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History of the Johnstown Flood: Including all the Fearful Record; the Breaking of the South Fork Dam; the Sweeping Out of the Conemaugh Valley; the Over-Throw of Johnstown; the Massing of the Wreck at the Railroad Bridge; Escapes, Rescues, Searches for Survivors and the Dead; Relief Organizations, Stupendous Charities, etc., etc., With Full Accounts also of the Destruction on the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, and the Bald Eagle Creek.Johnson, Willis Fletcher

History

History of the Johnstown Flood: Including all the Fearful Record; the Breaking of the South Fork Dam; the Sweeping Out of the Conemaugh Valley; the Over-Throw of Johnstown; the Massing of the Wreck at the Railroad Bridge; Escapes, Rescues, Searches for Survivors and the Dead; Relief Organizations, Stupendous Charities, etc., etc., With Full Accounts also of the Destruction on the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, and the Bald Eagle Creek.

Name: History of the Johnstown Flood: Including all the Fearful Record; the Breaking of the South Fork Dam; the Sweeping Out of the Conemaugh Valley; the Over-Throw of Johnstown; the Massing of the Wreck at the Railroad Bridge; Escapes, Rescues, Searches for Survivors and the Dead; Relief Organizations, Stupendous Charities, etc., etc., With Full Accounts also of the Destruction on the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, and the Bald Eagle Creek.
Author: Johnson, Willis Fletcher

Johnson, Willis Fletcher

Floods -- Pennsylvania -- Johnstown (Cambria County)

When the pay-day of the Cambria Iron Company does come it will be an
impressive scene. The only thing comparable to it will be the roll-call
after a great battle. Mothers, wives, and children will be there to
claim the wages of sons, and husbands, and fathers. The men in the
gloomy line will have few families to take their wages home to. The
Cambria people do not propose to stand on any red-tape rules about
paying the wages of their dead employés to the surviving friends and
relatives. They will only try to make reasonably sure that they are
paying the money to the right persons.

An assistant cashier, Thomas McGee, in the company's store saved $12,000
of the company's funds. The money was all in packages of bills in bags
in the safe on the ground floor of the main building of the stores. When
the water began to rise he went up on the second floor of the building,
carrying the money with him. When the crash of the reservoir torrent
came Mr. McGee clambered upon the roof, and just before the building
tottered and fell he managed to jump on the roof of a house that went
by. The house was swept near the bank. Mr. McGee jumped off and fell
into the water, but struck out and managed to clamber up the bank. Then
he got up on the hills and remained out all night guarding his treasure.

[Illustration: COLUMBIA, PA., UNDER THE FLOOD.]

At dawn of Thursday the stillness of the night, which had been punctured
frequently by the pistol and musket shots of vigilant guards scaring off
possible marauders, was permanently fractured by the arousing of gangs
of laborers who had slept about wherever they could find a soft spot in
the ruins, as well as in tents set up in the centre of where the town
used to be. The soldiers in their camps were seen about later, and the
railroad gang of several hundred men set out up the track toward where
they had left off work the night before. Breakfast was cooked at
hundreds of camp-fires, and about brick-kilns, and wherever else a fire
could be got. At seven o'clock five thousand laborers struck pick and
shovel and saw into the square miles of débris heaped over the city's
site. At the same time more laborers began to arrive on trains and march
through the streets in long gangs toward the place where they were
needed. Those whose work was to be pulling and hauling trailed along in
lines, holding to their ropes. They looked like gangs of slaves being
driven to a market. By the time the forenoon was well under way, seven
thousand laborers were at work in the city under the direction of one
hundred foremen. There were five hundred cars and as many teams, and
half a dozen portable hoisting engines, besides regular locomotives and
trains of flat cars that were used in hauling off débris that could not
be burned. With this force of men and appliances at work the ruined
city, looked at from the bluffs, seemed to fairly swarm with life,
wherever the flood had left anything to be removed. The whole lower part

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