Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1889-06-03
THE WRECKED HOMES
WHICH PASSED BY WHEELING, AT DAY
LIGHT YESTERDAY MORNING.
The River Filled With all Manner Of Debris fol
Over Three ROurs-A Sketch Of the Scene
The Water Touches 29 Feet 10 Inches.

morning, the Ohio at this point was well
filled with very tangible evidences OF the
friehtful calamity at JohnstOwn and
vicinity. Wreckage of almost every
conceivable description came pouring
down upon the swelling surface OF the
water, the debris being sufficient in
quantity to build goOd-sizsd city.
The river rose pretty rapidly all ngdt'
and al daylight there was about 25 feet in
the channel. At 3 o'clock in the
morning there was very little drift to be
seen, but sfter that hour it began TO
thicken up rapidly, and at four the river
toward the Island side was dotted thickly
with masses of boards, logs, trees,
etc. This was the advance guard
of the ruins of JohnstOwn and places
in the vicinity. At quarter after 1t
was noticed that fragments of weather
boarding, painted various cOlOrs, portions
of roofs, fences, flooring, etc, was freely
mixed in with the other stuff, and by hall
past this class of drift WAS largely in the
msiority. From that hour on until half
past 6 there was simply no end to the
tangled mass which fOated by. For dis
lance of q hundred yards out from the
Island shore, towards which the drift set,
the water was covered with weatherboards,
roofs floors, doors, shutters, broken win
dow sash, ioists, plank, framed timbers,
nieees of stairways, broken Out-buildings,
parts of stables, boardwalks and abont ev-
ervtbing else of the sort which can be i'm
sgined. Here and there this rubbish,
nearly all of it splintered and twisted as
though it had passed through cyclone,
would be wedged into a solid mass which
would rise two or three feet above the sur
face and apparently extended ten or fifteen
feet beneath. and it would have Jared i'll
with any boat happening to run foul OF the
stuff. Mixed in among the mass was TO
be seen fragments of furniture-chairs,
tahle.tops. pieces of dressers, portions OF
cornices of what must have been fine resi-
dences. sign boards, one with the legend,
''N0 423U which must have adorned the
front of some Johnstown establishment,
and so on. Here would BE- seen a barrel OF
oil. little beyond two or three new wooden
buckets, then big oil tank, of the sort IN
uee in retail groceries, and behind these a
wooden feed trough. Ga one pile of drift
white horse, the skin torn and bloody
from contact with timbers, lay, and short
distance away, on another floating pile,
was a hobby horse-the property of some
child who probably met its death amid the
ruin of a home demolished by the relent-
less water. Many sacks of meal or some
other substance, swollen by the water to
the bursting point, went by, while store
boxes, packing cases, kegs, tubs, etc, were
to be seen. Mixed in among the masses Of
drift were also many waving green vines and
branches of trees, indicating that private
grounds and gardens had bsen invaded by
the twisted and broken houses, and that
the shrubbery had been scraned from the
surface of the earth as the flood and it's
freight Of ruined homes swept by.
Numbers of bents of railroad trestles
and rats of saw logs we're mixed up with
other stuff and about a quarter after five
the Belle Prince steered into the drift and
Brought ont a mammoth raft of apparently
fine timber, landing it at Stonetown. AS
soon az it was light enough to see, skiffs
began to dot the river here and there, the
more adventurous of the Oarsmen mount
ing the piles of floating drift in the search
for something of value.
All during the day there were rumors
sfioat that bodies of men, women and
children had been seen in the river, and
countless stories were in circulation. One
rumor was TO the effect that fifteen bod
les had been caught at Henderson's coal
works, below Bellaire, another that man
had been caught at the water works, still
another that a wOmsn's body had been
caught at the mouth of the creek, that q
babe had been found in back river, and 80
on. Coroner Shuttle said last night there
was no truth in any of these stories, TO the
best of his belisf, and they are all doubt
less, without foundation in fact. IL is not
impossible, however, that some bodies have
gone down psst this city.
By nine o'clock the drift had mostly
run ont, but there WAS little during
mOSt OF tut Gay. NJ uuiluA lho uaJt anu
especially in the afternoon, throngs of
people promenaded the bridge, looking at
the muddy water, which seemed to have a
sort of horrible fascination for the public
The water rose slowly all during daylight,
there being 2S feet 3 inches at half past
three. At zine o'clock last night the
-~ touched 90 feet 10 inches, and was
nv I. will he falling this morn
~.
LAST evening ihe uews became current
that the broken dam at CIba, New York,
would cause further and disastrous rise
in the river. but this fear is groundless, as
the present rise will have very largely run
off before any additional volume can reach
us.
The best information ottainable at ?
O'Clock this morning is that the reported
additional water, concerning which all
sorts of rumors were in circulation last
night, is lake" aud that the river will
continue to recede There was but feet
at Oil City last night and falling.