ILLINOIS.
Sunday, February 19, 1888, will ever be a memorable day in the annals of the little town of Mount Vernon, Ill.—a day of supreme horrors, destruction and death. There had been thunder and lightning during the afternoon, followed by rain and hail, which had given away to an ominous stillness. The sky was covered with a wierd light, and the air was strangely oppressive. The clouds rapidly changed color, rolling and whirling, and dropping nearer to the earth, until suddenly they assumed the dreaded shape of a huge funnel or inverted cone, which came whirling along with an awful roar, and within three minutes after the fury of the storm had struck the town, thirty people had been killed and scores of others injured, and an immense amount of property destroyed.
Mount Vernon is the county seat of Jefferson county, and contained four thousand inhabitants. It was a pretty and prosperous place; its business centre surrounded a public square, whose four sides were lined with stores, and the middle ground occupied by the county court house, a fine three-story building; its broad streets were bordered with shade trees and lighted by electricity.
The cyclone cut a broad swath through the eastern half of the town, destroying everything in its path, tearing down brick houses, uprooting trees, and picking up small wooden houses and carrying them along as if they were made of cardboard, and finally dashing them to pieces against more substantial obstacles. In a very few minutes after the storm had passed, the sun shone out brightly, but on what a scene! The air was filled with cries of anguish coming from the maimed sufferers crushed under the ruins, and with the wailings for the dead and missing.
To add to the horrors already wrought, fire broke out in a dozen places. Those who were uninjured quickly came to the rescue, quenching the flames and exerting themselves to relieve the unfortunate victims, who were, in most cases, pinned down under the wreckage of their houses. All night long these brave men and women worked, and when morning came the few houses that remained standing were filled with the dead and injured.
Appeals for assistance were sent out to the people of the country, but through an improper statement of the situation, the public was misled, and not realizing the pressing needs of the stricken community, failed to take up the matter in a business-like manner, and the town was left to suffer for a little of the great abundance that was around them. In their extremity the despairing citizens appealed to the Red Cross for aid, which responded at once.
A most deplorable situation was presented: the people were homeless and helpless, neglected, and in a state of mind bordering on insanity.
After a somewhat hasty examination of the situation, the following simple message was sent to both the Associated and the United Press:
The pitiless snow is falling on the heads of three thousand people who are without homes, without food or clothing and without money.
Clara Barton.
With only this little word to explain the needs, our generous American people responded promptly and liberally, as they always do when they fully understand what is needed.
It was unnecessary to remain longer than two weeks with these people, who, as soon as they recovered from the first shock of their great misfortune, and when they felt that kind friends were by their side, lending them moral and substantial support, manfully commenced to bring order out of chaos, to rebuild their town and resume their usual avocations. Large quantities of relief supplies of all kinds quickly came to hand, and when we were ready to leave them, the Citizens’ Committee had in its treasury a cash balance of ninety thousand dollars. And thus, with their blessings ringing in our ears, we left them.
We were scarcely home from Mount Vernon when the yellow fever of Florida broke out in the summer and autumn of 1888.
YELLOW FEVER EPIDEMIC IN FLORIDA.
During the month of August, 1888, yellow fever broke out in Jacksonville, and in September it was declared to be epidemic, the usual alarm and exodus of citizens taking place. On September eighth heroic measures to depopulate the city were taken. Every person that was still well and could leave was requested to go; very little urging was necessary. Camps were established outside of the city, where those who had not the means to go further and get better quarters were enabled to live under medical surveillance, and away from the seat of infection.
The Mayor of Jacksonville had made an appeal for doctors and nurses, which had been quickly responded to, and they were doing everything possible to attend to the rapidly increasing number of patients.
On the formation of the Red Cross Society of New Orleans in 1893, it had been carefully and wisely arranged that in case of yellow fever becoming epidemic in any place, no unacclimated persons, or those not immune, should be sent as assistants by the Red Cross. New Orleans was the home of the famous “Old Howard Association,” that had won its reputation and worn its grateful renown from the horrors of Memphis to the present time. This body freely united with the Red Cross of New Orleans, and it was arranged that the southern states, through this society, should provide all Red Cross nurses for yellow fever, and that the northern portion of the country should raise the money to pay and provide them. We felt this to be a security, and an immediate provision which the country had never before known. Fearing that this might not, at its first inception, be fully understood, I called at once on Dr. Hamilton, then in charge of the Marine Hospital, explaining it to him, and offering all the nurses that could be required, even to hundreds, all experienced and organized for immediate action. Perhaps it was not strange that a provision so new and so unknown in the sad history of plagues and epidemics, should have seemed Eutopian, and as such been brushed aside as not only useless, but self-seeking and obtrusive. Like the entire organization of which it was a part, it had to wait and win its way against custom or even prejudice, by honest worth and stern necessity. It was the “old, old story.” The world takes reform hard and slow.
As it was, however, we did what we could. Headquarters were established at the Riggs House in Washington. The good hearted people of the north who felt that they must go to Florida, had by some means gotten the idea that they must have a pass from the Central Committee of the Red Cross in order to go. They came to us in hundreds and were mercifully held back from a scourge for which they would have been both food and fuel. Whilst the entire people of the country in pity and horror at the reports received, were holding meetings, raising money, and pouring funds like water into the doomed city of Jacksonville, where the scourge had centered, and to which every effort was made to confine it.
Not realizing the opposition there might prove to be to our nurses, we called upon their old time leader, Colonel F.R. Southmayd, the efficient secretary of the Red Cross Society of New Orleans, instructing him to enlist a body of nurses and take them at once to the fever district. He enlisted thirty, both men and women, white and colored, took a part with him, the remainder following next day.
Colonel Southmayd, Southern born and bred, was a man of quick impulse and intense feelings; his heart was warm with the love of humanity and the sense of justice. He had been identified with the old Howard Association almost from its inception, and had worked through every epidemic of fever or other disease that had afflicted the South since the war; and he knew full well the value of the services of his chosen nurses. He strongly resented the injustice that he felt they were receiving, and naturally became involved in an unfortunate altercation with his superiors. In order to restore peace and remove an impediment to effective work, I withdrew the Colonel, requesting him to come to Washington and assist the Central Committee.
He came in obedience to the call, but burning with a sense of indignity and injustice to himself and the faithful suffering nurses he had brought—even with the lack of the good right arm which had swung his sword for the Confederate cause till it dropped from the shoulder, he was not an easy man to hold; but duty to the Red Cross, which he loved, and loyalty to its officers, whom he honored, held him quiet. He would never return to New Orleans, but at length retired to some northern city, where, after a few years he died, beloved and respected by those who knew his proud high soul, sterling worth and devotion to humanity.
His was one of the strong hearts that carried the impress of its memories and griefs to the grave, and we always felt that somewhere on that heart that had ceased to beat could have been found a spot still bruised and sore on which was written Jacksonville.
Refugees who had fled from Jacksonville, carried the plague to several smaller places in the surrounding country, where in some instances it acquired quite a foothold; but owing to their obscurity and the lack of communication with the outside world, they were left alone to fight the disease as best they could. Among these places was the little town of MacClenny, where as soon as it became known that there was a case of fever within its limits, all trains were ordered to rush through without stopping, and an armed quarantine was placed around it with orders to shoot anyone attempting to leave the town. Thus left to their fate, without doctors, nurses or food, in any quantity, their situation was pitiable. There were a number of volunteers who had made attempts to get into MacClenny, but owing to the unreasoning panic existing, they were not permitted to enter the place.
Colonel Southmayd had heard of these neglected people, and he succeeded while en route to Jacksonville in dropping off ten nurses so much needed at MacClenny. How he did this, I have told in a little brochure entitled “The MacClenny Nurses,” that was issued at the close of the year 1888 as a holiday greeting, and intended as a public acknowledgment of the appreciation in which the Red Cross held those noble men and women who braved everything that they might serve their stricken brethren. Following is the story:
“THE MacCLENNY NURSES.”
A HOLIDAY TRIBUTE
TO
RED CROSS WORKERS,
IN
Warm appreciation and grateful acknowledgment of the faithful hands that toiled, and the generous hearts that gave.
BY
Clara Barton,
President of the American Association of the Red Cross.
“THE MACCLENNY NURSES.”
During the fourth week in November a dispatch to National Headquarters announced that the last band of Red Cross nurses, known as the MacClenny nurses, had finished their work at Enterprise, and would come into Camp Perry to wait their ten days’ quarantine and go home to New Orleans for Thanksgiving.
Seventy-nine days ago that would mean that their little company of eighteen, mainly women, steaming on to Jacksonville, under guidance of their old-time trusted leader, Southmayd, of New Orleans, listened to his announcement that the town of MacClenny, thirty-eight miles from Jacksonville, Florida, and through which they would soon pass, was in a fearful state of distress; a comparatively new town, of a few thousand, largely Northern and Western people, suddenly stricken down in scores; poor, helpless, physicians all ill, and no nurses; quarantined on all sides, no food, medicine, nor comforts for sick or well.
“Nurses, shall I leave a part of you there; the train cannot stop in, nor near the town, but if I can manage to get it slowed up somewhere, will you jump?”
“We will do anything you say, Colonel; we are here in God’s name and service to help His people; for Him, for you, and for the Red Cross, we will do our best and our all.”
“Conductor, you had a hot box a few miles back; don’t you think it should be looked to after passing MacClenny?”
“I will slow up and have it seen to, Colonel, although it may cost me my official head.” And it did.
One mile beyond town, the rain pouring in torrents, the ground soaked, slippery, and caving, out into pitchy darkness, leaped three men and seven women from a puffing, unsteady train, no physician with them, and no instructions save the charge of their leader as the last leap was made, and the train pushed on. “Nurses, you know what to do; go and do your best, and God help you.” Hand to hand, that none go astray in the darkness, they hobbled back over a mile of slippery cross-ties to the stricken town. Shelter was found, the wet clothes dried, and at midnight the sick had been parceled out, each nurse had his or her quota of patients, and were in for the issue, be it life or death. Those past all help must be seen through, and lost, all that could be must be saved. The next day a dispatch from Southmayd went back to New Orleans for Dr. Gill, a Norwegian by birth, tall, straight, honest, and true as the pines of his native land, to come and take charge of the sick and the nurses at MacClenny. It was done, and under his wise direction they found again a leader. Their labors and successes are matters for later and more extended record.
It is to be borne in mind that these nurses found no general table, no table at all but such as they could provide, find the food for, and cook for themselves, for the sick, the children, and the old and helpless who had escaped the fever and must be cared for. No patient could be left till the crisis was passed, and many are their records of seventy-two hours without change or sleep or sitting down. As the disease gradually succumbed to their watchful care, experience and skill, they reached out to other freshly attacked towns and hamlets. Sanderson and Glen St. Mary’s became their charge, and return their blessings for life preserved.
On November first it was thought they could safely leave and go into camp for quarantine; but no regular train would be permitted to take them. The Red Cross secured and paid a special train for them, and, as if in bold relief against the manner of their entry seven weeks before, the entire town, saving its invalids, was assembled at the station at seven o’clock in the morning to bid them good-by and God-speed.
But their fame had gone before them, and “Enterprise,” a hundred miles below, just stricken down among its flowers and fruits, reached out its hand for aid, and with one accord after two days in camp, all turned back from the coveted home and needed rest and added another month of toil to their already weary record. At length this was ended, and word came again to us that they would go into quarantine. Their unselfish, faithful, and successful record demanded something more than the mere sending of money. It deserved the thanks of the Red Cross organization in the best and highest manner in which they could be bestowed; it was decided that its president, in person, should most fittingly do this, and accordingly left Washington on the morning of November twenty-second in company with Dr. Hubbell, Field Agent, for Camp Perry, the quarantine station of Florida. Two days and one night by rail, a few miles across country by wagon, where trains were forbidden to stop, and another mile or so over the trestles of St. Mary’s on a dirt car with the workmen, brought us into camp as the evening fires were lighted and the bugle sounded supper. The genial surgeon in charge, Dr. Hutton, who carried a knapsack and musket in an Illinois regiment in ’62, met us cordially and extended every possible hospitality. Soon there filed past us to supper the tall doctor and his little flock; some light and fair-skinned, with the easy step of a well-bred lady, others dark and bony-handed, but the strong kind faces below the turbans told at a glance that you could trust your life there and find it again. They were not disturbed that night, and no certain information of our arrival got among them. It was cold and windy, and the evening short, as nine o’clock brought taps and lights out. In spite of all caution the news of our coming had spread over the surrounding country, and telegrams bringing both thanks for what had been received and the needs for more, came from all sides, and the good mayor of MacClenny made his troubled way to reach and greet us in person, and take again the faithful hands that had served and saved his people. Surgeon Hutton’s headquarter tent was politely tendered for the first meeting, and as one could never, while memory lasts, forget this scene, so no words can ever adequately describe it. The ample tent was filled. Here on the right the mayor, broad shouldered, kind faced and efficient, officers of camp, and many visitors, wondering what it all meant; in the centre the tall doctor and his faithful band. Eliza Lanier, Lena Seymour (mother and daughter), Elizabeth Eastman, Harriet Schmidt, Lizzie Louis, Rebecca Vidal, Annie Evans, Arthur Duteil, Frederick Wilson and Edward Holyland.
I give these names because they are worthy a place in the history of any epidemic; but no country, race, nor creed could claim them as a body: four Americans, one German, one French, one Irish, three Africans, part Protestant, and part Catholic, but all from New Orleans, of grand old Howard stock, from Memphis down, nursing in every epidemic from the bayous of the Mississippi to Tampa Bay; and hereafter we will know them as the “Old Guard.”
Here, in the winds of approaching winter they stand in the light garb of early September in New Orleans, thin, worn, longing for home, but patient, grateful and glad. Some trifling “nubia” or turban about the head, but only one distinguishing feature in common. A pitiful little misshapen Red Cross, made by their own hands, of two bits of scarlet ribbon, soiled, fringed, and tattered, pinned closely upon the left breast of each, strove in mute appeal to say who they were, and what they served. A friendly recognition and some words of thanks from their president, opened the way for those anxious to follow. The rich, warm eloquence of Mayor Watkins plainly told from how near his heart the stream of gratitude was flowing, and his manly voice trembled as he reverted to the condition of his stricken people, on that pitiless night, when this little band of pilgrim strangers strayed back to them in the rain and darkness. “I fear they often worked in hunger,” he said, “for then, as now, we had little for ourselves, our sick, or our well; but they brought us to our feet, and the blessing of every man, woman and child in MacClenny is on them.”
It was with a kind of paternal pride that Dr. Gill advanced and placed before us his matchless record of cases attended, and life preserved. “This is the record of our work,” he said. “I am proud of it, and glad that I have been able to make it, but without the best efforts of these faithful nurses I could not have done it; they have stood firm through everything; not a word of complaint from, nor of, one of them, in all these trying months, and I thank you, our president, for this opportunity to testify to their merits in your presence.” The full cups overflowed, and as we took each brown calloused hand in ours, and felt the warm tears dropping over them, we realized how far from calloused were the hearts behind them. The silence that followed was a season of prayer.
Then came opportunity for some conversation, questions and explanations. “We wish to introduce to our president our chief nurse, whom Colonel Southmayd placed in charge of us when we left the car, and directed us to obey him; he is younger than any of us, Ed. Holyland.” A slight young man with clear, olive complexion, and dark browed, earnest eyes that looked you straight in the face, came forward; his apparent youthfulness gave rise to the first remark:
“How old are you, Mr. Holyland?”
“Twenty-nine, madam.”
“And you have taken charge of these nurses?”
“I have done what I could for their comfort; I think that was what the Colonel desired; he knew they would need only care and advice, they would do their best of themselves. During the few days that Colonel Southmayd remained in Jacksonville,” he continued, “he was able to send us some such comforts as we needed for the sick, and some nourishing food for ourselves; but this was only a few days, you know, and after that we got on as well as we could without. I know that after he left the nurses gave to the sick, the children, the old and the helpless, what they needed for their own strength.”
“But you did not tell us this, Mr. Holyland.”
“No, we were dazed and frightened by the things we heard. We felt that your organization was having enough to bear. We knew we must look to you for our pay, and we thought, under the circumstances, that would be your share. But permit me, please, to call your attention to Mr. Wilson (a stout colored man advanced), who took charge of a little hospital of six cases, and carried them all through day and night without an hour’s relief from any person, and saved every case.”
“And permit me,” chimed in the clear-toned Irish voice of Lizzie Louis, “to tell of Mr. Holyland himself, who found a neglected Italian family a mile or more outside of the town. He went and nursed them alone, and when the young son, a lad of thirteen or fourteen years died, knowing there was no one to bury him there, he wrapped him in a blanket and brought him into town on his back, for burial.”
Holyland’s face grew sad, and his eyes modestly sought the floor, as he listened to this unexpected revelation.
“I wish to speak of something else,” added one of the men, “which we were held back from doing, and for which we are now very glad. We should not have thought of it ourselves. It is customary,” he continued, “when a patient dies in an epidemic, to give the nurse ten dollars for preparing the body for burial; this was done in our first case, but Mr. Holyland had the gift promptly returned with thanks, and the explanation that we were employed by an organization which fully rewarded its nurses, and was too high and too correct to accept tribute for misfortune; it was enough that the patient was lost.”
By this time poor black Annie Evans, the “Mammy” of the group, could hold quiet no longer, and broke silence with, “Missus President! whar is de Colonel? Colonel Southmayd; dey tells me all de time he’s gone away from New Orleans, and I can’t b’l’eve ’em. He can’t go away; he can’t lib anywhar else, he was always dar. I’se nursed in yellow fever and cholera more’n twenty-five year, and I neber went for nobody but him; it arn’t no New Orleans for us widout him dar. I doesn’t know de name of dat place dey say he’s gone to, and I doesn’t want to; he’ll be in New Orleans when we gets dar.”
There were pitying glances among the group, at this little burst of feeling, for in some way it was an echo of their own; and Lena Seymour added tenderly: “We have been trying for these two months to convince “Mammy” about this, but she is firm in her faith and sometimes refuses to hear us.” But the subject changed with “How many cases did you lose in this epidemic, Mammy?”
“I didn’t lose no cases! Lor’ bless you, honey, I doesn’t lose cases if dey hasn’t been killed afore dey gets to me; folks needn’t die of yellow fever.”
We didn’t suppose that “Mammy” intended any reflection upon the medical fraternity.
“But now, friends, we must turn to our settlement, which cannot be difficult. Three dollars a day for each nurse, for seventy-nine days, till you are home on Thanksgiving morning. But here are only ten. There are eighteen on our list who left with you and Colonel Southmayd; where are your comrades?” Some eyes flashed and some moistened, as they answered, “We do not know.” “They remained in the car that night, and went on to Jacksonville.” Swift, dark glances swept from one to another among them. Instinctively they drew closer to each other, and over knitted brows and firmly set teeth, a silence fell dark and ominous like a pall, which the future alone can lift.
The bugle sounded dinner, and this ended our little camp-meeting, than which, few camp-meetings we believe, ever came nearer to the heart of Him who offered His life a ransom, and went about doing good.
The winds blew cold across the camp; the fires shot out long angry tongues of flame and drifts of smoke to every passer-by. The norther was upon us. Night came down, and all were glad of shelter and sleep. The morning, quiet, crisp, and white with frost, revealed the blessing which had fallen upon a stricken land.
Thanksgiving was there before its time. The hard rules relaxed. One day more, and the quarantine was at an end. The north-bound train halted below the camp, and all together, president and agent, tall doctor and happy nurses, took places on it. The first for headquarters at Washington, the last for New Orleans, and home for Thanksgiving morning, full of the joys of a duty well done, rich in well-paid labor in the love of those they had befriended and the approval of a whole people south and north when once their work should be known to them.
To the last they clung to their little home-made Red Crosses as if they had been gold and diamonds; and when at length, the tracks diverged and the parting must be made, it was with few words, low and softly spoken, but meaning much; with a finger touch upon the little cross, “When you want us, we are there.”
The fever spread during the fall to several points in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, and resulted in the usual panic and flight from many places; but happily the disease got no great headway before the frost put an end to its career.
It was late in November when we closed this work; worn and disheartened as we were by both the needful and the needless hardships of the campaign, we were glad of the two or three months in which no call for action was made upon us.
JOHNSTOWN, PA., BEFORE THE FLOOD OF 1889.
RED CROSS HOTEL, LOCUST STREET, JOHNSTOWN, PA.
THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD.
On the thirty-first of May the knell of disaster rang over the entire world, and we were sharply reminded that the need of the Red Cross is ever present, and that its members must hold themselves in readiness to move at a moment’s notice. The news of the awful calamity of Johnstown, Pa., with all its horrors, appalled us; and so frightful and improbable were the reports, that it required twenty-four hours to satisfy ourselves that it was not a canard.
In order to get an intelligent idea of this disaster and the terrible damage wrought by the irresistible waters, it may be well to give a short sketch of the city of Johnstown and its adjacent surroundings. Before the flood there were thirty thousand people in this busy community, which embraced the city of Johnstown proper and numerous suburbs. The city is situated at the junction of Stony Creek and the Little Conemaugh, forming the Conemaugh River. These streams are liable to sudden overflows, and owing to the contraction of the waterway in the lower part of the city by the dumping of cinders and slag from the large iron works on the banks of the stream, and also encroachments by riparian owners, the upper portion of the city is liable to inundations. About nine miles above the city a dam had been thrown across the Little Conemaugh River many years ago for commercial purposes, but had been abandoned and the site with much surrounding property had been subsequently purchased by a sporting club, whose membership embraced some of the wealthiest citizens of Pennsylvania. These gentlemen were attracted by the picturesque scenery, and the hunting and fishing of the vicinity, and they spent thousands of dollars in improving and beautifying their holdings. The dam was raised to a height of over seventy feet and held an immense body of water covering many acres.
This large mass of water was a constant source of fear to the inhabitants of the lower valleys, who were aware of the danger that threatened them; and many protests were made against the continuance of the danger, but owing to the prominence of the owners of the dam, and the strong social and political influence they exerted, they remained unmolested in the possession of the monster that was to break its bounds and carry death and destruction in its pitiless pathway.
A steady rainfall for several days in the latter part of May caused overflows in all the streams in western Pennsylvania, and much of the city of Johnstown was already under water to a depth of from two to ten feet, when suddenly the dam over the Little Conemaugh gave way, and its flood, resembling a moving mountain of water thirty feet high, was precipitated upon the doomed city. Numbers of the inhabitants, who had carried the fear of this disaster in their minds for years, had become so alarmed by the long continued rains, and the floods that were already upon them, took their families and fled to the high grounds on the hillsides. But the great majority of the people, who, though fully aware of the danger, had lived with it so long that they had become careless and indifferent, took no precautions whatever. These were overwhelmed by the tide almost without warning, and before they could seek safety were swept away.
The number of lives lost will never be accurately known; but in all probability it reached in the entire valley nearly five thousand. It is said that property to the amount of twelve millions of dollars was absolutely lost.
It was at the moment of supreme affliction when we arrived at Johnstown. The waters had subsided, and those of the inhabitants who had escaped the fate of their fellows, were gazing over the scene of destruction and trying to arouse themselves from the lethargy that had taken hold of them when they were stunned by the realization of all the woe that had been visited upon them. How nobly they responded to the call of duty! How much of the heroic there is in our people when it is needed! No idle murmurings of fate, but true to the godlike instincts of manhood and fraternal love, they quickly banded together to do the best that the wisest among them could suggest.
For five weary months it was our portion to live amid these scenes of destruction, desolation, poverty, want and woe; sometimes in tents, sometimes without; in rain and mud, and a lack of the commonest comforts, until we could build houses to shelter ourselves and those around us. Without a safe, and with a dry goods box for a desk, we conducted financial affairs in money and material to the extent of nearly half a million dollars.
I shall never lose the memory of my first walk on the day of our arrival—the wading in mud, the climbing over broken engines, cars, heaps of iron rollers, broken timbers, wrecks of houses; bent railway tracks tangled with piles of iron wire; among bands of workmen, squads of military, and getting around the bodies of dead animals, and often people being borne away;—the smouldering fires and drizzling rain—all for the purpose of officially announcing to the commanding general (for the place was under martial law) that the Red Cross had arrived on the field. I could not have puzzled General Hastings more if I had addressed him in Chinese; and if ours had been truly an Oriental mission, the gallant soldier could not have been more courteous and kind. He immediately set about devising means for making as comfortable as possible a “poor, lone woman,” helpless, of course, upon such a field! It was with considerable difficulty that he could be convinced that the Red Cross had a way of taking care of itself at least, and was not likely to suffer from neglect. I don’t believe he quite got over his mistrust until a week later, when carloads of lumber from Iowa and Illinois began to come in consigned to the president of the Red Cross. As this was the only lumber that had come, the military were constrained to “borrow” from us in order to erect quarters in which to entertain the Governor of the State on the occasion of his first visit.
Our first duty was to study the situation and take up the line of relief as necessities developed and opportunities presented. Western Pennsylvania and Ohio had been “instant in season.” Pittsburg had mainly provided for the survivors who were injured. Ohio had sent its troops under its efficient Adjutant-General Axline; and food, the first necessity, was literally pouring in from every available source.
But the wherewithal to put and keep clothes upon this denuded city full of people, and something to sleep on at night was a problem; and shelter for them, a present impossibility. The possible must be attempted.
The first days brought in dispatches and letters to the amount of about a hundred a day, tendering sympathy, offering help, and giving notice of material and money sent. We were then living in tents and working literally night and day, some of us at work all the time.
From one mammoth tent, which served as a warehouse, food and clothing were given out to the waiting people through the hands of such volunteer agents, both women and men, as I scarcely dare hope ever to see gathered together in one work again. The great cry which had gone out had aroused the entire country, and our old-time helpers, full of rich experience and still richer love for the work, faithful to the cross of humanity as the devotee to the cross of the Master, came up from every point—the floods, the cyclones, the battlefields—and kneeling before the shrine, pledged heart and service anew to the work. Fair hands laying aside their diamonds, and business men their cares, left homes of elegance and luxury to open rough boxes and barrels, handle second-hand clothing, eat coarse food at rough board tables, sleep on boxes under a dripping canvas tent, all for the love of humanity symbolized in the little flag that floated above them.
Clergymen left their pulpits, and laymen their charge to tramp over the hillsides from house to house, find who needed and suffered, and to carry to them from our tents on their shoulders, like beasts of burden, the huge bundles of relief, where no beast of burden could reach.
Let it not be supposed that all this was accomplished without perplexity to someone. Goods came in from many sources of transport, five entries by freight and express requiring to be constantly watched; for, strange to say, there is no work in which people grow more reckless, selfish and jealous, than in the distribution of charities. Persons outside grew anxious that the receipt of goods was not acknowledged before they were received; that checks were not drawn and returned before the bank safes were out of the mud; and that houses were not built and the people living in them before it was possible to find a cleared spot for a little tent in which a workman could sleep at night. We finally found space, however, for the erection of a pine warehouse, fifty by one hundred and fifty feet in dimensions in the centre of the old town. The building was put up in four days, and, still in the rain, our accumulation of supplies was removed to it on the first of July.
We had been early requested by official resolution of the Finance Committee of the city of Johnstown to aid them in the erection of houses. We accepted the invitation, and at the same time proposed to aid in furnishing the nucleus of a household for the homes which should in any way be made up. This aid seemed imperative, as nothing was left for them to commence living with, neither beds, chairs, tables, nor cooking utensils of any kind; and there were few if any stores open, and no furniture in town.
It now became possible to more fully systematize the work; and a committee of Johnstown ladies of every denomination was formed, at our request, to receive the people and ascertain their greatest wants, which were carefully noted on printed blanks to be returned to us. These wants we undertook to fill without further trouble to the people themselves.
The result of this committee’s work was the written requests of three thousand families, aggregating eighteen thousand persons, to be served, in addition to two thousand others whom we had previously promised to help.
The great manufacturers of the country, and the heavy contributing agents, on learning our intentions, sent, without a hint from us, many of their articles, as for instance, New Bedford, Mass., sent mattresses and bedding; Sheboygan, Wis., sent furniture and enameled ironware; Titusville, Pa., with a population of ten thousand, sent ten thousand dollars’ worth of its well-made bedsteads, springs, extension tables, chairs, stands and rockers; and the well-known New York newspaper, The Mail and Express, sent car loads of mattresses, feather pillows, bed-clothing,—sheets, and pillow slips by the thousand, and cooking utensils by the ten thousands. Six large teams were in constant service delivering these goods.
When the contributions slackened or ceased, and more material was needed, we purchased of the same firms which had contributed, keeping our stock good until all applications were filled. The record on our books showed that over twenty-five thousand persons had been directly served by us. They had received our help independently and without begging. No child has learned to beg at the doors of the Red Cross.
Meanwhile our building contracts were not neglected. It is to be borne in mind that the fury of the deluge had swept almost entirely the homes of the wealthy, the elegant, the cultured leaders of society, and the fathers of the town. This class who were spared, were more painfully homeless than the poor, who could still huddle in together. They could not go away, for the suffering and demoralized town needed their care and oversight more than ever before. There was no home for them, nowhere to get a meal of food or to sleep. Still they must work on, and the stranger coming to town on business must go unfed, and return to Cresson at night, if he would sleep, or, indeed, escape being picked up by the military guard.
To meet these necessities, and being apprehensive that some good lives might go out under the existing lack of accommodations, it was decided to erect a building similar to our warehouse. The use of the former site of the Episcopal Church was generously tendered us by the bishop early in June, for any purpose we might desire. This house, which was soon erected, was known as the “Locust Street Red Cross Hotel;” it stood some fifty yards from our warehouse, and was fifty by one hundred and sixteen feet in dimensions, two stories in height, with lantern roof, built of hemlock, single siding, papered inside with heavy building paper, and heated by natural gas, as all our buildings were. It consisted of thirty-four rooms, besides kitchen, laundry, bath rooms with hot and cold water, and one main dining-hall and sitting room through the centre, sixteen feet in width by one hundred in length with second floor gallery.
It was fully furnished with excellent beds, bedding, bureaus, tables, chairs and all needful housekeeping furniture. A competent landlady, who like the rest, had a few weeks before floated down over that same ground on the roof of her house in thirty feet of water five miles below the city, rescued in a tree top, was placed in charge, with instructions to keep a good house, make what she could, rent free, but charging no Johnstown person over twenty-five cents for a meal of food.
This was the first attempt at social life after that terrible separation, and its success was something that I am very glad of. The house was full of townspeople from the first day, and strangers no longer looked in vain for accommodations.
The conception of the need of this house, and the method of selecting its inmates and the manner of inducting them into their new home, were somewhat unique and may be of interest to the reader. We had noticed among the brave and true men, who were working in the mud and rain, many refined looking gentlemen, who were, before this great misfortune carried away most of their worldly belongings, the wealthiest and most influential citizens. Never having had to struggle amid such hardships and deprivations, their sufferings were more acute than those of the poorer and more hardy people; and it did not require any great foresight to know that they were physically incapable of such labor if prolonged, nor to predict their early sickness and death if they were not properly housed and fed. As the salvation of the town depended in a great measure upon the efforts of these men, it was vitally necessary that their lives should be preserved. Realizing all this, it occurred to us that the most important thing to do, next to feeding the hungry, was to provide proper shelter for these men and their families. The idea once conceived was soon put in the way of realization.
RED CROSS FURNITURE ROOM, JOHNSTOWN.
TYPICAL SCENE AFTER THE FLOOD AT JOHNSTOWN, PA., MAY 30, 1889.
It was decided that we should erect the house as quickly as possible, furnish it completely, and when ready, invite the citizens to a reception within its hospitable walls. This arrangement was carried out, and a printed invitation was issued, of which the following is a facsimile:
On the afternoon of July 27, hundreds of citizens called on us and congratulations and good wishes were the order of the day. As the members of each family whom we had selected to occupy apartments in the house arrived, they were quietly taken aside and requested to remain and have dinner with us. After all the guests were departed except those who had been requested to remain, dinner was announced, and the party was seated by the members of the Red Cross. Beside the plate of each head of the family were laid the keys to an apartment, with a card inviting the family to take possession at once, and remain as long as they chose.
I cannot describe the scene that followed; there were tears and broken voices; suffice to say, the members of that household were made happy and comfortable for many long months; and I venture to assert that those now living recall those days with the fondest recollections.
This revealed a want so great, that a second house of the same dimensions and qualities was erected just across the river, known as the “Kernville Red Cross Hotel.” Another competent landlady was installed in charge, who had not only lost her home, but her beautiful daughter of twenty years. This house was also filled; and a fourth house of forty by one hundred feet was next built in the form of a block, the families living separately, for the accommodation of the working people of Woodvale, where no house was left. This was known as the “Red Cross Block,” or “Woodvale House.”
There was no rent to pay for accommodations in this house, the only cost to the tenant being for fire, lights and living.
Johnstown had neither a hospital nor an almshouse—never had, its poor being taken to Ebensville, twenty miles distant. Under ordinary circumstances this might do, but with the scant, poor homes of this winter we felt it to be unsafe, and saw that better provision should be made. Accordingly the use of some half-dozen unset portable houses, known as the “Oklahomas,” was asked of the Flood Commission, and erected adjoining our warehouse, as separate wards connected by a covered way, and provided with an adjoining house of eighteen by thirty feet, two stories high, for kitchen, dining, store, sleeping and living rooms for the use of the wards and attendants. These were all fully equipped and warmed for the accommodation of thirty patients, with the best of new outfit, and the hospital was known as the “Johnstown Infirmary.”
These things accomplished, there remained but one more danger to be guarded against. The citizens still had no organization of their own for the relief of their needy people through the coming winter, and no protection against any alarming report which might be sprung upon them. Any sensational writer could still, if he chose to, report two hundred cases of typhoid fever in Johnstown, alarming the whole country, with not a case of genuine typhoid there, and there were none to say him nay; or that its people were freezing or starving, with nowhere the authority to correct the misstatement. This protection was needed, not alone for Johnstown, but the people at large as well.
A few well-timed suggestions were sufficient. The meetings were held in our house and some of the leading men and women of the city effected a permanent organization to be incorporated under the name of the “Benevolent Union of Conemaugh Valley.”
This completed, we had only to turn over to their hands, as the leaders of the town, our warehouse with its entire remaining stock, amounting to some thousands of dollars; the care of the infirmary; one of our trained clerks, with all papers and accounts of our relief work from the day of its inception; one of our experienced working men to handle transportation—to fit up for them large, warm rooms for winter use; give them our blessing; accept theirs in fullest measure; say good bye to them and to our faithful helpers, with heavy hearts and choking voices, and return to our home, bearing the record of a few months of faithful endeavor among a people as patient and brave as people are made, as noble and grateful as falls to the lot of human nature to be. Enterprising, industrious, and hopeful, the new Johnstown, phoenix-like, rose from its ruins more beautiful than the old, with a ceaseless throb of grateful memory for every kind act rendered, and every thought of sympathy given her in her great hour of desolation and woe. God bless her, and God bless all who helped save her! We had employed during our sojourn in Johnstown a working force of fifty men and women, whom we had housed, fed and paid, with the exception of the volunteers who worked for the good they could do and would accept nothing. The means which we so largely handled came from everywhere; accounts were rendered for everything, and no word of business complication ever came to us. There never has in all our work.
There was much to do in Johnstown after we left; buildings to remove and property to care for when it had served its purpose and the ground became needed. But there is always a right time for any benevolent work to cease; a time when the community is ready to resume its own burdens, and when an offered charity is an insult to the honest and independent, and a degradation to the careless and improvident, tending to pauperize and make them an added burden on their better-minded fellow citizens. And then, the moment the tradesman is able to re-establish himself, he looks with jealous eyes on any agency that diverts possible business from his channels. Thus it is not only wise but just to all concerned to withdraw all gratuities from a people the instant they are able to gain even a meagre self-support.
A rather curious circumstance, somewhat on the line of this reflection, fell to our lot after leaving Johnstown. The houses that we had built and furnished were indispensable to the tenants during the winter, when there were no other houses to be had; but in the spring the city, rejuvenated, began to build up again, and we were notified that the land on which our large houses were standing was needed by the owners, who wished to use it for their own purposes, and they requested the Red Cross to remove its buildings. We promptly sent an agent to attend to the matter, and he began the work of vacating the premises. There was no hardship involved in this, as all the tenants were by this time in condition to pay rent, the relief fund of $1,600,000 having been distributed among them in proportion to their losses, and there were houses that they could get; in a few days our houses were empty. Then a new factor entered into the situation. When it became generally known that the Red Cross must remove these immense houses, and that a large quantity of lumber and house furnishings were to be disposed of, the self-interests of the dealers in those commodities were at once aroused, and they strongly protested against the gratuitous distribution of those articles among the people of Johnstown, asserting that the inhabitants were now prospering and had the means to buy everything they needed, and that a gift from us of any of these things would be an injustice to the honest traders who were trying to re-establish themselves.
We saw the justice of their objection and gave assurances that no injury should be done them, still to have fully conformed to their idea and transported the entire material to some other point, would have put the Red Cross to an amount of trouble and cost unjust to itself.
I am not prepared to say that our quiet field agent in charge of the work did not find resting places for very much of this material in still needy homes, where it did no harm to any one and for which no one but the pitiful recipients were the wiser.
Notwithstanding the fact that we took away from Johnstown as little material and furniture as was possible, after quietly disposing of the greater part of it, and this at an expense and inconvenience to ourselves which we could ill afford, there were those, who could not understand why we should take anything away; and their unkind misconstruction and criticisms have scarcely ceased echoing even to this late day.
The paths of charity are over roadways of ashes; and he who would tread them must be prepared to meet opposition, misconstruction, jealousy and calumny. Let his work be that of angels, still it will not satisfy all.
There is always an aftermath of attempted relief where none is needed; and more or less criticism of any work, for it is always so much easier to say how a thing ought to be done than it is to do it.
These little unpleasantnesses, however, cannot deprive us of the thousand memories of gratitude, appreciation, and kindnesses exchanged, which were mutually needful and helpful; nor of the many lifelong friendships formed that will bless us all our days.
I may perhaps be pardoned for quoting a few lines from the official report of the Johnstown Flood Finance Committee, appointed by Governor Beaver, as showing how these gentlemen, the foremost men in the community, regarded our efforts to give them a helping hand:
In this matter of sheltering the people, as in others of like importance, Miss Clara Barton, president of the Red Cross Association, was most helpful. At a time when there was a doubt if the Flood Commission could furnish houses of suitable character and with the requisite promptness, she offered to assume charge, and she erected with the funds of the association three large apartment houses which afforded comfortable lodgings for many houseless people. She was among the first to arrive on the scene of calamity, bringing with her Dr. Hubbell, the field officer of the Red Cross Association, and a staff of skilled assistants. She made her own organization for relief work in every form disposing of the large resources under her control with such wisdom and tenderness that the charity of the Red Cross had no sting, and its recipients are not Miss Barton’s dependents, but her friends. She was also the last of the ministering spirits to leave the scene of her labors, and she left her apartment houses for use during the winter, and turned over her warehouse, with its store of furniture, bedding and clothing and a well-equipped infirmary, to the Union Benevolent Association of the Conemaugh Valley, the organization of which she advised and helped to form; and its lady visitors have so well performed their work that the dreaded winter has no terrors, mendicancy has been repressed, and not a single case of unrelieved suffering is known to have occurred in all the flooded district.
The Johnstown Daily Tribune was one of the enterprising and reliable papers of the unfortunate city, which, though drowned out, would not stay dead, and insisted on “pulling itself together,” and cheering the people along in their efforts to re-establish their homes and their fortunes. On the eve of our departure the Tribune published an editorial which we are fain to believe reflected the feelings of the people, and which was as follows: