I made a tour of the cemeteries to-day to see how the dead were disposed in their last resting place. There are six burying grounds—two to the south of this place, one to the north, and three on Morrellsville to the west. The principal one is Grand View, on the summit of Kernville Hill.
But the most remarkable, through the damage done by the flood, is Sandy Vale Cemetery, at Hornersville, on Stony Creek, and about half a mile from the city of Johnstown. It is a private institution in which most of the people of the city buried their dead until two years ago, when the public corporation of Grand View was established. Its grounds are level, laid out in lots, and were quite picturesque, its dense foliage and numerous monuments attracting the eyes of every passenger entering the city by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which passes along one side the creek forming its other boundary. The banks of the creek are twenty feet high, and there was a nice sandy beach through its entire length.
A Sorry Scene.
When the floods came the first of the wreckage and the backwater sent hundreds of houses, immense quantities of logs and cut lumber over it and into the borough of Hornersville. As the angry waters subsided the pretty cemetery was wrecked as badly as was the city, a portion of the débris of which has destroyed its symmetry. To make way for the burial of the numerous bodies sent there by the town committees it became necessary to burn some of the débris. This was commenced at the nearest or southern end, and at the time of my visit I had, like the corpses, to pass through an avenue of fire and over live ashes to make my inspection. There were no unknown dead sent here, consequently they were interred in lots, and here and there, as the cleared spots would allow, a body was deposited and the grave made to look as decently as four or five inches of mud on the surface and the clay soil would allow.
Masses of Débris.
Scarcely a monument was left standing. Tall columns were broken like pipe-stems, and fences and evergreen bowers were almost a thing of the past. Whole houses on their sides, with their roofs on the ground, covered the lots, the beach, or blocked up the pathways, while other houses in fragments strewed the surface of the ground from one end to the other of the cemetery, once the pride of Johnstown. I found that some of the trees which were standing had feather beds or articles of furniture up in their boughs. Here and there a dead cow or a horse, two or three wagons, a railroad baggage car. Add to this several thousand logs, heaps of lumber, piled just as they left the yards, and still other single planks by the hundred thousand of feet, and some idea of the surroundings of the victims of the flood placed at rest here can be obtained.
On Kernville Hill.
Grand View Cemetery, a beautiful spot, was started as a citizens' cemetery and incorporated two years ago, and is now the finest burying place in this section of Pennsylvania. It is situated on the summit of Kernville hill, between six hundred and seven hundred feet above the town. It is approached by a zigzag roadway about one mile and a half in length, and a magnificent view of the valley is obtained from the grounds, making it well worth a visit under any circumstances. Here those whose relatives did not hold lots are to be buried in trenches four feet deep, sixty bodies to a trench. At present the trenches are not complete, and their encoffined bodies are stored in the beautiful stone chapel at the entrance. Of the other bodies they are entombed in the lots, where more than one were buried together. A wide grave was dug to hold them side by side. A single grave was made for Squire Fisher's family, one grave and one mound holding eight of them.
Snatched from the Flood.
One of the most thrilling incidents of narrow escapes is that told by Miss Minnie Chambers. She had been to see a friend in the morning and was returning to her home on Main street, when the suddenly rising waters caused her to quicken her steps. Before she could reach her home or seek shelter at any point, the water had risen so high and the current became so strong that she was swept from her feet and carried along in the flood. Fortunately her skirts served to support her on the surface for a time, but at last as they became soaked she gave up all hope of being saved.