After the flood, high-profile attorneys Philander Knox and James Hay Reed [It was Reed, Smith]– both club members – fended off any attempts to blame the club for what became the nation’s greatest disaster.
...
But the entire club agreed to remain silent about the disaster and membership in the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club.
Burkert said they were so effective that children and grandchildren of some of the lesser-known club members told researchers they knew nothing of their family’s onetime summer getaways to the picturesque – and perilous – lake above Johnstown.
“People were angry. [PISSED.] But they closed ranks and distanced themselves from it,” Burkert said. “It’s likely many of their records – even photographs from the time – were purged.” [The only known trove of photos was not discovered until long after Louis Clarke, the photographer, died, by his granddaughter or something in Rhode Island or Connecticut or one of those bite states.They were on glass plates in her attic.]
Burkert recalled JAHA’s [Johnstown Area Historical Association] onetime solicitor reaching out to a friend who worked for Knox and Reed’s Pittsburgh law firm decades ago.
As the story goes, the attorney ended up turning to a long-retired member of the firm who recalled as a young clerk being tasked with emptying out “an entire room full of flood evidence,” Burkert said.
“By then, it was 1911 and they figured it was time to dispose of it,” he said.
...
But the entire club agreed to remain silent about the disaster and membership in the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club.
Burkert said they were so effective that children and grandchildren of some of the lesser-known club members told researchers they knew nothing of their family’s onetime summer getaways to the picturesque – and perilous – lake above Johnstown.
“People were angry. [PISSED.] But they closed ranks and distanced themselves from it,” Burkert said. “It’s likely many of their records – even photographs from the time – were purged.” [The only known trove of photos was not discovered until long after Louis Clarke, the photographer, died, by his granddaughter or something in Rhode Island or Connecticut or one of those bite states.They were on glass plates in her attic.]
Burkert recalled JAHA’s [Johnstown Area Historical Association] onetime solicitor reaching out to a friend who worked for Knox and Reed’s Pittsburgh law firm decades ago.
As the story goes, the attorney ended up turning to a long-retired member of the firm who recalled as a young clerk being tasked with emptying out “an entire room full of flood evidence,” Burkert said.
“By then, it was 1911 and they figured it was time to dispose of it,” he said.
Yeah.
Burkert said that story stuck with him for years because he saw it as the moment that answers to their South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club questions were forever erased.
Burkert said that story stuck with him for years because he saw it as the moment that answers to their South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club questions were forever erased.
Yeah. NO! Thanks to John W. Kephart, my uncle's namessake...My uncle had nothing to do with the Johnstown Flood; my grandfather had nothing to do with the Johnstown Flood.
That’s what makes the Ebensburg-based historical society’s discovery so extraordinary, he said.
“The idea that some of this stuff would resurface 100 years later in an attic in Ebensburg,” Burkert said. “What they’ve found – it’s big.”
That’s what makes the Ebensburg-based historical society’s discovery so extraordinary, he said.
“The idea that some of this stuff would resurface 100 years later in an attic in Ebensburg,” Burkert said. “What they’ve found – it’s big.”
