The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-05-05
FIRES OF FORTY YEARS AGO
"reminiscences of Member of the
Old Volunteer Brigade.
The First Fire Engine in indianapolis, and
the ''Boys" Who Ran with the
Machine.

| IOu SuOulu nave seen Ule Indianapolis
fire department of forty years ago." said an
old citizen the other day, with a benevolent
smile, as a steam fire-engine spun by in
quick response to an alarm. 1.-THE old volun-
teer department, ] mean, long before a paid
| system was ever dreamed Of" With little
encouragement after giving his memory
preliminary amble, the old gentleman gave
full rein and galloped boldly into the dim
I bridle-path of the past.
1.-The first ire-engine company was the
Marion, organized in 1885. The late James
Blake was the first captain, and when equip
ped with his. speaking trumpet all the viii
layers were stricken with wonder and ad-
miration. Not that anybody ever understood
anything that Captain Blake or any succeed
ing captain ever delivered through a
trumpet, but it was considered
SO necessary part of the equipment
that no captain could hope to command the
proper degree of respect without it, Before
this engine was bought, the sole protection
of the place depended upon the bucket brig
ade There was a law compelling every
citizen to keep two leathern buckets, each
holding two gallons, in his house and ready
for use in case of fire. The bucket brigade
did good service in that particular kind of
blazes characterized by newspaper reporters
an incipient conhagration.'
THE FIRST FIRES.
1.-THE first large fire was in 1825-Maior
Carriers tavern (the word hotel came long
afterward with other metropolitan airs),
which then stood on East Washington street,
opposite the center of the courthouse
square. 1t was the burning of the old Man
sion House (afterward the Capital House,,
kept by Basil Brown, during the session of
the Legislature in 1885, that brought about the
purchase of the Marion engine. The Legis-
lature furnished half the money and the re-
mainder was raised by subscription from cit
liens. The Mansion House fire was fought
manfully with buckets and the loss was not
large but the scare was great, as the fire was
in the very center of the growing business of
the town. The first mill that was burned was
Seth Bacon's on the bank of Fall Greek, just
above the Indiana avenue bridge. That
/ burned soon after Carriers tavern. The Buck
tavern, on the site of what is now the House
of Lords property, then kept by man
named Armstrong, furnished good-sized
contagration in 1841 or 1912. One day, about
thirty-eight years ago, John Carlisle, who had
a mill on the basin of the canal, was flashing
| the SCOT out the pipes with powder, when
the mill caught fire and burned down.
Scudder & Hannaman's tobacco factory
and warehouse, a big !eP9, for
1912. 1t stood on Kentucky avenue west of
where the cleveland block now stands. In
| 1912 Judge Blackboard had three-story car
riage shop burned from the ground now &C.
cupied by the Condit block.
| There was good sized fire in 1843 or 1874,
| int no Of IOta hot I'd
stable and several horses. The old Loucks
brewery that stood on the site of the English
| block, corner of Noble and Washington
streets, burned about 1S4S. A number of
| frame stores on the site of Albert Calls car
PENTHOUSE, burned in 1849 Captain Ed
mund Browning's tavern, Washington Hall,
that stood on the site of the New York store,
burned in 1871, during the session of the
| Legislature. The engine did good work and
putt out before any great damage was done.
| 'One of the most expensive fires during the
days of the volunteer system and the hand
engines occurred on Jan. 10, 1852. Up to
that time it was perhaps, the costliest fire
the town had ever had. This fire was on
| Washington street, east OF the Capital House
| least of where Crafts jewelry store now
| stands), and the buildings were frame. The
| burned store-rooms were occupied by
Egedius Naltner with a toy store; H. A.
Danforth, boots and shoes; Beck & Tully
| Samuel Beck, the gunsmth), hat manufac-
| turers, and Joseph Parisette, confectioner.
morris Morris's fouring-mill, which occu-
pied the site now held by Walling & Co. IS
| drug store, east of the Union Depot (no
Union Depot then) burned in 1853 In the
same year large frame mill, five stories
high, built of heavy timber and the solidest
| building of its day, was burned. This was
steam mill, both saw and grist, with card
ing machine in the upper story, and stood
| directly north of the National road at the
| Of tba n l.;l ri.
mill was built in 1882, and at the time it was
burned, belonged to a company, James
| Blake, James NJ. Ray and Nicholas McCartv
being the principal owners.
| REPORTERS "ENTERpRIsE"
| 1.-THE Hasselman & Vinton foundry (now
the Eagle machine works. had three fires
within a few years of each other. The worst
fire was that OF 1852, when nearly everything
was destroyed except a planning machine,
which had just been put in, and which the
Marion boys saved by putting a steady
stream on it and keeping it cool James
Henry McNeely, then one of the editors of
the Journal, on that occasion did most as
| tonishing stroke of journalistic enterprise
In those days nobody staid up at night to
work on daily newspaper. News gatherers
were unknown, night editors had not been
| invented and the peoples taste had not been
vitiated by telegraph. In those good old
days the daily newspaper was locked up at
shutdown and not put to press until after
sunrise next morning But this fire oc-
Cured about OF clock in the evening, and it
struck Mr.. McNeely, who was practical
printer, that he could go back to the office
and put mention of it in the morning pa
per- He set up brief account of it, about
! twenty lines, unlocked the form, and next
morning it actually appeared in print This
was the humble beginning of the innumer-
able scoops the journal has achieved over its
contemporaries
THE MACHINE AND WHO MANNED IT.
"The old Marion engine was asquare box,
with two brakes at each end and was worked
hv raliafc of from, tbirtv-e;v 10 fo,.,r ,sa..