The Johnstown Horror!!! Part 34

Blasting Continues.

All day long the blast of dynamite resounded among the hills. Cartridges were let off in the debris, and a cloud of dust and flying spray marked the result of the mining operation. The interlaced timbers in the cul-de-sac yielded very slowly even to the mighty force of dynamite.

There were no finds of especial import. At the present rate of clearing, the cul-de-sac will not be free from the wreckage in two months.

There was a sad spectacle presented this morning when the laborers were engaged in pulling over a vast pile of timber and miscellaneous matter on Main street. A young woman and a little puny baby girl were found beneath the ma.s.s, which was as high as the second story windows of the houses near by.

Together in Death.

The girl must have been handsome when in the flush of youth and health.

She had seized the helpless infant and endeavored to find safety by flight. Her closely cut brown hair was filled with sand, and a piece of bra.s.s wire was wound around the head and neck. A loose cashmere house-gown was partially torn from her form, and one slipper, a little bead embroidered affair, covered a silk-stockinged foot. Each arm was tightly clasped around the baby. The rigidity of death should have pa.s.sed away, but the arms were fixed in their position as if composed of an unbendable material instead of muscle and bone. The fingers were imbedded in the sides of the little baby as if its protector had made a final effort not to be separated and to save if possible the fragile life. The faces of both were scarred and disfigured from contact with floating debris. The single garment of the baby--a thin white slip--was rent and frayed. The body of the young woman was identified, but the babe remained unknown. Probably its father and mother were lost in the flood, and it will never be claimed by friendly hands.

A Strange Discovery.

This is only one among the many pathetic incidents of the terrible disaster. There were only nine unidentified bodies at the Adams street morgue this afternoon, and three additions to the number were made after ten o'clock. Two hundred and eight bodies have been received by the embalmers in charge. The yard of the school house, which was converted into a temporary abode of death, contains large piles of coffins of the cheaper sort. They come from different cities within two or three hundred miles of Johnstown, and after being stacked up they are pulled out as needed. Coffins are to be seen everywhere about the valley, ready for use when a body is found. A trio of bodies was found near the Hurlburt House under peculiar circ.u.mstances. They were hidden beneath a pile of wreckage at least twenty-five feet in height. They were a father, a mother and son. Around the waist of each a quarter inch rope was tied so that the three were bound together tightly. The hands of the boy were clasped by those of the mother, and the father's arms were extended as if to ward off danger. The father probably knotted the rope during the awful moments of suspense intervening between the coming of the flood and the final destruction of the house they occupied. The united strength of the three could not resist the mighty force of the inundation, and like so many straws they were swept on the boiling surge until life was crushed out.

Child and Doll in One Coffin.

I beheld a touching spectacle when the corpse of a little girl was extricated and placed on a stretcher for transportation to the morgue.

Clasped to her breast by her two waxen hands was a rag doll. It was a cheap affair, evidently of domestic manufacture. To the child of poverty the rag baby was a favorite toy. The little mother held fast to her treasure and met her end without separating from it. The two, child and doll, were not parted when the white coffin received them, and they will moulder together.

I saw an old-fashioned cupboard dug out of a pile of rubbish. The top shelf contained a quant.i.ty of jelly of domestic manufacture. Not a gla.s.s jar was broken. Indeed there have been some remarkable instances of the escape of fragile articles from destruction. In the debris near the railroad bridge you may come upon all manner of things. The water-tanks of three locomotives which were borne from the roundhouse at Conemaugh, two miles away, are conspicuous. Amid the general wreck, beneath one of these heavy iron tanks, a looking gla.s.s, two feet by one foot in dimensions, was discovered intact, without even a scratch on the quicksilver.

Johnstown people surviving the destruction appear to bewail the death of the Fisher family. "Squire" Fisher was one of the old time public functionaries of the borough. He and his six children were swept away.

One of the Fisher girls was at home under peculiar circ.u.mstances. She had been away at school, and returned home to be married to her betrothed. Then she was to return to school and take part in the graduating exercises. Her body has not yet been recovered.

Something to be Thankful For.

There is much dest.i.tution felt by people whose pride prevents them from asking for supplies from the relief committees. I saw a sad little procession wending up the hill to the camp of the Americus Club. There was a father, an honest, simple German, who had been employed at the Cambria works during the past twelve years. Behind him trooped eight children, from a girl of fourteen to a babe in the arms of the mother, who brought up the rear. The woman and children were hatless, and possessed only the calico garments worn at the moment of flight. Forlorn and weary, they ranged in front of the relieving stand and implored succor.

"We lost one only, thank G.o.d!" exclaimed the mother. "Our second daughter is gone. We had a comfortable house which we owned. It was paid for by our savings. Now all is gone." Then the unhappy woman sat down on the wet ground and sobbed hysterically. The children crowded around their mother and joined in her grief. You will behold many of these scenes of domestic distress about the ruins of Johnstown in these dolorous days.

Saw a Flood of Helpless Humanity.

Mr. L.D. Woodruff, the editor and proprietor of the Johnstown _Democrat_, tells his experiences during the night of horrors. He was at the office of the paper, which is in the upper portion of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway station. This brick edifice stands almost in the centre of the course of the flood, and its preservation from ruin is one of the remarkable features of the occasion. A pile of freight cars lodged at the corner of the building and the breakwater thus formed checked the onslaught of floating battering rams. Mr. Woodruff, with his two sons, remained in the building until the following day. The water came up to the floor of the second story. All night long he witnessed people floating past on the roofs of houses or on various kinds of wreckage. A number of persons were rescued through the windows.

A man and his wife with three children were pulled in. After a while the mother for the first time remembered that her baby of fifteen months was left behind. Her grief was violent, and her cries were mingled with the groans of her husband, who lay on the floor with a broken leg. The next day the baby was found, when the waters subsided, on a pile of debris outside and it was alive and uninjured.

During the first few hours Mr. Woodruff momentarily expected that the building would go. As the night wore away it became evident the water was going down. Not a vestige of Mr. Woodruff's dwelling has been found.

The newspapers of Johnstown came out of the flood fairly well. The _Democrat_ lost only a job press, which was swept out of one corner of the building.

The Flood's Awful Spoil.

In the broad field of debris at the Pennsylvania Railroad viaduct, where the huge playthings of the flood were tossed only to be burned and beaten to a solid, intricate ma.s.s, are seen the peculiar metal works of two trains of cars. The wreck of the day express east, running in two sections that fatal Friday, lie there about thirty yards above the bridge. One ma.s.s of wreckage is unmistakably that of the Pullman car section, made up of two baggage cars and six Pullman coaches, and the other shows the irons of five day coaches and one Pullman car. These trains were running in the same block at Johnstown and were struck by the flood two miles above, torn from their tracks and carried tumbling down the mighty torrents to their resting place in the big eddy.

Railroad Men Suppressing Information.

The train crew, who saw the waters coming, warned the pa.s.sengers, escaped, and went home on foot. Conductor Bell duly made his report, yet for some unknown reasons one of Superintendent Pitcairn's sub-ordinates has been doing his best to give out and prove by witnesses, to whom he takes newspaper men, that only one car of that express was lost and with it "two or three ladies who went back for overshoes and a very few others not lively enough to escape after the warnings." That story went well until the smoke rolled away from the wreckage and the bones of the two sections of the day express east were disclosed. Another very singular feature was the apparent inability of the conductor of the express to tell how many pa.s.sengers they had on board and just how many were saved. It had been learned that the first section of the train carried 180 pa.s.sengers and the second 157. It may be stated as undoubtedly true that of the number fifty, at least, swell the horrible tale of the dead.

From the wreck where the trains burned there have been taken out fifty-eight charred bodies, the features being unrecognizable. Of these seven found together were the Gilmore family, whose house had floated there. The others, all adults, which, with two or three exceptions, swell the list of the unidentified dead, are undoubted corpses of the ill-fated pa.s.sengers of the east express.

The Church Loses a Missionary.

To-day another corpse was found in the ruins of a Pullman car badly burned. It was fully identified as that of Miss Anna Clara Chrisman, of Beauregard, Miss., a well-developed lady of about twenty-five years, who was on her way to New York to fill a mission station in Brazil. Between the leaves of her Greek testament was a telegram she had written, expecting to send it at the first stop, addressed to the Methodist Mission headquarters, No. 20 East Twelfth street, New York, saying that she would arrive on "train 8" of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the day express east. In her satchel were found photographs of friends and her Bible, and from her neck hung a $20 gold piece, carefully sewn in a bag.

Is it possible that the Pennsylvania Railroad is keeping back the knowledge in order simply to avoid a list of "pa.s.sengers killed" in its annual report, solely to keep its record as little stained as possible?

It can hardly be that they fear suits for damages, for the responsibility of the wreck does not rest on them.

Two hundred bodies were recovered from the ruins yesterday. Some were identified, but the great majority were not. This number includes all the morgues--the one at the Pennsylvania Railroad station, the Fourth ward school, Cambria city, Morrellville, Kernville and the Presbyterian Church.

At the latter place a remarkable state of affairs exists. The first floor has been washed out completely and the second, while submerged, was badly damaged, but not ruined. The walls, floors and pews were drenched, and the mud has collected on the matting and carpets an inch deep. Walking is attended with much difficulty, and the undertakers and attendants, with arms bared, slide about the slippery surface at a tremendous rate. The chancel is filled with coffins, strips of muslin, boards, and all undertaking accessories. Lying across the tops of the pews are a dozen pine boxes, each containing a victim of the flood.

Printed cards are tacked on each. Upon them the s.e.x and full description of the enclosed body is written with the name, if known.

The Nameless Dead.

The great number of bodies not identified seems incredulous and impossible. Some of these bodies have lain in the different morgues for four days. Thousands of people from different sections of the State have seen them, yet they remain unidentified.

At Nineveh they are burying all the unidentified dead, but in the morgues in this vicinity no bodies have been buried unless they were identified.

The First Presbyterian Church contains nine "unknown." Burials will have to be made to-morrow. This morning workmen found three members of Benjamin Hoffman's family, which occupied a large residence in the rear of Lincoln street. Benjamin Hoffman, the head of the family, was found seated on the edge of the bedstead. He was evidently preparing to retire when the flood struck the building. He had his socks in his pocket. His twenty-year-old daughter was found close by attired in a night-dress.

The youngest member of the family, a three-year-old infant, was also found beside the bed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARRYING CHILDREN TO BURIAL.]

Where the Dead are Laid.

I made a tour of the cemeteries to-day to see how the dead were disposed in their last resting place. There are six burying grounds--two to the south of this place, one to the north, and three on Morrellsville to the west. The princ.i.p.al one is Grand View, on the summit of Kernville Hill.

But the most remarkable, through the damage done by the flood, is Sandy Vale Cemetery, at Hornersville, on Stony Creek, and about half a mile from the city of Johnstown. It is a private inst.i.tution in which most of the people of the city buried their dead until two years ago, when the public corporation of Grand View was established. Its grounds are level, laid out in lots, and were quite picturesque, its dense foliage and numerous monuments attracting the eyes of every pa.s.senger entering the city by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which pa.s.ses along one side the creek forming its other boundary. The banks of the creek are twenty feet high, and there was a nice sandy beach through its entire length.

A Sorry Scene.

When the floods came the first of the wreckage and the backwater sent hundreds of houses, immense quant.i.ties of logs and cut lumber over it and into the borough of Hornersville. As the angry waters subsided the pretty cemetery was wrecked as badly as was the city, a portion of the debris of which has destroyed its symmetry. To make way for the burial of the numerous bodies sent there by the town committees it became necessary to burn some of the debris. This was commenced at the nearest or southern end, and at the time of my visit I had, like the corpses, to pa.s.s through an avenue of fire and over live ashes to make my inspection. There were no unknown dead sent here, consequently they were interred in lots, and here and there, as the cleared spots would allow, a body was deposited and the grave made to look as decently as four or five inches of mud on the surface and the clay soil would allow.

Ma.s.ses of Debris.