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Chapter 12. Monday, May 8, 1989
- University of Pittsburgh Press
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269 T H E J O H N S T O W N G I R L S Monday, May 8, 1989 Oldest Flood Survivor Visits Memories, Reveals Truths Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD SERIES BY BEN BRAGDON The Johnstown Flood of 1889 was a capricious god. In the maelstrom that was the tumbling water of the South Fork Dam, there was a group of people huddled on a roof that floated, and though it was a strange ride, they thought they were safe and that they would live. There was a boy riding a tree trunk that careened crazily through the water, making him and everyone who saw him certain that he faced imminent death. The boy lived. The group on the roof died when the roof went under. By June 1, 1889, there were many such stories of deaths and survivals. The flood’s oldest known survivor, Ellen Emerson of Johnstown, for years has told a story as strange as any other. She now lives in an apartment in the Southmont area of Johnstown. The building is well maintained; she has daily help, but she has insisted on her goal of remaining independent. Mrs. Emerson’s personal history is unusual for a child born in 1885. She got an undergraduate education at what is now 270 K AT H L E E N G E O R G E Chatham College in Pittsburgh and a graduate degree at New York University. For many years she worked in publishing as an editor at the Greaves publishing house. She married William Emerson in 1918. They adopted a child and took that child, Rosemary, to Johnstown to raise her. Rosemary, who died in 1952, had married Rev. Stephen Driscoll of Johnstown. Mrs. Emerson has often spoken of the day of the flood. In 1889 she was one of the most colorful survivors. Journalists from around the world wanted her story. And she, a child of four, told it well. But she asserts now that she told it only partially , understanding even as a four-year-old that some of the truth made an unseemly picture of the relatives who would take her and raise her. Mrs. Emerson’s parents were Victor and Molly Burrell. She had an older brother, Martin, and a twin sister, Mary. She remembers her family rushing to put what goods they could save in a cart. They didn’t have a horse to do the pulling so her mother and father and a cousin, Paul Folks, drew the cart themselves . Around them on the street were neighbors also packing up goods and moving to higher ground. The first layer on the cart, Mrs. Emerson explains, was made up of stacks of Bibles, since selling Bibles was her father’s business. “We couldn’t tolerate the loss of his inventory,” she says. “But of course, in the end, just about everything that everybody owned was lost. “On top of the Bibles were a few items of clothing and some blankets. And on top of that a mattress and over it an oil cloth. We were going to my uncle’s house and we knew we would want one more bed. But also the mattress just fit the cart and it acted as a cover, a cap, to protect the Bibles.” At one point as they moved along slowly, they and their neighbors heard the famous sound that some thought at first was a locomotive. But soon enough, Ellen Emerson says, the panic began to hit. “Only it was too late. By the time people turned and could see the wall of water coming at us, there was no time to go anywhere.” The flood itself, a huge disaster that claimed 2,209 lives in a matter of minutes, is difficult to comprehend because of its speed. “Everything happened suddenly. I saw my mother call to [3.235.75.229] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 21:24 GMT) 271 T H E J O H N S T O W N G I R L S us to run to a building. I saw her and my brother start toward it. And I saw them swallowed by water.” What happened next was as strange as any story of the flood. Mrs. Emerson’s father grabbed her to put her on the cart. Her sister was already there, terrified from the start by the warnings of disaster and the ceaseless rain. The movement of the water tipped both Ellen...