Johnstown is the largest city in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 18,411 as of the 2020 census. Located 57 miles (92 km) east of Pittsburgh, it is the principal city of the Johnstown metropolitan area and had 133,472 residents in 2020. It is also part of the Johnstown–Somerset combined statistical area, which includes both Cambria and Somerset Counties.
Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, better known by her pen name Nellie Bly, was an American journalist who was widely known for her record-breaking trip around the world in 72 days in emulation of Jules Verne's fictional character Phileas Fogg and an exposé in which she worked undercover to report on a mental institution from within. She pioneered her field and launched a new kind of investigative journalism.
Ida Minerva Tarbell was an American writer, investigative journalist, biographer, and lecturer. She was one of the leading muckrakers and reformers of the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was a pioneer of investigative journalism.
Henry Clay Frick was an American industrialist, financier, and art patron. He founded the H. C. Frick & Company coke manufacturing company, was chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company and played a major role in the formation of the giant U.S. Steel manufacturing concern. He had extensive real estate holdings in Pittsburgh and throughout the state of Pennsylvania. He later built the Neoclassical Frick Mansion in Manhattan, and upon his death donated his extensive collection of old master paintings and fine furniture to create the celebrated Frick Collection and art museum. However, as a founding member of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, he was also in large part responsible for the alterations to the South Fork Dam that caused its failure, leading to the catastrophic Johnstown Flood. His vehement opposition to unions also caused violent conflict, most notably in the Homestead Strike.
The Johnstown Flood, sometimes referred to locally as Great Flood of 1889, occurred on Friday, May 31, 1889, after the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam, located on the south fork of the Little Conemaugh River, 14 miles (23 km) upstream of the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, United States. The dam ruptured after several days of extremely heavy rainfall, releasing 14.55 million cubic meters of water. With a volumetric flow rate that temporarily equaled the average flow rate of the Mississippi River, the flood killed 2,208 people and accounted for US$17,000,000 in damage.
The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club was a Pennsylvania corporation that operated an exclusive and secretive retreat at a mountain lake near South Fork, Pennsylvania. Its members were more than 50 extremely wealthy industrialists and their families. Most were based in Pittsburgh, the center of steel and related industries.
Hugh Charles Boyle was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania from 1921 until his death in 1950.
James W. Brown II was a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He worked in the iron and steel industry and served as vice president of the Crucible Steel Company. He was also engaged in banking, and was trustee of the Dollar Savings Bank.
The Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill were founded by Sister Aloysia Lowe. In 1870, she and sisters Blanche O'Keefe, Maria Theresa O'Donnell, Maria Kavanaugh and two novices were sent to western Pennsylvania from the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati and began their work, founding and staffing schools. The sisters later expanded their work to include healthcare.
Nancy Isobel McIntosh was an American-born singer and actress who performed mostly on the London stage. Her father was a member of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, which had been blamed in connection with the 1889 Johnstown Flood that resulted in the loss of over 2,200 lives in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
The Cambria Iron Company of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was a major producer of iron and steel that operated independently from 1852 to 1916. The company adopted many innovations in the steelmaking process, including those of William Kelly and Henry Bessemer.
Elizabeth Robins Pennell was an American writer who, for most of her adult life, made her home in London. A researcher summed her up in a work published in 2000 as "an adventurous, accomplished, self-assured, well-known columnist, biographer, cookbook collector, and art critic"; in addition, she wrote travelogues, mainly of European cycling voyages, and memoirs, centred on her London salon. Her biographies included the first in almost a century of the proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, one of her uncle the folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland, and one of her friend the painter Whistler. In recent years, her art criticism has come under scrutiny, and her food criticism has been reprinted.
John George Alexander Leishman was an American businessman and diplomat. He worked in various executive positions at Carnegie Steel Company, rising to President, and later served as an ambassador for the United States to Switzerland, the Ottoman Empire, Italy, and Germany.
Louis Semple Clarke, or Semple Clarke or simply LS, (1866–1957) was a pioneering businessman and engineer in the American automotive industry. One of the central founders of The Autocar Company, Clarke was also an inventor who made numerous contributions to the development of modern motor vehicles, including innovations in the use of the drive shaft, circulating motor oil, sparkplugs, and the American convention of placing a vehicle's steering wheel on the left.
Cara is a feminine given name with multiple origins in different languages. It is often considered a spelling variant of the name Kara. As an English name, it is usually considered a modern spelling variant of the Italian endearment cara, meaning beloved, or the Irish word cara, meaning friend. Neither Cara or Kara has been in common use as a name in Italy or Ireland prior to the 20th century, though Kara had been in use as an independent name in the United States since at least the 1890s. Both forms of the name had occasionally been used as a hypocorism for the name Caroline, as in the case of American journalist Cara Reese (1856-1914), who was born Caroline. Actress Bernice Kamiat, who used the stage name Cara Williams, popularized that version of the name in the 1950s and 1960s.
Julia Schoenfeld was a Jewish-American social worker, writer, and activist. During the period of her settlement work, Schoenfeld became interested in recreation for working girls, a subject on which she became a recognized authority. Her investigation of public dance halls in New York City, undertaken in 1908 while she was secretary of the Committee on the Amusement Resources of Working Girls, was the basis for the model New York City ordinance regulating dance halls. Later, as secretary of the Playground and Recreation Association of America, she conducted dance hall investigations in Boston, Massachusetts, St. Joseph, Missouri, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Sarah Elizabeth Bierce (1838–1898) was an American journalist and educator who was a charter member of the Woman's Press Club of Cleveland.
Dorothy Alice Cornelius was an American registered nurse from Ohio who served in executive and in leadership positions in nursing. Cornelius was the only person to be president of the American Nurses Association, the International Council of Nurses, and the American Journal of Nursing Company.
Nana Ama Agyemang Asante is a Ghanaian journalist, editor and writer. Beginning in 2012 she worked as deputy online editor of Citi FM's web portal. She also co-hosts the “Citi Breakfast Show” at the Accra-based radio station Citi FM, together with Bernard Avle.
Charles Chandler Reese, was a well-known American illustrator, newspaper cartoonist, and artist who worked for newspapers in Boston, Massachusetts; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and New York City. His sketches on the field of action in Cuba during the Spanish-American War appeared in the New York World. His two-time comic strip, Speaking of Ancestors, appeared in the Philadelphia North American in February 1904. He also contributed cartoon series to the Boston Herald and New York Tribune. He was the first artist to have a picture reproduced as a double-truck, or two-page, illustration in a newspaper. He was the younger brother of American journalist Cara Reese. His parents were Abram or Abraham Reese, who came from Wales, and Mary Godwin Reese, who came from England. He also had three brothers: Harry, Arthur, and Stanley. Reese served for decades in the 18th Regiment of the National Guard, enlisting in 1876 and serving as an Adjutant in 1892. He married a woman named Bertha in 1895 and divorced her for infidelity in 1913. He later remarried by 1920 to a woman named Eloise and had a daughter, also named Eloise or Elsie, and was living in Staten Island, New York, and working as an artist for a press company, according to U.S. census data. He relocated to California in 1930, where he worked as an independent artist, and died in Glendale, California in 1936.
