One Township's Yesterdays Chapter XLVI
FIRES AND FIRE FIGHTERS
"It seemed that nations did conspire
To offer to the god of fire Some vast, stupendous sacrifice!
The summoned firemen woke at call,
And hied them to their stations all.
The engines thundered through the street,
Fire-hook, pipe, bucket, all complete."
... Horace Smith |
THE ORIGINAL MAKERS OF FIRE antedated the comparatively modern Quenchers of Fire in these parts by not a few decades of history. The
Potawatomi Indians who dwelt in this land, were a "nation of fire-blowers," so their name signified, originating it seems in the
facility with which they produced flame and set burning the ancient council fires of their forefathers beside the waters of the Green
Bay country. They were the people who lighted some of the earliest fires in the wilderness that is now Union Township, but those were
fires for the cooking and roasting of venison and other wild meats and the baking of corn patties and like native delicacies, also
for the toasting of native shins when the weather turned chilly. Those redskin fires were strictly utilitarian.
Since then, many other fires have been lighted in Union Township, fires without number, for similar purposes. Still another kind of
fire, however, figures in township history, the kind that lighted itself by some mysterious means, or became lighted through some
mishap or other, or was called by the name of "incendiary."
There were several varieties of fires throughout the township, and a number of fires of each variety There were uncounted fires that
did not get very far, were "nipped in the bud"; there were others that got far and some that got too far, just went as far as they
could . . . despite the heroic efforts of the fighters of fire.
The fighters of fire date back to the first settlements, when the fighting was a sort of individually co-operative affair, the
neighbors being called in to help in the battle if the, fire got beyond the control of the household concerned. That was the "home
fire." There were not many public buildings in those early days; consequently, "community fires" were rare. But whenever one did
occur, the men - - and sometimes the women - - of the community that were within range sort of pooled their resources and fire-fighting
ambitions and apparatus (mostly buckets), and pitched in. It was "potluck."
Dearth of facilities, though not of aims and ambitions, made of early fire fighting a rather hopeless, task, when once the fire got
beyond human control. Several fine old homesteads and a considerably larger number of barns, here and there throughout the township,
were razed by the fiery destroyer. Among the larger homesteads destroyed was the VOREIS place near Burr Oak. Family heirlooms of
considerable value, which cannot be replaced, were lost in this fire.