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Fighting a Knox Fire in the Winter of 1877
By Hank Hufnagel, January, 1982 in the Clarion News
The fire on Main Street a week ago, in which the Coulter House was destroyed, showed
how our area can mobilize to fight a large fire. Men left their jobs in Clarion,
Shippenville and Strattanville to become the firemen who fought the blaze under extraordinary
conditions of wind and cold. Firemen from Rimersburg and Farmington Township, and
even a few men off the street, pitched in to hold a hose and to help where they could.
Stores in the area provided the liquid warmth needed to offset the arctic conditions,
and a group of people helped to remove goods from one of the threatened stores. Just
such a community reaction to fire was evident one hundred and four years ago, but
the techniques used back then to combat the flames were very different.
In January of 1877 when the Coulter House had just opened, two fires struck the county, a small smoky one in Clarion and a great conflagration in Edenburg (now Knox). It is interesting to look at how these fires were put out in that earlier day. Winter that year had proved to be unusually cold and snowy. By January, over two feet of snow had accumulated and old sheds and roofs around town collapsed from the weight. The temperature was supposed, at times, to be about the same as the interior of Greenland, but on milder days the countryside abounded with human activity. Children sledded down the river hill and in the process lost an eye or fractured a limb. Farmers and lumbermen were busy sliding things around, for this was the very best time to move heavy loads… wagons being supplied with runners instead of wheels. Livery stables did a good business with town folk wishing to take a run on the snow, and sleigh bells were heard both day and night.
On a snowy Saturday late in January the fire bell rang its alarm in Clarion and the fire company quickly mobilized to pull the fire engine to the corner of Main and Market streets (now Fifth Avenue). The town had only recently installed a water works and the firemen were probably eager to try their hand pumper as they hooked up to a fire hydrant and watched the smoke billow from a second story window of the residence of Charles Leeper, a local lumberman. Imagine the mixed feelings these firemen had when they found that quick as they were the bucket brigade had been quicker, having doused a rug on fire and thrown a burning mattress from the second story window. The commotion was quickly over but illustrated the benefit of having water close at hand in winter. Not a soul protested the lack of usefulness of the fire engine on this occasion since all recalled the horrible conflagration in Edenburg a few weeks earlier, and how the citizenry was forced to fight that blaze.
Edenburg and Elk City in early 1877 were swept up in the "Oil Excitement". Wells were being sunk year round and many struck oil, providing their owners with riches and others with the urge to speculate. Elk City had grown from a cow pasture to a town of 2,000 inhabitants during 1876, and Edenburg from a sleepy country village to a town of similar size. The roads leading to this vicinity were packed with teams employed in hauling lumber on sleds. During a drive from Clarion to Elk City, which took about an hour, 50 to 60 such lumber sleds were passed along the way. Many men were also to be seen along the road, walking toward Edenburg and the slim chance of a fortune. Tramps pestered everyone for handouts, and the county was overrun with agents, peddlers, liquor sellers, fraudulent vendors of bogus jewelry and sham catch pennies (i.e., fake blind men, etc.). Many along the roads were just seeking work in the oil regions, which was very hard to find during that hard winter. Money was being made in Elk City and Edenburg and everybody wanted to get hold of some of it. Edenburg was, with only a few exceptions, a town of wood. Here were saloons, boiler shops, hardware stores, houses of ill fame, derrick manufactories, hotels, livery stables, an opera house, an oil exchange, etc., etc., catering to the needs of the oil wells and the men who worked on them. The respectable portion of the citizenry was concerned about the numerous unlicensed saloons and houses of ill fame which were thought to drag down, to ruin and to death everlasting, the young men of the oil region, but regardless of such perils, Edenburg must have been an interesting and active place to visit in those early days. It was not, however, prepared to fight a fire.
On the evening of Saturday, January 13, 1877, a telegraph message was received in Clarion staling that fire was spreading through downtown Edenburg. The fire company quickly assembled and voted overwhelmingly to take the engine to fight the blaze. As preparations were underway, someone remembered that Edenburg was without a waterworks and that the engine would have nothing to pump but snow. Hearing this the planned assistance was reluctantly called off, but many of the men went over to see the fire and render what assistance they could. Arriving at Elk City about 10:00 p.m., they could easily see a glow in the sky indicating their destination. On topping the hill as they entered Edenburg the scenes of disaster lay before them. A great fire was spreading along the north side of State Street from the railroad tracks to Main Street. (Today this section is occupied by the Carriage Inn Hotel at the railroad track up to Main Street where KCG Federal Credit Union occupies the site of a livery stable, which figures in the story.)
A little before 8:00 that evening the fire broke out in the second story over Barnards Clothing Store, in rooms occupied by a lady who had a millenary establishment. It was supposed that the fire started when a stovepipe fell, but this was never ascertained for certain. Indeed the History of Clarion County ascribes the source of the fire to a saloon next door. When discovered, the whole inside of the clothing store was in flames and this caused a great panic. The company contracted to build a waterworks had, at that time, dug only a few trenches, and what with the cold and two feet of snow, little water was available for fighting the blaze. A snowball brigade instead of a bucket brigade was quickly organized and teams of men and boys pelted threatened neighboring structures. Despite these efforts the fire was communicated to adjoining buildings, though it spread slowly due to the snow and the absence of wind. Slow but seemingly unstoppable, the flames spread to the drug store of J. W. Phillips on the corner of Main and State Streets, and to the Edenburg Hotel. This hotel was to have changed hands the following Monday, but the deal fell through as come Monday there was nothing left to sell. As the flames leaped from building to building, the citizenry tried to stay one jump ahead of it. Goods and furniture were frantically removed from endangered buildings and taken away to a safe distance where most were kept for the owners. Thieves, however, took advantage of the darkness and commotion to make off with some of the goods. It was thought for some time that the whole town was doomed, but all hands went to work and in a very short time the livery stable of Shaw & Wilber on Main Street was emptied and completely torn down. The fire was thus deprived of any more easy victims and efforts were directed toward stopping the flames from leaping across Main or State Streets, or over the gaps created by the razing of the livery stable, and by the railroad tracks. In this battle the snowball brigade was more successful and, although the buildings opposite were scorched and their glass broken by the heat, the blaze did not spread further. By dawn the fire was burning itself out and the citizenry was already making plans for rebuilding. The loss due to the fire was 20 buildings destroyed at a total dollar cost of $60,000. The Edenburg Hotel was valued at $8,000, Bryant's Hardware at $1,500, and a restaurant at $1,000. Much of the lost property was insured. No time was lost in the rebuilding effort, and within a week Bryant's new store was under roof, the Phoenix Drug Store was rising from the ashes of its predecessor, and the whole burnt district was covered with new buildings, some ready for occupation. Thus, Edenburg's first (but not last) large fire came to an end. The efforts of the community had averted total destruction of the town by the use of the materials at hand and by the willingness of everyone to pitch in. So it is today when fire threatens.
Old News of Clarion County