Camp Davis and the Flood of 1955

In August of 1955 a series of two hurricanes following the same track went through the eastern part of the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. One of the major tragedies happened in the area just to the north of Stroudsburg, when the Brodhead Creek was overwhelmed as the ground was already saturated. As noted by the National Weather Service and quoted in the Pocono Living Magazine (Aug/Sep 2021) (https://issuu.com/poconolivingmagazine/docs/plm_augsept_2021):

“Two powerful hurricanes moved up the Eastern Seaboard in quick succession in August 1955.” Connie dumped “six-to-ten inches of rain … across the eastern portions of the state” on Aug. 12 and 13. Diane arrived five days later. “With soils moist from the heavy rains from Connie and streams already flowing high, flooding quickly increased in severity during the evening hours on the 18^th. Rainfall estimated (at) between seven to nine inches fell in a six-hour period, with the heaviest amounts centered over the mountainous portions of northeast Pennsylvania. These small mountain creeks produced destructive flooding and led to several deadly small dam failures.”

The flooding on Brodhead Creek caused “a truly horrific event” at Camp Davis, a religious complex about four miles north of East Stroudsburg, the NWS says. “Forty-seven campers, mostly children, were huddled in a building that was rapidly flooded and dislodged into the roaring flood waters. Hours later, only seven of the campers were found alive.”

Camp Davis was a small campground that was run by a retired Baptist preacher, Leon Davis, and his wife. He used to rent out the camp to various religious groups. A small bridge crossed the creek (normally only 30 feet across, but that swelled to 300 yards during the storm) so that people could walk to Pinebrook Bible Conference, then owned and run by Percy Crawford. That way they could attend the various conferences and/or concerts during the day and return to Camp Davis in the evening.

As noted above, when the creek began rising it was in the evening and people initially went to the main building. Then as the water continued rising the first floor began flooding and people went upstairs, ending up huddling in the attic. It was then that the rising waters overwhelmed the building, collapsing it and sending all those inside into the water and getting washed down the quickly flowing “creek”. Most of them were drowned, some ending up lodged in trees, and some bodies never being found.

A second article in the same magazine (https://issuu.com/poconolivingmagazine/docs/plm_octnov_2021) noted that this was “A story of 37 children who perished…” While the number is correct, the statement that these were all “children” is far from the truth.

In 1968, the Bible Fellowship Church purchased the property. A 1995 article in the Fellowship News recounted this tragedy and said that the people in the camp were members of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ (MBC) church, the former name of the Bible Fellowship Church. But as my research below shows, this is not correct either.

Newspaper reports during the weeks that followed varied widely in their estimates of the number of individuals affected at Camp Davis. The Pocono Record of 22 Aug reported “55 Deaths in County; 20 missing.” The next day, the Standard-Sentinel from Hazleton reported, “a revised casualty list identifying 25 known dead in the Camp Davis flood disaster. Nine of the estimated 40 persons at the camp survived and six are missing.” Two weeks later, on 3 Sep The Pocono Record reported “61 known dead. Of this total six are unidentified.” (these numbers included not only Camp Davis but residents of Stroudsburg and a few others who were in camps farther north in Canadensis). A headline from 24 Sep gave a good analysis when it stated, “Erroneous Reports Add To Confusion”.

Part of this confusion was that several individuals reported as missing were still being searched for. An article on 19 Sep noted, “They were looking for the missing bodies of six children and two adults – all eight lost from Camp Davis.” Some were never found. The final count, in The Pocono Record of 24 Sep was reported as:

“There had been 46 persons at the camp [note that this is one less than had been reported by the NWS]. When the tide had dropped and the dead and missing were counted, only nine had survived.”

It took six weeks for this number to stabilize. But this final count of 37 killed is in agreement with the count reported in The Pocono Living Magazine above.

On 13 Oct 2004, The Morning Call published an article where they reported on an interview of one of the survivors, Jennie Johnson, from 22 Aug 1955. The title of the article was “Hurricane Diane proved tragic for campers – Floodwater killed 37 at Monroe campsite in August 1955.”

Some of the quotes from the article were:

Around 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 18 she and her children were watching the creek. “We watched the stream rushing past and remarked how pretty it looked. There wasn’t anything to worry about, at least we didn’t think so then.”

They were sitting in the bungalow a half-hour later when the building began to shake. Johnson remembered that it sounded as if a dam had broken. She and her children fled the shaking building for the big, solid home of camp supervisors, the Rev. and Mrs. Leon Davis. There they joined the rest of the campers.

Although the three-story house seemed safe, water quickly began to rise. As it reached each floor, the screaming campers fled to the next. Finally they were forced to seek refuge in the attic. The campers were watching the water climb the attic stairs after them when the building shuddered and collapsed.

Johnson told The Morning Call she was hit on her head by a board and passed out. When she came to, she found herself floating. Johnson grabbed one board and then another to try to stay afloat. Eventually she drifted onto a debris pile, praying until 7 a.m., when she was rescued. She found her 19-year-old daughter, but her two sons, age 14 and 10, had died. When the final count was made, only nine of the 46 campers who had been at Camp Davis survived.

 

The Dead

I’ve searched through a number of records to pull together a list of all those who were killed. There is a detailed report in The Pocono Record of 24 Sep 1955, but even that has a few errors as I note below. My primary source of information is the death certificates issued by the coroner for Monroe County. However, for those who were missing, the coroner did not fill out a death certificate, so I had to use other sources to verify the names and ages. Here is a complete of all the 37 individuals. As you can see, only half of them are children.

·        Anderson, Addie (73) – Nanuet, NY

·        Christensen, Louise T. (41) and her son, Donald (15) – Staten Island, NY

·        Deubel, Martha (48) – Orange, NJ

·        Donlon, Katherine Elizabeth (59) – Nanuet, NY

·        Hartig, Henry (67) and wife Lillian (70) – Brooklyn, NY

·        Hyatt, Emma (76) – Millburn, NJ

·        Johnson, Roy (14) and his brother David (10) – Jersey City, NJ

o   Johnson, David (10), was listed twice. As noted in The Pocono Record of 7 Sep, “A body previously identified as David Johnson, 10, Jersey City, will be exhumed from a grave in a Jersey City cemetery today and returned to Stroudsburg for further identification. Monroe County officials said yesterday they have found discrepancies in the boy’s identification.”

·        Kehmna, Susan (42) and her son John [Jay] (5) – Jersey City, NJ

·        Koch, John D (55) and his wife Mae (56) – Brooklyn, NY

·        Koch, Julie (56) and her grandsons, Frank J. McCaffrey (9) and James McCaffrey (8) – West Caldwell, NJ

·        Lawyer, Christian (49), wife Helen (45), daughter Carol (8), son Allan (11) – East Orange, NJ

o   Lieberford, William (Nanuet, NY), was listed initially, but no one of that name exists

·        Orgera, Elsie (53) – Park Ridge, NJ

·        Polly, Bertha (80) – Nanuet, NJ

·        Russo, Joseph (12) and his brother Frank (10) – Pompton Plains, NJ

·        Rutherford, Jean (46) and daughter Susan (4) and son Jimmy (6) – Staten Island, NY

·        Thompson, Gladys (22), her brother Bruce (15), sister Beverly (8) – Jersey City, NJ

·        Wagner, Josephine (62) – Jersey City, NJ

·        Weber, Elizabeth Jane (9) and her brother Robert (6) – West Patterson, NJ

·        Winfield, Edna (37), son Rowan (6) and daughter Karen (8) – Rutherford, NJ

o   Karen was not initially listed, but death certificate confirms her presence.

 

The Mennonite Connection

As should be evident from the places where these individuals were from (Brooklyn, NY; Jersey City, NJ; Nanuet, NY; Pompton Plains, NJ; Rutherford, NJ; Staten Island, NY; West Patterson, NJ), these were not places where the Mennonite Brethren in Christ had congregations in 1955 (with the exception of Staten Island). A few of the newspaper articles mentioned that these individuals were from Mennonite churches, but it does not appear that there was an MBC connection. That does not make it any less a tragedy. Even today, almost 70 years later, one has a hard time comprehending so many people, and often entire families, losing their lives in such a tragic event.