile, that no expressions of acc.u.mulated pathos at their command could do justice to the theme. They had only to stand in the street wherever a knot of men had gathered, to hear countless stories of thrilling escapes. Hundreds of people had such narrow escapes that they hardly dared to believe that they were saved for hours after they reached solid ground. William Wise, a young man who lived at Woodvale, was walking along the road when the rush of water came down the valley.

He started to rush up the side of the hills, but stopped to help a young woman; Ida Zidstein, to escape; lost too much time, and was forced to drag the young woman upon a high pile of metal near the road. They had clung there several hours, and thought that they could both escape, as the metal pile was not exposed to the full force of the torrent. A telegraph pole came dashing down the flood, its top standing above the water, from which dangled some wires. The pole was caught in an eddy opposite the pile. It shot in toward the two who were clinging there. As the pole swung around, the wires came through the air like a whip-lash, and catching in the hair of the young woman, dragged her down to instant death. The young man remained on the heap of metal for hours before the water subsided so as to allow him to escape.

One man named Homer, with his child, age six, was on one of the houses which were first carried away. He climbed to the roof and held fast there for four hours, floating all the way to Bolivar, fifteen miles below.

A young hero sat upon the roof of his father's house, holding his mother and little sister. Once the house swung in toward a brick structure which still rested on its foundation. As one house struck the other, the boy sprang into one of the windows. As he turned to rescue his mother and sister, the house swung out again, and the boy, seeing that there was no possibility of getting them off, leaped back to their side. A second time the house was stopped--this time by a tree. The boy helped his mother and sister to a place of safety in the tree, but before he could leave the roof, the house was swept on and he was drowned.

One man took his whole family to the roof of his floating house. He and one child escaped to another building, but his wife and five children were whirled around for hours, and finally carried down to the bridge where so many people perished in the flames. They were all rescued.

District Attorney Rose, his wife, two brothers and two sisters were swept across the lower portion of the town. They had been thrown into the water, and were swimming, the men a.s.sisting the women. Finally, they got into a back current, and were cast ash.o.r.e at the foot of the hills back of Knoxville.

One merchant of Johnstown, after floating about upon a piece of wreckage for hours, was carried down to the stone bridge. After a miraculous escape from being burned to death, he was rescued and carried ash.o.r.e. He was so dazed and terrified by his experience, however, that he walked off the bridge and broke his neck.

One man who was powerless to save his wife, after he had leaped from a burning building to a house floating by, was driven insane by her shrieks for help.

An old gentleman of Verona rescued a modern Moses from the bulrushes.

Verona is on the east bank of the Allegheny river, twelve miles above Pittsburg. Mr. McCutcheon, while standing on the river bank watching the drift floating by, was compelled by instinct to take a skiff and row out to one dense ma.s.s of timber. As he reached it, he was startled to find in the centre, out of the reach of the water, a cradle covered with the clothing. As he lifted the coverings aside a pretty five-months-old boy baby smiled on him. The little innocent, unconscious of the scenes it had pa.s.sed through, crowed with delight as the old man lifted it tenderly, cradle and all, into his skiff and brought it ash.o.r.e.

Among the miraculous escapes is that of George J. Lea and family. When the rush of water came there were eight people on the roof of Lea's house. The house swung around and floated for nearly half an hour before it struck the wreck above the stone bridge. A three-year-old girl, with sunny, golden hair and dimpled cheeks, prayed all the while that G.o.d would save them, and it seemed that G.o.d really answered the prayer and directed the house against the drift, enabling every one of the eight to get off.

H. M. Bennett and S. W. Keltz, engineer and conductor of engine No. 1165 and the extra freight, which happened to be lying at South Fork when the dam broke, tell a graphic story of their wonderful flight and escape on the locomotive before the advancing flood. Bennett and Keltz were in the signal tower awaiting orders. The fireman and flagman were on the engine, and two brakemen were asleep in the caboose. Suddenly the men in the tower heard a roaring sound in the valley above them. They looked in that direction and were almost transfixed with horror to see, two miles above them, a huge black wall of water, at least 150 feet in height, rushing down the valley. The fear-stricken men made a rush for the locomotive, at the same time giving the alarm to the sleeping brakemen in the caboose, but with no avail. It was impossible to aid them further, however, so Bennett and Keltz cut the engine loose from the train, and the engineer, with one wild wrench, threw the lever wide open, and they were away on a mad race for life. It seemed that they would not receive momentum enough to keep ahead of the flood, and they cast one despairing glance back. Then they could see the awful deluge approaching in its might. On it came, rolling and roaring, tossing and tearing houses, sheds and trees in its awful speed as if they were toys.

As they looked, they saw the two brakemen rush out of the caboose, but they had not time to gather the slightest idea of the cause of their doom before they, the car and signal tower were tossed high in the air, to disappear forever. Then the engine leaped forward like a thing of life, and speeded down the valley. But fast as it went, the flood gained upon it. In a few moments the shrieking locomotive whizzed around a curve, and they were in sight of a bridge. Horror upon horrors! ahead of them was a freight train, with the rear end almost on the bridge, and to get across was simply impossible. Engineer Bennett then reversed the lever, and succeeded in checking the engine as they glided across the bridge. Then the men jumped and ran for their lives up the hillside. The bridge and the tender of the engine they had been on were swept away like a bundle of matches.

A young man who was a pa.s.senger on the Derry express furnishes an interesting account of his experiences. "When we reached Derry," he said, "our train was boarded by a relief committee, and no sooner was it ascertained that we were going on to Sang Hollow than the contributions of provisions and supplies of every kind were piled on board, filling an entire car. On reaching Sang Hollow the scene that presented itself to us was heart-rending. The road was lined with homeless people, some with a trunk or solitary chair, the only thing saved from their household goods, and all wearing an aspect of the most hopeless misery. Men were at work transferring from a freight car a pile of corpses at least sixty in number, and here and there a ghastly something under a covering showed where the body of some victim of the flood lay awaiting identification or burial in a nameless grave. Busy workers were engaged in clearing away the piles of driftwood and scattered articles of household use which c.u.mbered the tracks and the roads. These piles told their own mournful story. There were beds, bureaus, mattresses, chairs, tables, pictures, dead horses and mules, overcoats, remnants of dresses sticking on the branches of trees, and a thousand other odd pieces of flotsam and jetsam from ruined homes. I saw a man get off the train and pick up an insurance policy for $30,000. Another took away as relics a baby's chair and a confirmation card in a battered frame. On the banks of the Little Conemaugh creek people were delving in the driftwood, which was piled to a depth of six or seven feet, unearthing and carrying away whatever could be turned to account. Under those piles, it is thought, numbers of bodies are buried, not to be recovered except by the labor of many days. A woman and a little girl were brought from Johnstown by some means which I could not ascertain. The woman was in confinement, and was carried on a lounge, her sole remaining piece of property. She was taken to Latrobe for hospital treatment. I cannot understand how it is that people are unable to make their way from Sang Hollow to Johnstown. The distance is short, and it should certainly be a comparatively easy task to get over it on foot or horseback. However, there seems to be some insuperable obstacle. All those who made the trip on the train with me in order to obtain tidings of their friends in Johnstown, were forced to return as I did.

"The railroad is in a terrible condition. The day express and the limited, which left Pittsburg on Friday morning, are lying between Johnstown and Conemaugh on the east, having been cut off by the flood.

Linemen were sent down from our train at every station to repair the telegraph wires which are damaged. Tremendous efforts are being exerted to repair the injury sustained by the railroad, and it is only a question of a couple of days until through communication is reestablished. Our homeward trip was marked by a succession of sad spectacles. At Blairsville intersection two little girls lay dead, and in a house taken from the river was the body of a woman. Some idea of the force of the flood may be had from the statement that freight cars, both loaded and empty, had been lifted bodily from the track, and carried a distance of several blocks, and deposited in a graveyard in the outskirts of the town, where they were lying in a ma.s.s mixed up with tombstones and monuments."

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUINS OF THE CAMBRIA IRON CO'S STORE.]

CHAPTER XXI.

Where the carca.s.s is, there will the vultures be gathered together. It is humiliating to human nature to record it, but it is nevertheless true, that amid all the suffering and sacrifice, and heroism and generosity that was displayed in this awful time, there arose some of the basest pa.s.sions of unbridled vice. The l.u.s.t of gain led many skulking wretches to rob and despoil, and even to mutilate the bodies of the dead. Pockets were searched. Jewels were stolen. Finger-rings and ear-rings were torn away, the knife often being used upon the poor, dead clay to facilitate the spoliation. Against this savagery the better elements of the populace sternly revolted. For the time there was no organized government. But outraged and indignant humanity soon formulates its own code of laws. Pistol and rope and bludgeon, in the hand of honesty, did effective work. The reports of summary lynchings that at first were spread abroad were doubtless exaggerated, but they had a stern foundation of truth; and they had abundant provocation.

Writing on that tragic Sunday, one correspondent says: "The way of the transgressor in the desolated valley of the Conemaugh is hard indeed.

Each hour reveals some new and horrible story of suffering and outrage, and every succeeding hour brings news of swift and merited punishment meted out to the fiends who have dared to desecrate the stiff and mangled bodies in the city of the dead, and torture the already half-crazed victims of the cruelest of modern catastrophes. Last night a party of thirteen Hungarians were noticed stealthily picking their way along the banks of the Conemaugh toward Sang Hollow. Suspicious of their purpose, several farmers armed themselves and started in pursuit. Soon their most horrible fears were realized. The Hungarians were out for plunder. They came upon the dead and mangled body of a woman, lying upon the sh.o.r.e, upon whose person there were a number of trinkets of jewelry and two diamond rings. In their eagerness to secure the plunder, the Hungarians got into a squabble, during which one of the number severed the finger upon which were the rings, and started on a run with his fearful prize. The revolting nature of the deed so wrought upon the pursuing farmers, who by this time were close at hand, that they gave immediate chase. Some of the Hungarians showed fight, but, being outnumbered, were compelled to flee for their lives. Nine of the brutes escaped, but four were literally driven into the surging river and to their death. The thief who took the rings was among the number of the involuntary suicides."

At 8.30 o'clock this morning an old railroader, who had walked from Sang Hollow, stepped up to a number of men who were on the platform station at Curranville, and said:--

"Gentlemen, had I a shot-gun with me half an hour ago, I would now be a murderer, yet with no fear of ever having to suffer for my crime. Two miles below here I watched three men going along the banks stealing the jewels from the bodies of the dead wives and daughters of men who have been robbed of all they hold dear on earth."

He had no sooner finished the last sentence than five burly men, with looks of terrible determination written on their faces, were on their way to the scene of plunder, one with a coil of rope over his shoulder and another with a revolver in his hand. In twenty minutes, so it is stated, they had overtaken two of their victims, who were then in the act of cutting pieces from the ears and fingers from the hands of the bodies of two dead women. With revolver leveled at the scoundrels, the leader of the posse shouted:--

"Throw up your hands, or I'll blow your heads off!"

With blanched faces and trembling forms, they obeyed the order and begged for mercy. They were searched, and, as their pockets were emptied of their ghastly finds, the indignation of the crowd intensified, and when a b.l.o.o.d.y finger of an infant encircled with two tiny gold rings was found among the plunder in the leader's pocket, a cry went up, "Lynch them! Lynch them!" Without a moment's delay ropes were thrown around their necks and they were dangling to the limbs of a tree, in the branches of which an hour before were entangled the bodies of a dead father and son. After half an hour the ropes were cut and the bodies lowered and carried to a pile of rocks in the forest on the hill above.

It is hinted that an Allegheny county official was one of the most prominent in this justifiable homicide.

One miserable wretch who was caught in the act of mutilating a body was chased by a crowd of citizens, and when captured was promptly strung up to a telegraph pole. A company of officers rescued him before he was dead, much to the disgust of many reputable people, whose feelings had been outraged by the treatment of their deceased relations. Shortly after midnight an attempt was made to rob the First National Bank, which, with the exception of the vaults, had been destroyed. The plunderers were discovered by the citizens' patrol, which had been established during the night, and a lively chase ensued. A number of the thieves--six, it is said--were shot. It is not known whether any were killed or not, as their bodies would have been washed away almost immediately if such had been the case.

A number of Hungarians collected about a number of bodies at Cambria which had been washed up, and began rifling the trunks. After they had secured all the contents they turned their attention to the dead.

The ghastly spectacle presented by the distorted features of those who had lost their lives during the flood had no influence upon the ghouls, who acted more like wild beasts than human beings. They took every article from the clothing on the dead bodies, not leaving anything of value or anything that would serve to identify the remains.

After the miscreants had removed all their plunder to dry ground a dispute arose over a division of the spoils. A pitched battle followed, and for a time the situation was alarming. Knives and clubs were used freely. As a result several of the combatants were seriously wounded and left on the ground, their fellow-countrymen not making any attempt to remove them from the field of strife.

A Hungarian was caught in the act of cutting off a dead woman's finger, on which was a costly ring. The infuriated spectators raised an outcry and the fiend fled. He was hotly pursued, and after a half-hour's hard chase, was captured and hanged to a telegraph pole, but was cut down and resuscitated by officers. Liquor emboldened the ghouls, and Pittsburg was telegraphed for help, and the 18th and 14th Regiments, Battery B and the Washington Infantry were at once called out for duty, members being apprised by posters in the newspaper windows.

One correspondent wrote: "The number of drunken men is remarkable.

Whiskey seems marvelously plenty. Men are actually carrying it around in pails. Barrels of the stuff are constantly located among the drifts, and _men are scrambling over each other and fighting like wild beasts_ in their mad search for it. At the cemetery, at the upper end of town, I saw a sight that rivals the Inferno. A number of ghouls had found a lot of fine groceries, among them a barrel of brandy, with which they were fairly stuffing themselves. One huge fellow was standing on the strings of an upright piano singing a profane song, every little while breaking into a wild dance. A half-dozen others were engaged in a hand-to-hand fight over the possession of some treasure stolen from a ruined house, and the crowd around the barrel were yelling like wild men."

These reports were largely discredited and denied by later and probably more trustworthy authorities, but there was doubtless a considerable residue of truth in them.

There were so many contradictory stories about these horrible doings that our painstaking correspondent put to "Chall" d.i.c.k, the Deputy Sheriff, this "leading question": "Did you shoot any robbers?" Chall did not make instant reply, but finally looked up with a peculiar expression on his face and said:--

"There are some men whom their friends will never again see alive."