Plymouth memories of an octogenarian

by William T. Davis

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: