Chalmers "Chal" Dick

Chal Dick

Quick Facts

Place of Birth:

Mount Pleasant, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania

Date of Birth:

June 20, 1856

Place of Death:

Johnstown, Cambria County, Pennsylvania

Date of Death:

September 16,1890

Place of Burial:

Southmont, Cambria County, Pennsylvania

Cemetery Name:

Grandview Cemetery

"It was a splendid realization of the judgment day. It was a magnificent realization of the impotency of man in a battle with such a combination of fire and flood.” -Chal Dick

Chal Dick was an attorney at Alma Hall and resided on Somerset Street. He was part of Captain A. N. Hart's police force in Johnstown after the flood. In the chaotic aftermath, order was hard to come by. 

On the day of the flood, the water rose so quickly and he decided to move his wife and children to the home of Mr. Bergman on Napoleon Street. Bergman's house filled with several feet of rising water. Dick and his family were in waist high water and made it out of the house to a higher location. He recalled watching houses be toppled and the scene of devastation that followed the flood wave. Dick was also witness to the fire at the Stone Bridge. In The Jeffersonian newspaper, West Chester, Pennsylvania on June 8, 1889. Part of his account read:

"At the windows of the dwellings there appeared the faces of people equally ill fated as the rest. God forbid that I should ever again look upon such intensity of anguish. Oh, how white and horror stricken those faces were and such appeals for help that could not come The women wrung their hands in their despair and prayed aloud for deliverance."

Dick patrolled town on his horse wielding his Winchester rifle. He came back with stories of Hungarians robbing the dead of jewelry and other valuables. He stated that he shot some of them. The Weekly Courier, Connellsville, Pennsylvania reported on June 7, 1889, that "On Sunday several of these human vandals were caught at their despicable work and two were shot dead in their tracks by Chal. Dick, ex-mayor of Johnstown." Dick was actually the burgess of Johnstown in 1888.

Stories like these spread quickly in the valley and made people fearful and suspicious of people from different ethnic groups.

In Through the Johnstown Flood by a Survivor, Reverend Beale wrote:
There was little stealing done by the Hungarians, and most accounts of outrages attributed to these people were apocryphal; and I am glad to say that all statements of shooting and hanging them were without foundation. I have assurance from Mr. Dick himself, who was reported to have killed several."

He died suddenly at age 34 in September 1890. The Daily Register, Wheeling, West Virginia, published a report of his death from Pittsburgh. Part of the article said:
"Chalmers L. Dick who single handed and alone stopped the Hungarians and others from pillaging houses and robbing the dead at Johnstown the day after the great flood, died suddenly in his home in Johnstown this morning."