Johnstown

“ A slide, a series of frightful tosses from side to side, a run, and you have crossed the narrow rope bridge which spanned the chasm dug by the waters between the stone bridge and Johnstown. Crossing the bridge is an exciting task, yet many women accomplished it rather than remain in Johnstown. The bridge pitched like a ship in a storm. Within two inches of your feet rushed the muddy waters of the Conemaugh. There were no ropes to easily guide, and creeping was more convenient than walking. ”

“ The pillaging of the houses in Johnstown is something awful to contemplate and describe. It makes one feel almost ashamed to call himself a man and know that others who bear the same name have converted themselves into human vultures, preying on the dead. Men are carrying shotguns and revolvers, and woe betide the stranger who looks even suspiciously at any article. Goods of great value were being sold in town to-day for a drink of whiskey.
A supply store has been established in the Fourth ward in Johnstown. ”

“ In a sand pile near the Pennsylvania Railroad depot a horse's hind feet, rump and tail are all that can be seen of him. He was caught in the rapidly running waters and had been driven into the sand.
The following telegram from Johnstown has been received at Pittsburg:
"For God's sake tell the sight-seers to keep away from Johnstown for the present. What we want is people to work, not to look on. Citizen's Committee."
Three trains have already been sent out with crowded cargoes of sight-seers. At every station along the road excited crowds are waiting for an opportunity to get aboard. ”

“ The merchandise came up from Philadelphia and Baltimore by river, too; up the Susquehanna and Juniata, to the eastern foot-hills, and there was a great portage from the Juniata to the Conemaugh; the Kittanning Trail, then the Frankstown Turnpike. Later came the great trunk railroad whose express trains now go roaring down the valley.
Johnstown is—nay, Johnstown was!—a busy and industrious place. The people of the town were the employees of the Cambria Iron and Steel Company, their families, and small storekeepers. There was not one rich man in the town. ”

“ At the present moment firemen and others are out on that ghastly aggregation of woodwork [Pg 205] and human kind jammed against the unyielding mass of arched masonry.
Round them curls the white smoke from the smouldering interior of the heaped up houses of Johnstown. Every now and then the gleam of an axe and a group of stooping forms tell that another ghastly find has been made, and a whisper goes round among the hundreds of watchers that other bodies are being brought to light. ”

“ Johnstown is in a hollow between two rivers, and that lake must have swept over the city at a depth of forty feet. It cannot be, it is impossible that such an awful thing could happen to a city of ten thousand inhabitants, and if it has, thousands have lost their lives, and men are to blame for it, for warnings have been uttered a thousand times and have received no attention. ”

“ The afflicted people quietly bear their crosses. The calamity has been so general that the sufferers feel that everybody has been treated alike. Grouped together, the sorrows of each other assist in keeping up the strength and courage of all. In the excitement and hurry of the present, loss of friends is forgotten, but the time will come when it is all over and the world gradually drifts back to business, forgetful that such a town as Johnstown ever existed. ”

“ The people of Johnstown have supped so full of horrors that they go about in a sort of a daze and only half conscious of their griefs. Every hour, as one goes through the streets, he hears neighbors greeting each other and then inquiring without show of feeling how many each had lost in his family. ”

“ In Pittsburg there was but one topic of conversation, and that was the Johnstown deluge. Crowds of eager watchers all day long besieged the newspaper bulletin boards and rendered streets impassable in their vicinity. Many of them had friends or relatives in the stricken district, and "Names!" "Names!" was their cry. But there were no names. The storm which had perhaps swept away their loved ones had also carried away all means of communication and their vigil was unrewarded. It is not yet known whether the telegraph operator at Johnstown is dead or alive. ”

“ There have been strange doings in Johnstown since you left: a change has come in a single week, lad; neighbours no longer speak; the town is three parts Tory to one part patriot; even brothers hate each other. Two taverns known to be the meeting-places of patriots have been set afire and shot into; and old John Butler is gone north, where, they say, he is raising a bloody crew of cut-throats, rangers, half-breeds, and young Mohawks. Sir William is holding long talks with Brant and Red Jacket at the upper castle. ”

“ Everything except what nature tints is the favorite color. This was one of the principal stopping places on the Post Road, but it has sadly dwindled since the old days.
JOHNSTOWN — RACE PLACE.
Johnstown contains three Livingston houses, built by various members of this omnipresent family. The one north of the village stands on a commanding hill, and looks from the road like a handsome place. In 1805 there were twenty public houses in this place, even members of the reigning family consenting to take in the sheckels over the bar. ”

“ Just as the day was dawning I left the desolate city of Johnstown, and, wending my way along the shore of the winding Conemaugh to Sheridan, I succeeded in persuading a number of brave and stout-hearted men, who had constructed a raft and were about to start on an extended search for the lost who are known to be strewn all along this fated stream, to take me with them.
The river is still very high, and while the current is [Pg 262] not remarkably swift, the still flowing débris made the expedition one of peril. Between the starting point and Nineveh several bodies were recovered. ”

“ England was then shipping rails into this country under a low duty, and the iron industry here was struggling for existence. The company at Johnstown was aided by a number of Philadelphia merchants, but was unable to continue in business, and suspended in 1854. At a meeting of the creditors in Philadelphia soon afterward a committee was appointed, with Daniel J. Morrell as Chairman, to visit the works at Johnstown and recommend the best means, if any, to save themselves from loss. ”

“ The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad ordinarily does not attempt to compete for business from Pittsburgh into Johnstown. Its only route between those two cities leads over small branch lines among the mountains south of Johnstown, and is over double the length of the Pennsylvania main line route. The first train to reach Johnstown, however, was one over the Baltimore and Ohio lines, and, although they made no attempt to establish a regular line, they did on Sunday get two relief trains out of Pittsburgh and into Johnstown. ”

“ There can be no doubt that this movement should be encouraged to the greatest possible extent, and it would be well if places away from Johnstown, at no too great distance, could be opened for the reception of those who, while not entirely disabled, are useless at home. The scarcity of pure spring water which is not tainted by dead animal matter is a pressing evil for consideration, but we doubt if this is as important a fact at Johnstown as it is further down the river, owing to the large amount of decomposing flesh in the water at this latter point. ”

“ In the summer of 1781 another expedition was secretly planned against Johnstown, and executed with silent celerity. The expedition consisted of four companies of the Second battalion of Sir John's regiment of Royal Greens, Butler's Rangers and two hundred Indians, numbering in all about one thousand men, under the command of Major Ross. He was defeated at the battle of Johnstown on October 25th. The army of Major Ross, for four days in the wilderness, on their advance had been living on only a half pound of horse flesh per man per day ”

“ Hundreds of people are constantly crowding to these temporary houses, one of which is located in each of the suburban boroughs that surround Johnstown. Men armed with muskets, uniformed sentinels, constituting the force that guard the city while it is practically under martial law, stand at the doors and admit the crowd by tens. ”

“ The ruined city lies to-night within a girdle of steel—the bayonets of the 14th regiment. The militia [Pg 322] has captured Johnstown and to-night over the desolate plain where the city proper stood, through the towering wrecks and by the river passes, marches the patrol, crying "Halt" and challenging vagabonds, vandals and ghouls, who cross their path. ”

“ If Pennsylvania Railroad trains ever ran over tougher-looking tracks than those used now through Johnstown it must have been before people began to ride on it. The section from the north end of the bridge to the railroad station has a grade that wabbles between 50 and 500 feet to the mile and jerks back and forth sideways as though laid by a gang of intoxicated men on a dark night. ”

“ Jack Drogue will not refuse his old friend, Billy Alexander. So for God's sake leave your rifle-shirt and moccasins in Johnstown and put on the clothing which I have bespoken of the same Johnstown tailoress who made your forest dress and mine when in happier days we hunted and fished with Sir William in the pleasant forests of Fonda's Bush. ”

“ The people of Johnstown, although prostrated by their misfortune, soon recovered, rebuilt their city and re-established their industrial plants, making it a more beautiful and more modern place than ever before. ”

“ The mental condition of almost every former resident of Johnstown is one of the gravest character, and the reaction which will set in when the reality of the whole affair is fully comprehended can scarcely fail to produce many cases of permanent or temporary insanity. Most of the faces that one meets, both male and female, are those of the most profound melancholia, associated with an almost absolute disregard of the future. The nervous system shows the strain it has borne by a tremulousness of the hand and of the lip in man as well as in woman. ”

“ All I could do was to urge them to leave their homes and go to Johnstown; but they shook their heads, some asserting that Johnstown was full of Tories, awaiting the coming of Walter Butler to rise and massacre everybody; others declaring that the Yellow Tavern, which had been fortified, was safer than Albany itself. None would leave house or land; and whether these people really believed that they could hold out against a sudden onslaught, I never knew. They were the usual mixture of races, some of low Dutch extraction, like the Vanderveers and Wemples, some high Dutch, like the Kleins ”

“ What was worse than anything, however, was the fact that incoming trains from Pittsburgh brought hundreds of toughs, who joined with the Slavs and Bohemians in rifling the bodies, stealing furniture, insulting women, and endeavoring to assume control of any rescuing parties that tried to seek the bodies under the bushes and in the limbs of trees. There was no one in authority, no one to take command of even a citizens’ posse could it have been organized. A lawless mob seemed to control this narrow neck of land that was the only approach to the city of Johnstown. ”

“ The scenes at the distributing points through the week have been most interesting. Monday and Tuesday saw lines of men, women and children in the scantiest of clothing, blue with cold, unwashed and dishevelled, so pitifully destitute a company as one would wish to see. Since the clothing cars have come the people have assumed a more presentable appearance and food has brought life back to them and warmth, but their condition is still pitiful. The destitute ones are almost altogether from the well-to-do people of Johnstown, who have lost all and are as poor as the poorest. ”

“ There is no need of troops to quell another disturbance, but now there are at least two thousand men at work in Johnstown clearing up the débris, and I think that it will not hurt to have the Fourteenth regiment here, as they can guard the banks and all valuables. ”

“ There are two camps on the hillside to the north of Johnstown, and they are almost side by side. One is a camp for the living, for the most woebegone and unfortunate of the refugees from the Conemaugh Valley of the shadow of death, and the other is for the dead. The camp of the living is Camp Hastings and the ministering spirits are members of the Americus Republican Club of Pittsburgh. The camp for the dead is the new potters' field that was laid out on Monday for the bodies of unknown victims. ”

“ The houses that remain are filled with mud and the ceilings still drip with water. People seem to have lost their senses. They are apparently paralyzed by their troubles. They sit around waiting for some one to come and clear the wreckage away.
"Well, it is a terrible sight and we will hurry through the place and cross to Johnstown flat, over another pontoon bridge further down. It brings us out, as you see, near the main street again. Hello! there is a man; there is his name on the sign—Kramer, isn't it? who is getting his grocery store open, the first in town. ”

“ The Eighteenth regiment, of Pittsburgh, has tendered its services to this work, but has received no reply to its tender.
General Hastings estimates that the loss of life is at least eight thousand.
An employee of J.L. Gill, of Latrobe, says he and thirty-five other men were in a three-story building in Johnstown last night. They had been getting out logs for the Johnstown Lumber Company. The man says [Pg 64] that the building was swept away and all the men were drowned except Gill and his family. ”