The Johnstown Horror!!!: or, Valley of Death, being A Complete and Thrilling Account; of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling RuinWalker, James Herbert
History
The Johnstown Horror!!!: or, Valley of Death, being A Complete and Thrilling Account; of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling Ruin
The military men say there was no conflict of authority, and it was
deemed proper that the civil authorities should still control the pass
there. The sheriff came near getting shot in Cambria City this morning
during a clash with one of his deputies over a buggy. Yet he looked calm
and serene. Some beg him for passes to hunt for their dead. One man
cried: "I've just gotten here, and my wife and children are in that
town;" another said, "I belong in Conemaugh and was carried off by the
flood," while an aged, trembling man behind him whispered, "Sheriff, I
just wanted to look where the old home stood." When four peaceful faced
sisters in convent garb, on their mission of mercy, came that way the
sentinels stood back a pace and no voice ordered "Halt!"
At noon the crane belonging to the Pennsylvania Railroad was taken away
from the debris at the bridge, and Mr. Kirk had to depend on dynamite
alone. Later it was ordered back, and after that the work went on
rapidly. An opening 400 feet long, which runs back in some places fifty
feet, was made during the afternoon. A relief party yesterday found a
ladies' hand satchel containing $91 in cash, deeds for $26,000 in
property and about $10,000 in insurance policies. Mrs. Lizzie Dignom was
the owner, and both she and her husband perished in the flood.
Remembering the Orphans.
Miss H.W. Hinckley and Miss E. Hanover, agent of the Children's Aid
Society and Bureau of Information of Philadelphia, arrived here this
morning, and in twenty minutes had established a transfer agency. Miss
Hinckley said:
"There are hundreds of children here who are apparently without parents.
We want all of them given to us, and we will send them to the various
homes and orphanages of the State, where they shall be maintained for
several months to await the possibility of the reappearance of their
parents when they will be returned to them. If after the lapse of a
month they do not reclaim their little ones, we shall do more than we
ordinarily do in the way of providing good homes for children in their
cases. Think of it, in the house adjoining us are seven orphans, all of
one family. We have been here only a half hour, but we have already
found scores. We shall stay right here till every child has been
provided for."
There is no denying that a great deal of ill-feeling is breeding here
between the survivors of the flood over the distribution of the relief
supplies. The supplies are spread along the railroad track down as far
as Morrellville in great stacks; provisions, clothing, shoes, and
everything else. The people come for them in swarms with baskets and
other means of conveyance. Lines are drawn, which are kept in trim by
the pickets, and in this way they pass along in turn to the point where
the stock is distributed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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