The accounts of the Johnstown Flood of 1889 caught my attention several years ago when I was watching the History Channel documentary The Men Who Built America. The tragedies, the survivor accounts, and the outpouring of charity from across America and beyond amazed me. What stuck with me the most and has never let go is that not one charge was ever brought against the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club nor any of its members. Despite proof of negligence, no one was ever held accountable.
This broke my heart, and I knew someday I would write a story based on this disaster to not only educate readers about the events but also to honor those who experienced that terrible day.
As in the story, the day before the flood was full of celebration, as Johnstown observed Memorial Day. Many sources I studied revealed that it was such a grand day, no one would have guessed that for many it would be their last night on earth.
While the main characters and basic storyline of When the Waters Came are completely fictional, real survivors waltz across the pages throughout the story. There were so many details and accounts I wanted to add, but I had to limit what I used to avoid writing a story that was too lengthy. I used exact quotes as dialogue in every place I could, only making small grammatical changes so it flowed easier. The legendary horse rider in chapter two who warns the folks of Johnstown about the oncoming wave has been deemed by experts as fiction, but the following true events were used in my story and spotlight real-life survivors.
James and Rosina Quinn owned Quinn’s Dry Goods. Their six-year-old daughter, Gertrude, was thrown from their house when the wave hit, ripping off everything but her underclothes. While riding the water toward the burning stone bridge, she was rescued by Max McCachren, a painter and paperhanger, “a beast of a man” with the gentlest of hearts. He’d been separated from his wife and fifteen children during the flood and joined several others on a raft. When he spotted Gertrude kneeling on the mattress, hands clasped and raised to the sky in prayer, his heart broke. He swam to her and later pitched her to two men on a rooftop. He continued toward the bridge. By the grace of God, Max survived the flood, but he and Gertrude never saw each other again. The man who caught Gertrude that night was Mr. Henry Koch, who owned Koch House, a hotel and saloon in Johnstown.
The scene where Monty takes Gertrude to the apartment where she was recognized by the Bowser sisters is a true account and detailed beautifully in David G. McCullough’s The Johnstown Flood.
In chapter five, Ernie Dickenson says to Monty, “You’ve always told me that the Lord would care for me. Will He look after me now?” This line was actually spoken by a child to his mother, Mrs. Fenn (who’s quoted at the beginning of chapter three), when she placed him on driftwood and raised the attic window to release him in hopes he’d survive somehow versus certain drowning in their attic. He drifted away, and she never saw her little boy again. As a mother, that account shredded my heart, and I felt it was too heavy to portray the details in the story using its exact form. I mention it now to honor the story of Mrs. Fenn’s son.
Looters almost immediately preyed upon Johnstown; however, the number of such cases and many of the details were sensationalized to sell papers. This made things even more difficult for immigrants in the area, causing many to fear for their lives.
Folks from all over the country poured into Johnstown to witness the wreckage. As mentioned in the story, some weren’t above taking a meal at the commissary while visiting (limiting food for the survivors and volunteers), swiping trinkets they found in the wreckage for keepsakes, or purchasing keepsakes from hawkers attempting to capitalize on the disaster.
Many factors contributed to the dam’s collapse, though none ranked higher than the negligence of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. The growing town needed lumber, and the deforestation caused erosion that contributed to much of the town’s spring flooding. Slag from the mills was dumped into the nearby rivers, narrowing the riverbeds and causing the water to rush at a faster speed. When Benjamin Ruff purchased the club’s property from the Pennsylvania Railroad, one of the first things he did was remove the sluice pipes and sell them for scrap. The control tower to raise and lower the water burned, and parts of the concrete culvert were removed and packed with mud and hay and other substances. This caused the dam to sag in the middle and was made worse when the carriage road that ran the length of the dam was lowered and widened to allow two carriages to pass. For nearly a decade, folks had expressed their concern about the dam, but Ruff and the club members ignored the pleas to strengthen it.
Colonel Elias J. Unger worked to prevent the dam’s collapse, but his efforts were too little, too late. After watching the water shoot from the dam with the force of Niagara, he collapsed and had to be carried to his home. His health never fully recovered. Years after the flood, a Civil War military record was found for him (unlike in the story), but it appears as if he never saw combat.
General Hastings, Doctor Hubbell, Cyrus Elder, Tom L. Johnson, John Fulton, Clara Barton, Doctor Hamilton (Surgeon General of the United States), Henry Clay Frick, and several others were real and vital characters in Johnstown.
The Red Cross arrived in Johnstown five days after the flood. The accounts of injuries, typhoid, and distribution of supplies and disinfectants I used in the story are accurate according to my research.
Clara Barton was a fascinating woman to learn about, and I thoroughly enjoyed making her part of the story. I detailed her quirks and personality to the best of my ability, according to the information I found in her biographies. The account of her brother’s injury when she was eleven is true, and most of the dialogue used in that scene are her exact words.
John Fulton’s speech regarding the Cambria Iron Works building their business back better and stronger actually happened. His speech is almost verbatim.
Monty’s scene with Cyrus Elder reflects Elder’s true statements on the matter of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club’s responsibility for the dam’s collapse.
Many of the newspaper headlines and articles in the story were pulled from actual periodicals. All quotes that begin each chapter are cited from authentic sources.
Sadly, Henry Clay Frick never visited Johnstown, which shows his callous attitude regarding the club’s responsibility, but the story called for a confrontation between Frick and Monty, so I wrote Frick’s visit for the sake of storytelling. Frick did not have a nephew named Monty.
Andrew Carnegie did visit Johnstown when he returned from Scotland in the fall of 1889, and afterward donated thousands to aid in the reconstruction, including providing Johnstown with a new public library—one of over 1,600 he’d later establish across the United States. Since Carnegie was such a prominent member of the club, generations have believed that he owned a private cottage at the lake, but a discovery nearly a century after the flood showed that he never owned a cottage nor did he ever stay at the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club’s clubhouse on Lake Conemaugh. Carnegie owned his own mountain home in Cresson where he recreated. He likely joined the club merely to associate his name with other important men in the country.
In the story, I mention that the club’s charter was filed in the Court of Common Pleas in Allegheny County instead of the Cambria County courthouse as it should have been. This happened to keep the club membership secretive. However, this wasn’t discovered until many years later. I used it in my story to give Annamae something to reveal to the reporter that would provoke Mr. Frick to confront her.
Sadly, the Johnstown Flood of 1889 isn’t the only time the town has been inundated by floodwaters. It flooded again in 1936, killing two dozen, and again in 1977, killing eighty-five.
If you would like to learn more about the Johnstown Flood of 1889, the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, or the Red Cross, I recommend visiting the Johnstown Flood National Memorial, the Johnstown Flood Museum, and Grandview Cemetery. I also recommend the following books and websites:
*The Johnstown Flood by David G. McCullough, Simon & Schuster, 1968
*Johnstown and Its Flood by Gertrude Quinn Slattery, Wilkes-Barre, 1936
*History of the Johnstown Flood, Illustrated by Willis Fletcher Johnson, Edgewood Publishing Co., 1889
*The Life of Clara Barton by Percy H. Epler, The Macmillan Company, 1919 (this book includes transcripts of her journals and personal correspondence)
*The Johnstown Flood documentary, narrated by Richard Dreyfuss
*Ruthless Tide by Al Roker, William Morrow, 2018
*Johnstown Area Heritage Association and Johnstown Flood Museum (Jaha.org)
*Flood map of Washington, D.C., in June 1889 (mallhistory.org)
*National Parks Service, Johnstown Flood, National Memorial Pennsylvania (https://www.nps.gov/jofl/learn/historyculture/cyrus-elder.htm)
*Johnstown National Flood Museum Facebook page