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.
The unsightliest place in Johnstown is the morgue in the Presbyterian
Church. The edifice is a large brick structure in the centre of the
city, and was about the first church building in the city. About one
hundred and seventy-five people took refuge there during the flood.
After the first crash, when the people were expecting another every
instant, and of course that they would perish, the pastor of the church,
the Rev. Mr. Beale, began to pray fervently that the lives of those in
the church might be spared. He fairly wrestled in prayer, and those who
heard him say that it seemed to be a very death-struggle with the demon
of the flood itself. No second crash came, the waters receded, and the
lives of those in the church were spared. The people said that it was
all due to the Rev. Mr. Beale's prayer. The pews in the church were all
demolished, and the Sunday-school room under it was flooded with the
angry waters, and filled up to the ceiling with débris. The Rev. Mr.
Beale is now general morgue director in Johnstown, and has the
authority of a dictator of the bodies of the dead. In the Presbyterian
Church morgue the bodies are, almost without exception, those which have
been recovered from the ruins of the smashed buildings. The bodies are
torn and bruised in the most horrible manner, so that identification is
very difficult. They are nearly all bodies of the prominent or
well-known residents of Johnstown. The cleaning and embalming of the
bodies takes place in the corners of the church, on either side of the
pulpit. As soon as they have a presentable appearance, the bodies are
placed in coffins, put across the ends of the pews near the aisles, so
that people can pass around through the aisles and look at them. Few
identifications have yet been made here. In one coffin is the body of a
young man who had on a nice bicycle suit when found. In his pockets were
forty dollars in money. The bicycle has not been found. It is supposed
that the body is that of some young fellow who was on a bicycle tour up
the Conemaugh River, and who was engulfed by the flood.
The waters played some queer freaks. A number of mirrors taken out of
the ruins with the frames smashed and with the glass parts entirely
uninjured have been a matter for constant comment on the part of those
who have inspected the ruins and worked in them. When the waters went
down, the Sunday-school rooms of the Presbyterian Church just referred
to were found littered with playing cards. In a baby's cradle was found
a dissertation upon infant baptism and two volumes of a history of the
Crusades. A commercial man from Pittsburgh, who came down to look at the
ruins, found among them his own picture. He never was in Johnstown but
two or three times before, and he did not have any friends there. How
the picture got among the ruins of Johnstown is a mystery to him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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