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.
About the only people who have come into Johnstown, not having business
there connected with the clearing up of the city, are people from a
great distance, hunting up their friends and relatives. There are folks
here now from almost every State in the Union, with the exception,
perhaps, of those on the Pacific coast. There are people, too, from
Pennsylvania and States near by, who, receiving no answer to their
telegrams, have decided to come on in person. They wander over the town
in their search, at first frantically asking everybody right and left if
they have heard of their missing friends. Generally nobody has heard of
them, or some one may remember that he saw a man who said that he
happened to see a body pulled out at Nineveh or Cambria City, or
somewhere, that looked like Jack So-and-So, naming the missing one. At
the morgues the inquirer is told that about four hundred unidentified
dead have already been buried, and on the fences before the morgues and
on the outside house walls of the buildings themselves he reads several
hundred such notices as these, of bodies still unclaimed:--
A woman, dark hair, blue eyes, blue waist, dark dress, clothing of fine
quality; a single bracelet on the left arm; age, about twenty-three.
An old lady, clothing undistinguishable, but containing a purse with
twenty-seven dollars and a small key.
A young man, fair complexion, light hair, gray eyes, dark blue suit,
white shirt; believed to have been a guest at the Hurlburt House.
A female; supposed to belong to the Salvation Army.
A man about thirty-five years old, dark-complexioned, brown hair, brown
moustache, light clothes, left leg a little shortened.
A boy about ten years old, found with a little girl of nearly same age;
boy had hold of girl's hand; both light-haired and fair-complexioned,
and girl had long curls; boy had on dark clothes, and girl a gingham
dress.
* * * * *
The people looking for their friends had lots of money, but money is of
no use now in Johnstown. It cannot hire teams to go up along the
Conemaugh River, where lots of people want to go; it cannot hire men as
searchers, for all the people in Johnstown not on business of their own
are digging in the ruins; it cannot even buy food, for what little food
there is in Johnstown is practically free, and a good square meal cannot
be procured for love nor money anywhere. Under these discouragements
many people are giving up the search and going home, either giving their
relatives up for dead or waiting for them to turn up, still maintaining
the hope that they are alive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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