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.
At Falling Waters, where only a few days before a cyclone caused death
and destruction, two houses went down in the angry water, and the little
town was almost entirely submerged. In Carroll County, Md., the losses
reached several hundred thousand dollars. George Derrick was drowned at
Trevanion Mills, on Pipe creek. Along the Patapsco river in Howard
county great damage was done to mills and private property. Near
Sykesville the water undermined the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad track
and a freight train was turned over an embankment. William Hudson was
standing on the Suspension Bridge, at Orange Grove, when the structure
was swept away, and he was never seen again.
Port Deposit, near the mouth of the Susquehanna river, went under water.
Residents along the river front left their homes and took refuge on the
hills back of the town. The river was filled with thousands of logs from
the broken booms up in the timber regions. From the eastern and southern
sections of the State came reports of entire fruit farms swept away. Two
men were drowned in the storm by the capsizing of a sloop near
Salisbury.
A number of houses on the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers near Harper's
Ferry were destroyed by the raging waters which came thundering down
from the mountains, thirty to forty feet higher than low-water mark.
John Brown's fort was nearly swept away. The old building has withstood
a number of floods. There is only a rickety portion of it standing,
anyhow, and that is now covered with mud and rubbish. While the crowds
on the heights near Harper's Ferry were watching the terrible work of
destruction, a house was seen coming down the Potomac. Upon its roof
were three men wildly shouting to the people on the hills to save them.
Just as the structure struck the railroad bridge, the men tried to catch
hold of the flooring and iron work, but the swift torrent swept them all
under, and they were seen no more. What appeared to be a babe in a
cradle came floating down behind them, and a few moments later the body
of a woman, supposed to be the mother of the child, swept by. Robert
Connell, a farmer living upon a large island in the Potomac, known as
Herter Island, lost all his wheat crop and his cattle. His family was
rescued by Clarence Stedman and E. A. Keyser, an artist from Washington,
at the risk of their lives. The fine railroad bridge across the
Shenandoah, near Harper's Ferry, was destroyed. The Ferry Mill Company
sustained heavy losses.
Along the South Mountains, in Washington and Alleghany counties, Md.,
the destruction was terrible. Whole farms, including the houses and
barns, were swept away and hundreds of live stock killed. Between
Williamsport, Md., and Dam No. 6 on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal
twenty-six houses were destroyed, and it is reported that several
persons were drowned. The homeless families are camping out on the
hills, being supplied with food and clothing by the citizens of
Williamsport.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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