By FRANK CONNORS
EDITOR'S NOTE: Late in the year 1902, Bowdoinham suffered the most devastating fire recorded during the Town's 212 year history. Following is an account of that blaze, based upon old newspaper reports of the disaster, and on testimony offered by several Bowdoinham residents who even today remember that terrible night. (F.D.C.)
BOWDOINHAM, December 13, 1902: Residents of this village no doubt banked their stoves and went to bed early Saturday night. A gale howled outside from the northeast, and snow was drifting on the Town's desolate streets. It was no night to be out and around.
Flames erupted in the village sometime between the midnight and one o'clock Sunday morning, December 14. For five hours, wind-whipped flames ravaged the downtown area. When it was finally over fifteen major buildings had been leveled, including all but the fringe areas of the business section. More than 30 persons had been left homeless before the ashes cooled, and property loss estimates exceeded $35,000. The village lost four of its six grocery stores; a drug store; a hardware store; a funeral parlor; a blacksmith's shop; a barber's shop; and several other business offices that awful night; along with ten private residences. That night in the winter just 72 years ago, Bowdoinham almost died.
The inferno started in the south-east corner of the massive Purington-Hinkley block, a three-story commercial block located on the corner of Main and Bridge Streets, (where Bowdoinham's Masonic Lodge stands today).
In 1902, the Purington-Hinkley block housed two small stores on its ground floor. William H Gould rented both fronts, selling hardware from one, and general provisions from the other.
Upstair's above the Gould's stores were meeting rooms for the T.T. Rideout Post, Grand Army of the Republic (GAR); a hall rented by the Merrymeeting Grange; and a room retained by the local chapter of the Gospel Missions. Bowdoinham's venerable Masonic Order, one of the State's oldest, held its meetings in the Purington-Hinckley block on the third floor, as did the local Eastern Star chapter.
THE PURINGTON-HINKLEY BLOCK as it looked in downtown Bowdoinham before the terrible fire of 1902. The store and home occupied by William Rideout appears to the right. (Photo submitted by L.H. Chamberlain).
Theo Lang, a youthful resident of the town in 1902, walked past the Purington-Hinkley block about 12:10, Sunday morning. He was hurrying home after a visit with a lady friend in Brooklyn. He later affirmed that everything seemed quiet and right when he passed the store at that late hour; but he also said his head was bent low against the blowing snow, and he agreed sadly that he may have overlooked the budding disaster within the darkened structure.
Ira Williams, night watchman at the Kindling Wood Factory just east of the village on the Cathance River, first signaled the alarm. Williams was slowly trodding what he called his "graveyard rounds," in the sawmill, and happened to pause near a door, perhaps to light a pipe. When Williams glanced through the darkness toward the village, the ominous yellow glow that he spotted must have made his heart jump. He ran to the plant's steam whistle and tied the valve open, desperately hoping its shrill signal would awaken the sleeping village. Williams knew immediately that trouble was brewing for his town. By the time he ran down the railroad tracks to the Main Street gate house, flames were leaping through the roof of the Purington-Hinkley block.
H. G. SCHOFF was one of the first residents to reach the scene of the blaze. The morning after the fire, while stunned residents still walked among the smoldering ashes that lined both sides of Main Street, Schoff described the night to a LEWISTON-JOURNAL reporter.
"I was started awake by the Kindling Wood whistle. I jumped out of my bed," he said, "and looked at my watch. It was ten minutes past one." Schoff spotted the trouble almost immediately from his School Street window. Reflections from the flames danced about on his walls and ceiling. Schoff woke his family, pulled on his boots, pants and a great coat. He grabbed two pails and an extra pair of mittens, then headed down the hill at a dead run toward the now billowing flames. "Gould's stores were wrapped in flames when I arrived," Schoff said. "It was through the roof and the fire was beginning to spread. Rideout's house and store was the second place to go."
William Rideout tells his own story. "I was awakened by the Kindling Wood whistle," he said. "At first I guessed the alarm was for a fire at the factory; there had been a small blaze in some sawdust there not twenty hours before. Those steam driven saws were always starting little fires," he said.
Rideout stood in the darkness and listened. He realized, much to his own horror, that he could hear the unmistakable roar of flames. Wherever the fire was, he realized, it had to be closer to him than at the mill.
The store owner got dressed quickly, called to the others in the house and then climbed to the attic to place his ear to the chimney. He heard nothing in the attic, and must have felt a moment's relief as he touched the brick of his chimney and felt a slight frost. Rideout returned to his bedroom on the second floor and opened a window to peer out. The roar could be heard so much louder now.
At nearly the same moment that Rideout raised his sash for a look around, flames first burst through the side wall of Gould's Store and started to lap hungrily at the side of Rideout's building.
"I didn't know what to do," remembered Rideout. "I felt like a lost soul, I couldn't think of anything upstairs that I wanted to save, so I went downstairs to the store. I didn't know where to begin."
By the time Rideout descended to his store, a fiendish, yellow glare was illuminating the entire room.
The Purington-Hinkley block was now totally engulfed by flames, and light from that fire reflected off the Carr block (where Dot Dickinson's store is now.) and into the Rideout's store. "It was bright as daylight in the store," Rideout said. "I was getting scared."
Rideout sent his family to the relative safety of the street, and then returned to his store to open his safe and remove his business ledgers. "I must have been more nervous than I remember," he said later, "each time that I got that combination around right, it would slip by and I would have to start all over again. I worked on those tumblers for maybe fifteen minutes," he recalled, "until I was driven away by the flames."
Too late, Rideout remembered a money bag up stairs in his sleeping room tucked away for safety under his mattress. "There was $400 cash in that bag, so l rushed upstairs to save it. The room was a mass of flame when I reached the top landing," Rideout said. "I knew it was too late . . . no use." Rideout fled helplessly to the street, saving nothing.
BOWDOINHAM was ill-equipped for dealing with such a fire. There was a volunteer fire brigade in town, but it was sadly lacking in hose and other fire fighting apparatus. The Town owned two old and ineffective handtubs, the WATER WITCH and the PHENIX; aside from these team-drawn tubs, the firemen's only remaining tool was the ageless, virtually useless bucket brigade.
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Firemen gamely rolled the two old tubs up Bridge Street from the engine house to the blaze, with fire chief Charles Henry McEwen barking out orders. But fate was dealing against McEwen and his testy volunteers that frigid night. The PHENIX froze solid before her old hose could bear on the flames, and though the WATER WITCH pumped bravely, she couldn't be kept filled with water. Several of the cisterns downtown were frozen solid that night. The WITCH lost pressure again and again, and was finally abandoned in disgust. With the Witch out of commission, the only water used against the blaze had to be carried by pail and barrel from the ice-locked Cathance.
The Purington-Hinkley Block and Rideout's store were both blazing infernos in just minutes. A JOURNAL reporter recalls the scene: "Even the elements seemed united with the flames in an attempt to spread and wipe Bowdoinham from the face of the earth. The wind howled across the peaks of buildings, carrying the sparks from the top of one block to the roof or side wall of another. As men on the opposite side of the street opened doors to carry out possessions, sparks would follow them through the open doors like dogs, kindling new fires everywhere. There was no escaping the flames. The fire was like a fiend, using a host of ways to defeat the brave but futile efforts of the inhabitants trying to stop the spreading holocaust."
THE CARR BLOCK was the third structure taken by flames. State Insurance Commissioner Stephen Carr owned the building and operated a coat factory inside. His tenants included an office for the Standard Wood Company; and a sales room for Benjamin Adams, a local coal dealer. Fire chief McEwen had a barber shop on the front corner of the Carr Block. He managed to save a couple of shaving mugs as the building burned, nothing more.
The fire blew into and consumed Mosher's store on Main Street, then jumped to the Sampson store on Elm street. Small's drug store caught fire at 1:45 a.m. Flames devoured that structure in minutes, then moved next door to level the medical offices of Doctor Charles Palmer. Nothing was saved from Palmer's office, or from the Apothecary operated by Lorenzo D. Small, Bowdoinham's veteran town clerk.
The STINSON HOUSE, (where the town's memorial cannon now sits) caught fire just minutes after Carr's block. Innkeeper George W. Rideout watched sadly from the street as his famous old hostelry flamed. Fortunate for this Rideout, volunteers saved much of the furniture from the hotel by moving it into the street before the structure caught fire. Rideout took stock the next morning and found that nearly half of the furnishings had been saved; but that fine old three story hotel where liquor was never sold was gone from the village scene forever.
Fire Chief McEwen led his already tired brigade of fire fighters to the long, low carriage house and stable at the rear of the Stinson House. Here McEwen and his volunteers knew they had to hold the fire, or it could sweep out of control up the hill, taking with it most of the private residences in the village.
The RICHMOND BEE reported, "Those harried men in the bucket brigades knew that if the flames were allowed to pass that stable, then the greater part of this beautiful village would have been wiped out of existence before the sun came up on that fateful morning."
Men soaked horse blankets in the river, then carried them in freezing hands to be draped across the stable walls and roof. Others dashed back and forth with buckets of water, keeping the steaming, ice dripping blankets wet, and the building underneath cool.
Boys and girls of every age ran among houses on the hill, swatting out sparks that lit hungrily on many of the town's wooden buildings. Many persons suffered minor bums that night.
The squat old stable smoked from the heat of the burning hotel, but it never burned. For the moment at least, the fire's progress was halted. The upper town appeared safe.
Weary firefighters had no time to cheer or rest, however. After burning the Carr block and Sampson's store on Elm Street, the flames reached to and devoured the Sampson house. From that place, the fire threatened to jump to the home of E. P. Kendall next door.
The Kendall house was considered a local show place, but more important than that, firefighters knew flames from that house could easily threaten the homes on Back Hill and School Street again; or spread in the other direction to the Kendall's grist mill, feed stores or fertilizer plant.
Residents must also have worried that flames might jump from the Kendall house to the Maine Central Railroad Station across the road. If the depot and its telegraph keys burned, all contact with the outside world would be lost.
Inside the MCRR depot, telegraph operator Emma Snell, (Mildred Given's mother) clacked out desperate appeals for assistance to other towns. "Our town is ablaze," went the frantic call, "we need men, equipment . . . send help immediately." Mrs. Snell sent that appeal many times during that night.
Bath responded to the wire immediately, saying help would be sent by rail, "as soon as we can locate a locomotive." Topsham rang an alarm, but no men or equipment started up the cold dark road to Bowdoinham.
Gardiner was wired, but the fire chief replied that no fire fighters or equipment could be dispatched with out an okay from the city council. He said he didn't want to be the one to get the town fathers out of bed at 2 a.m., Sunday morning.
Augusta rang an alarm for Bowdoinham immediately, and crews pushed their fire engine aboard a flat car for the trip down river. But Augusta also wired there would be a delay, the nearest locomotive to pull the relief train was in the round house at Waterville. Bowdoinham was on its own.
A JOURNAL writer said, "The scene was like a great forest fire. The business section of Bowdoinham was one solid mass of flames. No one could pass up or down Main streets, or along certain portions of Bridge or Elm Streets."
"People at Richmond, Bowdoin, Brunswick, and Bath could see the flames clearly. Men whose property was going up in flames could not stand around and grieve, there was simply no time. They all knew the loss of a moment's time in checking the devastating flames might cause doom of the entire village."
On the east side of Main Street, the flames were eating steadily from house to house. The fire spread faster than the plucky people could even hope to follow it. One building after another caught fire, blazed and crashed to the ground in a shower of sparks. It must have been a horrible sight.
Eyewitnesses reported the flames ran down the roofs and sidewalls of Mrs. Foye's block as if oil had been poured onto them. The undertaker's rooms exploded in flames, and then the residence of Mr. Thorne. Berry's house and store burned; then the old carriage works and the old bank building, where all the town's records were kept. It would be late morning before the ashes of the old bank building would be sufficiently cooled for anxious selectmen to paw about in the ruins; seeking the safe holding the town's records. Miraculously, the books were found intact. For that at least, the town had been lucky.
FIREMEN finally checked the fire's progress around 4 a.m. Hose stretched down the railroad tracks from the Kindling Wood Factory supplied ample water with which to protect the railroad's gate house on the Main Street crossing, and a house across the street owned by a Captain Getchell. This same line protected the warehouses, sheds and wharfs between the tracks and the river from destruction.
Volunteers were able to stop the fire on Elm Street before it could turn the corner and consume the Kendall house. This place was one of the very few in town served by interior plumbing at this early date. It is said that access to running water inside the house that night was probably the only thing that stopped the fire from taking the house.
A number of valuable antique pieces in the Kendall house were carried out to the street when fears that the house would burn were at their highest. Several of these pieces were ruined by water and sparks, even though the house was saved.
Bath Steamer No. 3 with a crew of volunteers reached Bowdoinham on a relief train about 5 a.m. The Bath men were reported dazed at the scope of destruction, even though by 5 a.m. the fire was completely under control and burning very low.
The Bath teams relieved as many bone-weary Bowdoinham men as they could, continuing to play water on the ruins until almost noon, when the blaze was declared officially out.
Men from Bowdoin, Richmond, Topsham and Brunswick walked and rode to town any way they could and offered their services to the victims of the fire. What belongings the people had saved by piling them in the street were loaded on wagons and carried to the homes of friends for safe keeping. About 6 a.m., Mrs. Snell wired up river to Augusta that volunteers from the Capitol City should not make the trip down to Bowdoinham, there was nothing left for the fire to burn, she said. The flames had finally been subdued.
The cause of the Great Bowdoinham fire has never been determined. No reason to blame Willie Gould was ever found, even though the blaze started in his store. Many residents suggested arson as the cause, suggesting that Gould's store might have been robbed, and then burned to destroy any evidence that may have been left behind. No proof of arson or robbery was every discovered, however.
Bowdoinham Advertiser, Vol.II No.III
Frank Connors, Editor