A few words may be interesting concerning the management of fires
in my youth. Either there were very few fires in Plymouth during
the colonial and provincial periods, or the record of them is very
incomplete. It is known that on the 24th of January, 1620-21, the
Common House on Leyden street caught fire from the lodgment of a
spark on its thatched roof, and was burned to the ground. At a town
meeting held on the fifth of February, 1664-5, it was voted, “to
see what may be collected for the relief of Francis Billington, he
having lately suffered great loss by the burning of his house.” The
house known as the “Crow House” at Seaside, was probably built in
1665, on the site of the “Billington House.” The only other fire, of
which there is any record before the Revolution, is referred to in
a vote of the town passed March 21, 1757, “that Thomas Norrington,
in consideration of his loss by fire, be abated his Province, County
and Town rates for the last year.” As there is no record of any
house owned by Mr. Norrington, it is probable that he was a tenant
of some house or store, and suffered the loss of furniture or goods.
In Boston, either more complete records were kept, or there were
many more fires during the periods above mentioned. In 1654 occurred
what was known as the great fire. In 1676 a fire at the North end
consumed forty-five dwelling houses, the North Church and several
warehouses within a district enclosed by Richmond, Hanover and Clark
streets. On the 8th of August, 1679, a fire occurred extending from
what is now Blackstone street, westerly to Dock square, and southerly
to the present Liberty square, which destroyed eighty dwelling
houses, seventy warehouses, and many vessels with their cargoes,
causing a loss of two hundred thousand pounds. The main reliance
in extinguishing fires at that time was upon long handled hooks,
with which every householder was required to be provided, and upon
large swabs attached to poles twelve feet long, with which water was
splashed on the walls and roofs. A few pumps and the dock were the
only sources of water supply. All buildings in Boston at that time
were wooden, and at the next session of the General Court a law was
passed providing that no dwelling houses should be erected in Boston
except of stone or brick, and covered with slate or tile, unless by
permission of the magistrates, commissioners and selectmen. October
1st, 1711, a fire beginning in Williams Court, burned nearly one
hundred buildings, including the First Church.
In 1778 a fire occurred at the South end, beginning at Beach street,
and extending southerly on both sides of Washington street, as far
as Common street, burning in its course the Hollis street church;
and in 1825 a fire in Kilby street destroyed fifty stores. The great
fire in Boston, which burned from the evening of the 9th to the 11th
of November, 1872, covered about eighty acres, and extended from
Bedford to State street, and with the exception of a few buildings,
from Washington street to the harbor, causing a loss of about eighty
millions of dollars. Taking into consideration only the fires
in Boston before the Revolution, the number was entirely out of
proportion to those in Plymouth during the same period.
The first fire engine used in Boston with any effect, was made in
1765 by David Wheeler, a blacksmith, who had his house and shop on
what is now Washington street, a little north of Bedford street,
and between the latter street and what is now known as Avon place.
From the first settlement of Boston there was a pond belonging to
the town abutting Wheeler’s land, which had been always used as a
town watering place, and which became a nuisance when dwellings were
erected in its vicinity, and was finally sold to Mr. Wheeler in 1753.
The first steam fire engine was introduced into Boston in 1854, and
there are now between thirty and forty in the city.
In 1792 the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society was organized, and
incorporated in 1794, to relieve sufferers by fire, and to invent
means by which fires might be extinguished. For many years its
anniversary was celebrated by an oration and an ode. Several of the
odes were written by Robert Treat Paine, Jr., who changed his name
from Thomas on account of his aversion to Thomas Paine, the author
of the “Age of Reason.” The celebrated song, “Adams and Liberty” was
written by Mr. Paine to be sung at one of the celebrations of the
Society to the tune, “To Anacreon in Heaven,” which is now better
known as the tune of the “Star Spangled Banner.” As most of my
readers are probably unfamiliar with this song, I give below one of
its stanzas:
“Ye sons of Columbia who bravely have fought,
For those rights which unstained from your sires had descended,
May you long taste the blessings your valor has bought,
And your sons reap the soil which their fathers defended;
Mid the reign of mild peace,
May your nation increase,
With the glory of Rome and the wisdom of Greece,
And no son of Columbia shall e’er be a slave,
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls a wave.”
As far as I can learn there was no fire insurance on any building
in Massachusetts until the very last years of the 18th century.
There were no insurance companies in the state until then, but it is
possible that there may have been individuals who took fire risks as
Barnabas Hedge did at a later period in Plymouth. Until about 1798
or 1799, marine insurance was done entirely by underwriters, as they
were called. A ship owner, for instance, about to send his vessel to
sea, who wished insurance, would ask a few men of means how large
risks each would take, and they would under write their names on
printed blanks, stating the amounts they would insure. Of course the
establishment of insurance companies put an end to this method of
insurance except in outports like Plymouth, and the name underwriter
was transferred to the companies. My great uncle Thomas Davis, was
the first president of the first marine insurance company in Boston,
from 1798 until his death in 1805, and I have hanging on the wall in
my library, the barometer which hung in his office.
I have spoken of three fires which occurred in Plymouth during the
colonial period. I am inclined to think that not more than forty
fires have occurred since 1620, causing losses exceeding five hundred
dollars, and that the total loss by fire, exclusive of fires in the
woods, has not exceeded three hundred thousand dollars. Of all the
fires, which have occurred within my memory I can recall only one in
which adjoining buildings were seriously damaged. While this bears
testimony to the efficiency of the Plymouth fire department, I think
that special mention should be made of the Unitarian Church fire,
when only great skill and persistent effort saved the Bradford house,
the Town house, and the Orthodox church.
For more than a hundred years Plymouth possessed no special means
of extinguishing fires. On the 27th of January, 1728, it was voted
in town meeting “that every householder shall from time to time be
provided with a sufficient ladder or ladders to reach from the ground
to the ridge of such house at the charge of the owner thereof; and in
case the owner or owners of such house or houses be not an inhabitant
of the town, then the occupiers thereof to provide the same and
deduct the charge thereof out of his or their rent, on pain of the
forfeiture of five shillings per month for every month’s neglect
after the tenth day of January next.” It was also voted that between
the first day of March and the first of December every householder
between Wood’s Lane, now Samoset street, and Jabez Corner, should
keep on his premises a hogshead or two barrels of water, or a cistern
to the value of two hogsheads, exempting, however, any house standing
twenty rods from the highway. So things went on with only the efforts
of citizens to rely on, and the utmost care in the management of
domestic fires, until the 16th of March, 1752, when it was voted
to choose thereafter annually a board of five firewards; and on
the 21st of March, 1757, it was voted to purchase what was called
a ‘garden engine’ that would throw about fifty gallons of water a
minute. On the 18th of February, 1765, it was voted that Gideon
White, Wm. Rider, Samuel Cole, Wm. Rickard, Abiel Shurtleff, Zacheus
Curtis, Lewis Bartlett, John May and Wm. Crombie, the managers of
the engine, be exempted from the performance of all other town
duties. In 1770 two engines are referred to in the records, though
there is no mention of the purchase of the second one, and both were
kept in an addition at the easterly end of the present town house.
On the 2d of May, 1798, the town voted to buy a new engine, and on
the 6th of April, 1801, another, these two taking the places of the
two old ones. These two new engines called respectively Niagara No.
1 and Fountain No. 2, were bucket engines, and were kept under the
Unitarian Meeting House until it was taken down in 1831, when the
Fountain was removed to a house built on the southwest corner of
Training Green, and the Niagara was removed to a house near the jail,
and later to a house on Russell street. An engine which was called
No. 3, was presented to the town by Nathaniel Russell, William Davis
and Barnabas Hedge, May 5, 1823, but was disposed of in 1836, when
the Rapid was bought, and took its number. In 1829 the reservoirs in
Town and Shirley squares were built, and in that year Torrent No. 4,
a suction engine, was bought, and in the same year the Niagara was
changed to a suction engine. In 1834 and later, reservoirs were built
at Training Green, in High street and in Court street at the foot of
Russell street and opposite Pilgrim Hall. The Torrent No. 4 was kept
some years in the Northwesterly end of the Town House, and afterwards
in Franklin street, while the Rapid was removed to Summer street.
At the present time the Niagara built in 1798, the Fountain built
in 1801, the Torrent built in 1828, and the Rapid built in 1836,
are stored in the hospital of the Fire Department on Spring street,
where I hope they will be permitted to long remain as veterans in the
service, and relics of the past.
The earliest fire of which I have any recollection, was in 1828, when
the anchor works, standing where the Plymouth Mills are now located,
were burned. I was then attending Mrs. Maynard’s school on the corner
of Main street and Town Square, and saw one of the engines go round
the corner. In the same year or the next, before the reservoirs were
built, and before the first suction engine was bought, I remember
seeing two lines of men and women carrying up one line buckets of
water from the dock to a bucket engine at the head of North street,
and carrying empty buckets down the other line back to the dock. In
every house two leather fire buckets handsomely painted, and bearing
the owner’s name, hung in the front entry, and when the fire bells
rang there was a general panic, and men half dressed and women
bareheaded, and with disordered hair, seized their buckets and ran to
the scene of the fire. In my boyhood the active men at fires were,
Joseph Bradford, Samuel Doten, and Daniel and Isaac C. Jackson, each
with his fire trumpet, calling as the occasion required, “Play away,
No. 4,” or “Play away, No. 1.”
In 1835 an act was passed by the General Court, establishing the
Plymouth Fire Department, under which the selectmen appoint annually
a board of engineers, who now have full charge of the organization
of the department and the management of fires. In May, 1870, in
accordance with a vote of the town, steam fire engine No. 1 was
bought, and in June, 1874, No. 2 was bought and named Jeremiah
Farris. In 1893 No. 3 was bought, and named H. P. Bailey. The
question may well be asked why suction engines were not earlier
invented. For centuries water pumps were used, and the engine only
needed an application of their well known principles to make them
complete. The saying that necessity is the mother of invention, is
only another version of the statement that providence supplies what
the actual wants of the people demand. The carelessness of men, the
cheap methods of building, and the introduction of new devices for
heating houses, have alarmingly increased the liabilities to fires,
and have led to a demand for better methods of extinguishing them,
and lo, the engine appeared at call. Nor does the steam fire engine
mark more than another step towards more effective machines. The time
is undoubtedly near at hand when the auto engine will take the place
of that drawn by horse power, and sooner or later will itself give
way to some fire extinguisher, the nature of which time will disclose.
The Plymouth Fire Department, as now organized, is exceedingly
creditable to the town. It consists of a board of five engineers and
130 men, with the following apparatus and equipment:
In the two story brick central station in Main street, Steamer H. P.
Bailey No. 3, hose wagon, ladder truck, chemical engine, hose reel,
seven horses.
In the two story brick station on South street, Steamer No. 2, the
Jeremiah Farris, hose wagon, ladder truck, and five horses.
At the Seaside station, Steamer No. 1, reel and hose.
At Hall Town, reel and hose.
At Whiting street, reel and hose.
At Baptist street, reel and hose.
At the Langford house, Chiltonville reel and hose.
Two hundred and twenty-eight hydrants: four hand engines, laid up;
nine thousand feet of hose; twenty-five fire alarm signal boxes, and
a battery room in the Central station.
It is only necessary to add that the appropriation for the
maintenance of the department for the present year is eleven thousand
dollars.