“Jail
visited Dec. 17, 1873.
This new prison was finished in 1872 , and has
been occupied since April of that year. It is a very
substantial edifice. . . it is built of light colored
sandstone, about 130 feet in length by 56 feet wide, and
a tower in front. The celling department, which is 110
by 56 feet, contains a lower and upper tier - 17 cells
in each. The cells are 15 by 8, and 9 feet high in the
center. They are arranged with water closets, a warm air
and one ventilating register, and are sufficiently
lighted. . . The floors are wooden but underlaid by iron
plates. The inside door is of wrought iron bars, the
outside of heavy oak, both with heavy and approved bolts
and locks. The floor in the corridor is of German tile.
. . The
building is surrounded by a substantial stone wall 22
feet high. It (the jail) was erected at a cost of
$73,000.”
Cambria Freeman-
March 20, 1874.
October
13, 1908 - Johnstown, Penna.
To the
Commissioners of Cambria County:
My husband, (A.H.), is confined in the
common jail...on the charge of desertion and
non-support. The court having sentenced him...to pay the
writer, his wife, the sum of $2.50 per week, and he is
held in the jail, because of his inability to comply
with the sentence.... he is unable to earn anything, of
course, for his support or mine, and as long as he is
confined, my condition becomes worse. I am worn out and
sick, and ask as a matter of mercy, that you release him
from jail, conditional that he makes an effort to comply
with the sentence of the court...and if he does not...he
can be returned to jail.
Mrs. (A.H.)
from
a letter in the archives of the Cambria County
Historical Society
New
Book
"The 1889 Flood in Johnstown Pennsylvania"
by
Dr. Michael McGough
Except from pages 56-57
“There were numerous stories told following the
flood of brave and heroic rides to spread the word that
the dam had broken and peril was on the loose. Although
somewhat interesting and dramatically heroic to say the
least, each of these stories is little more than a
marginally plausible figment of an inventive
imagination. The fact that the stories were so widely
circulated is due largely to the almost hysterical
search for details and related stories following the
flood. In may instances, if a story could be reduced to
words and could conceivably have occurred, it was fair
game. It was not until sometime after the flood that the
line between fact and fiction could be distinguished
with any degree or reliability.
The most popular of the “Paul Revere” stories
is the story of Daniel Peyton. Interestingly enough, it
is also the most fictitious of the lot. According to the
various accounts of Peyton’s ride, he and his trusty
steed rode from South Fork to Johnstown, via the
“turnpike” just ahead of the wave of flood water
from the collapsed dam. Once they arrived in Johnstown,
supposedly just prior to the flood wave, they rode
throughout the town warning all to take to the hills.
Just as horse and rider were about to heed their own
warning, the wave overtook them and they both perished.
The June 11, 1889, edition of The
Star and Sentinel, the weekly paper of Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania, reported the following under the headline:
“THE
HERO’S
BODY
FOUND”
Johnstown,
June 4- the body of the Paul Revere of the Valley and
the first man to go down at the call of the demon of
death on Friday, was found beneath the mass of broken
trees at the base of the hill west of Johnstown this
afternoon. It was horribly disfigured and the features
of the man who sacrificed his life that thousands of his
fellow beings might live, were almost beyond
recognition. Daniel Peyton’s name will go down in
history among
the greatest of heroes. He it was by whom the message,
sent from South Fork by John G. Parke to the effect that
the dam was about to burst was conveyed.
A few simple facts have long compromised this
story, rendering it a handsome piece of fiction and
rendering Peyton an imaginary hero at best. There is no
“turnpike” or single road along which a horse and
rider could travel from South Fork to Johnstown. With
every road flooded or mud-swamped by the heavy rains a
trip of some fourteen miles in well under an hour would
have been essentially impossible. The streets of
Johnstown were already submerged at the time Peyton was
to have arrived, seriously compromising the ability to
ride the streets of Johnstown at great speed warning
everyone who would listen. No one between South Fork and
Johnstown had any recollection of a horse and rider
galloping past in advance of the flood wave giving
warning of what was coming. And possibly the most
compelling piece of information, the lack of which
refutes this story totally and completely, is that there
was no Daniel Peyton. There is no record of a Daniel
Peyton having lived in South Fork, Johnstown or any
where else in that vicinity, and no one had a
recollection of a person by that name. The creators and
purveyors of this story held that both Peyton and his
horse died in the end. Was it their purpose to add a
touch of the ultimate drama to the story, or was their
intent to make the story impossible to verify?”
Note: Dr.
McGough’s book continues with two other “Paul
Revere” stories featuring John Baker and John G.
Parke, Jr. both of whom did play a role in warning
others about the flood but not to the degree in which it
was reported.
Copies of this
book are available through:
Thomas
Publications
P.O. Box 3031
Gettysburg, PA
17325
^Top
