Johnstown, Pennsylvania Flood of 1889

Question

How many would be interested in the Johnstown, PA flood of 1889?

Comments

I have a free space page for this. Currently it is private.

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I hope you will make that free-space page visible, Chris!

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Free-space page now open. nothing is on it.

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Erm... When you mentioned the page, I assumed it had content.

Not to worry: I added a little bit of content.

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Sorry. American English is my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd language and I am not very good at it. Have a hard time reading, writing, and speaking it.I find I do better with a readable foreign language. This is why most of my profiles I have do not have a bio on them and the ones that do taken a while to put on them.

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No worries, Chris. You took the first step by creating a page!

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Belatedly: me too! Thanks for setting up the free space page, Chris! One of the US Civil War veterans of the famous 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry and his wife died in the Great Flood of 1889.

Answer 1

It seems to me it could be a categories. It is well documented is it not. It might help me with missing PA family.

Answer 2

I have a mother and three children lost in the flood. Only three bodies recovered.

Comments

You might want to add the new category to these people's profiles.

Answer 3

This would be a good topic for both a Free-space page (for documentation about the flood) and a category (to hold profiles of people who died or were significantly affected by the flood). The category could be created with https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:United_States_Floods and https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Johnstown%2C_Pennsylvania as parent categories. I went ahead and created Category:Johnstown_Flood_of_1889. It currently contains only one profile. Feel free to add it to other profiles!

Comments

Just added someone to the category from one of my branches. Noticed there are three listed that died at later times in the 1900's. 1936 1932 1940 to be exact. One is buried in Grandview, probably should have the Grandview category, not the 1889 flood. Other 2 lived in Ebensburg and are buried in Butler County.  Don't they have to have died in the flood to be on this page?

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Where does it say that disaster categories are only allowed to contain profiles of people who died in the disaster? And where does it say that a profile can only be included in one category? Categories are not just for causes of death or burial locations; categories can be built around a variety of themes?

The profile for Fagan-549 says "The Johnstown flood in 1889 forced [the family] to leave their home and all their possessions." Isn't surviving a disaster but undergoing a major life changes as a result (in this case, losing one's home and moving to another county) a good reason for associating a profile with a disaster category?

And although the Schaatz-115 profile doesn't explain this, it's apparent from the https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Wirth-548 profile that Schaatz-115 lost her entire family (except for her new husband) in the flood.

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My Pennsylvania family lived in Lock Haven and Mill Hall, and nearby towns. I know that in Mill Hall, my great aunts always spoke of their parents being "in" the Johnstown flood, even though they weren't in Johnstown. Mill Hall got flooded every time there was rising of the Susquehanna River and its tributaries. And several of my great aunts kept on returning to their flooded homes, cleaned them up, and went on living in their lowland habitat.  

My grandmother spoke of one flood in which the water engulfed the first floors. She offered shelter to a few community members in her 2nd floor apartment. I would have to check on the dates, but I'm assuming early 20th century, as she was born in 1897 and didn't leave home until after 1915.

Even in the flood of 1972, my great aunts refused to leave their homes by the river! My own second child was born during that flood - and the hospital in Tyrone, PA where I went to deliver, lost their water supply. The bridge between our home in State College and Tyrone was washed out, but my husband found an alternate route to bring me water to drink!