Copyright, 1898, by Clara Barton.
“JOSH V. THROOP.”
The first steamer used in the United States by the American Red Cross, 1884.
THE OHIO RIVER FLOODS.
But the respite was all too short for our purposes. The rapidly melting snows of February, 1884, brought the one thousand miles of the Ohio River again out of its bed. A wild cry went out all over the country for help. The government, through Congress, took immediate action and appropriated several hundred thousand dollars for relief, to be applied through the War Department. The Red Cross agents must again repair to the field, its societies be again notified.
But its president felt that if she were to be called every year to direct the relief work of the association in these inundations it was incumbent upon her to visit the scene in person, to see for herself what floods were like, to learn the necessities and be able to direct with the wisdom born of actual knowledge of the subject; and accordingly, with ten hours’ preparation, she joined Dr. Hubbell on his way and proceeded to Pittsburg, the head of the Ohio River. There the societies were telegraphed that Cincinnati would be headquarters and that money and supplies should be sent there. This done, we proceeded to Cincinnati by rail.
Any description of this city upon our entrance would fall so far short of the reality as to render it useless.
The surging river had climbed up the bluffs like a devouring monster and possessed the town; large steamers could have plied along its business streets; ordinary avocations were abandoned. Bankers and merchants stood in its relief houses and fed the hungry populace, and men and women were out in boats passing baskets of food to pale, trembling hands stretched out to reach it from third story windows of the stately blocks and warehouses of that beautiful city. Sometimes the water soaked away the foundations and the structure fell with a crash and was lost in the floods below; in one instance seven lives went out with the falling building; and this was one city, and probably the best protected and provided locality in a thousand miles of thickly populated country.