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Updated: May 2, 2025
Her brothers, Lieutenant P. and James McKee, received the following telegram at Carthage yesterday from Johnstown: "Escaped with my life on housetop; am all right. "The lady is well known in this county." Rich Made Poor. John Kelly, the prominent Odd Fellow of Conemaugh, who was supposed to be lost, escaped with his entire family, though his house and store were swept down the river.
"Are the horrors of the flood to give way to the terrors of the plague?" is the question that is now agitating the valley of the Conemaugh. To-day opened warm and almost sultry, and the stench that assails one's senses as he wanders through Johnstown is almost overpowering.
It begins to dawn on us that the catastrophe was brought about not merely by the bursting of the dam of the old canal reservoir, but by a rainfall exceeding in depth and area all previously recorded phenomena of the kind. The whole drainage basin of the Kiskiminetas, and more particularly that of the Conemaugh, was affected.
So rapidly did gifts pour in that within eight days after the disaster the following statement was made from Harrisburg: The Governor's fund for the relief of the survivors of the flood in the Conemaugh Valley and other portions of the State is assuming large proportions and the disposition to contribute appears to be on the increase.
The topography of Johnstown is almost precisely like that of Pittsburgh, only in a diminished degree. Stony Creek comes in from the mountains on the northeast, and the Little Conemaugh comes in from the northwest, forming the Conemaugh at Johnstown, precisely as the Allegheny and Monongahela form the Ohio at Pittsburgh.
Early this morning the 14th Regiment went into service, but it was a volunteer service of two young officers and three privates when at noon they dragged gently from the rushing Conemaugh the body of a beautiful young girl.
There has been no attempt to replace the bridge at "Ten Acre," as the point below Cambria City is called. The banks of the Conemaugh remain covered with débris. In many places the masses are piled twenty-five feet high. The people are clearing their land by burning the unwonted accumulations. Only an occasional body is found.
The frightened inhabitants along the Conemaugh describe the flood as something awful. The first rise came almost without warning, and the torrent came roaring down the mountain passes in one huge wave, several feet in height. After the first swell the water continued to rise at a fearful rate. Daylight Brings No Relief.
The water-tanks of three locomotives which were borne from the roundhouse at Conemaugh, two miles away, are conspicuous. Amid the general wreck, beneath one of these heavy iron tanks, a looking glass, two feet by one foot in dimensions, was discovered intact, without even a scratch on the quicksilver. Johnstown people surviving the destruction appear to bewail the death of the Fisher family.
The ground was water soaked, and when the immense mountain district that drains into the Conemaugh above South Fork is taken into consideration the terrible volume of water that must have accumulated can be realized. Gathering, as it did, within a few minutes, it came against the breast of the South Fork dam with irresistible force.
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