The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1889-06-20
GALLANT WILLIAM HENRY
SMITH.


says: Our train was made up in two
sections, each train with one locomotive,
and we carried about 10 passengers.
We got across the bridge just as the
| water was beginning to surge, and once
across the rain began 10 come down III
sheets. People were already beginning
to remove their effects to higher ground
and were escaping themselves. One
house had already been carried away.
and many horses and cattle had been
drowned in their stables long before the
dam broke at all.
was in one of the ordinary passenge
coaches of the first section, and the other
section in which were the vestIbnle and
buffet cars, was right behind. We pro
ceeded slowly as far as Conemaugh, and
three or four miles from Johnstown, aud
there we were signaled to stop and were
side tracked. We remained there long
while, the water rising rapidly behind us
meanwhile, until the passengers became
rather uneasy We were assured by
telegram, however that we were all right
aud had better remain in the cars.
Otherwise we should all have left the
train before the dam broke and reached
high land without any more of a wetting
than the rain would have given US.
On board the train had met William
Henry Smith the courageous general
agent of the Associated Press (who, by
the way, was the very last to leave the
train), and Mr.. Ealey of New York.
AS the time went on we began to get
hungry, and Smith and myself offered to
go out and try TO procure some eatables.
The train officials told us not to do so,
however and sent some of their number
back for the buffet car in the second sec
ton, where the provisions were stored.
They never got there.
The brakeman David Moses, was IN
charge Of the train. III the absence of the
conductor, and at o'clock he came into
the car and told lis that he had received
another message stating that the dam
was likely to break, and that if it did he
would sound the locomotive whistle as
signal to US to escape from the cars to
the hills near by.
At this time our situation was this:
We were on land twenty feet above the
river bed with the river itself on one side
of us and the high land on the other.
In less than ten minutes after the
brakeman's announcements the locomotive
whistle began to shrek like very
human beiug in terror, and the cry ran
through the train
ssFor Gods sake, leave the cars and fly
for your lives to the hills''
At this dread summons the passengers
with blanched faces and beating hearts
sprang TO their feet and rushed for exits
Smith, Ealey, ard myself were in the
center of the car, and we divided the
crowd. Ealey urging one half forward,
and Smith and myself guided the others
to the rear. Over the platforms to the
side of the track where safety lay we
rushed, bat horrors! In the meantime
the second section of vestlbuled cars had
| come up and stopped just opposite,
forming an impenetrable barrier to our
progress. In this fearful emergency
there was only one thing to do, and
Smith and myself made superhumanly
strong by the fearful conditions that sur
rounded US, kicked through the vestlbule
doors and jumped through on the road
! bed beyond. We landed in water up to
our waists. A planA was floating by.
and I grabbed it, but Smith missed it.
In moment / was lodged up against
picket fence and began to work my way
along this toward q little frame church
| a quarter of mile away, where Conductor
John S. Aher had already led most of
the other passengers. | hadn't followed
the fence long before 1 came across Mrs
| General James w. Latta, of Phiadel
phia, and her little IL year old daughter
| Edith, who had become separated from
the rest and were in imminent danger of
drowning. They had both jumped off
the train with N. s. Jorrald, train
porter, who with cowardice left them to
| their fate and saved himself. The
coward has since got his deserts, how
ever, for he was discharged from the
company's service when his act became
| known.
Taking the little girl under one arm
and with Mrs. Latta holding on to me
tightly, l worked my way along aud
finally, after fording a big gully more
than waist deep, and with no guiding
across it, we reached the church and join
ed the others. The water here was deep,
but sufficiently so to float the structure.
By this time Johnstown was wiped
ont, and we were hardly in the church
when the first house came by smashing
! off the smokestack of our locomotive,
and with wrench separating the engine
| from the train.
As we looked back we saw the heroic
Brakeman Moses perish at his post. His
warning whistle had saved the rest, but
he himself went down in the mighty
flood of the furious waters.
While the hurried exodus from the
ears was going on another deed of hero
ism was being enacted by colored por
ter named W. ii. Woodyear. A NIr.
Griffith and a woman and her child had
been caught in the last parlor Car of the
second section and were in danger of
suffocation when Woodyear elm bed
upon the roof and with an Ak hewei out
aD opening and saved them.
The food lasted just fifty minutes by
MIR. Smiths watch, he, with the natural
instincts of newspaper man, timing it.
THE LIGHT OF HOME.
A cheerful, healthy woman is the light
of home but throuph over eyertion in her