Copyright USGenNet Inc., 2012, All Rights Reserved U.S. Data Repository Please read U.S. Data Repository Copyright Statement on this page: Transcribed and submitted by Linda Talbott for the US Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ ========================================================================= U.S. Data Repository NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization. Non-commercial organizations desiring to use this material must obtain the consent of the transcriber prior to use. Individuals desiring to use this material in their own research may do so. ========================================================================= Formatted by U.S. Data Repository Chief Archivist, Linda Talbott All of the above information must remain when copied or downloaded. =========================================================================== THE NORTHWESTERN FIRES WISCONSIN --------- The great fires which devastated the northern and northeastern portions of Wisconsin and Michigan appropriately belong to a work of this kind, for the burning of Peshtigo, Manistee, Holland and the numerous villages along the shores of Green Bay, will always be associated with the destruction of Chicago, more especially as the principal towns were destroyed on the same evening. While the loss of property may not have been son great, the loss of life was incalculably larger. The same causes in a certain degree conspired to produce this destruc- tion. The summer had been an excessively dry one, and the usual prairie fires which occur every fall, were burning over wider tracts than usual. Had it not been for the comination of wind and fire, it is doubtful whether any material loss would have occurred. Prairie fires in these regions are so common as to attract no attention, even when they get into the woods, for green timber offers little food for combustion. The people of Peshtigo for in- stance, were resting in perfect security on that fatal Sabbath. The fires were about them in every Page 372 direction, but they had fought them off with the appliances so familiar to frontiersmen, and dreamed of no danger. At sundown there was a lull in the wind and comparative stillness. For two hours there were no signs of danger; but at a few minutes after nine o'clock, and by a singular coincidence precisely the time at which the Chicago fire com- menced, the people of the village heard a terrible roar. It was that of a tornado, crushing through the forests. Instantly the heavens were illuminated with a terrible glare. The sky which had been so dark a moment before burst into clouds of flame. A spectator of the horrible scene says the fire did not come upon them gradually from burning trees and other objects to the windward, but the first notice they had of it was a whirlwind of flame in great clouds from above the tops of the trees, which fell upon and entirely enveloped everything. The poor people inhaled it, or the intensely hot air, and fell down dead. This is verified by the appear- ance of many of the corpses. They were found dead in the roads and open spaces, where there were no visible marks of fire near by, with not a trace of burning upon their bodies or clothing. At the Sugar Bush, which is an extended clearing, in some places four miles in width, corpses were found in the open road, between fences only slightly burned. No mark of fire was upon them, they lay there as if asleep. This phenomena seems to explain the fact that so many were killed in com pact masses. They seemed to have huddled together Page 373 in what were evidently regarded at the moment as the safest places, away from buildings, trees or other inflammable material, and there to have died together. Fences around cleared fields were burned in spots of only a few rods in length, and elsewhere not touched. Fish were killed in the streams - as at Peshtigo. Another spectator says: "Much has been said of the intense heat of the fires which destroyed Peshtigo, Menekaune, Wil- liamson, &c., but all that has been said cannot give the stranger even a faint conception of the reality. The heat has been compared to that engen dered by a flame concentrated on an object by a blow-pipe, but even that would not account for some of the phenomena. For instance, we have in our possession a copper cent, taken from the pocket of a dead man in the Peshtigo Sugar Bush, which will illustrate our point. This cent has been partially fused but still retains its round form and the in- scription upon it is legible. Others in the same pocket were partially melted off, and yet the clothing and the body of the man was not even singed. We do not know any way to account for this, unless, as is asserted by some, the tornado and fire were accom- panied by electrical phenomena." It is the universal testimony that the prevailing idea among the people was that the last day had come. Accustomed as they were to fire, nothing like Page 374 this had ever been known. They could give no other interpretation to this ominous roar, this burst- ing of the sky with flame, and this dropping down of fire out of the very heavens, consuming instantly everything it touched. No two give a like description of the great tornado as it smote and devoured the village. It seemed as if "the fiery fiends of hell had been loosened," says one. "It came in great sheeted flames from heaven," says another. "There was a pittiless rain of fire and sand." "The atmosphere was all afire." Some speak of "great balls of fire unrolling and shooting forth in streams." The fire leaped over roofs and trees and ignited whole streets at once. No one could stand before the blast. It was a race with death, above, behind and before them. The appearance of Peshtigo after the fire, and the effects of the flames is well told in a letter to the Milwaukee Wisconsin. The write says: "Yesterday afternoon I rode out several miles from Menominee to the opening in the woods, where Peshtigo was. It is a level and sandy road, bordered mainly by blackened stumps and pine. We came to the Peshtigo opening. Fox river, where so many had been saved or drowned, was flowing placidly over the half-burnt dam; heaps of mortar, brick and iron, showed where the factory, dry house, mills, foundry and machine works stood, - all else was a naked waste of drifted ashes and sand. Fording the river with our team, we continued our drive for a Page 375 few miles westward into the Sugar Bush settlements. The trees had been cut and pulled aside from the road. Burned culverts and small bridges filled up with logs. Outside the road on either hand, was seen the work of the tornado. Great forests of maple, oak, beach, hemlock and pine were torn as by the power of a hundred whirlwinds, and hurled length wise and cross-wise on the ground. The whole forest had been mowed down like grass; not one tree in twenty was standing. Mingled with the work of the winds, is seen the black wrath of the flames. Green maples and oaks, three feet in diam- eter, went down in a whirl, and were eaten up by the red flames in an hour. It was this double rage of tornado and flame that burst in upon the ill- fated village of Peshtigo. Not all the fire steamers in the world could have stayed its destruction. "Out among the clearings of the Sugar Bush, not a trace of fence or farm buildings is seen, but a few black embers by the road side and the relics of stoves and kettles by the chimney pile. "There were two hundred and twenty families burned out in the Sugar Bush, two hundred and fifty in Peshtigo, and full a hundred elsewhere in the track of the tornado. Nothing was saved among the farmers, except now and then a stray horse or cow and a few scanty rags that hung to their bodies. The villagers fared no better. A few attempted flight with bundles and carpet bags, but they were snatched up and devoured by the flames. No one as yet can sum up the number of the dead. One Page 376 hundred and forty dead bodies have been found and identified in the lower Sugar Bush, fifty in the middle, and seventy-seven in the upper. It is thought that nearly all the farm settlers have been discovered. It is difficult to get at the number of the Peshtigo dead. There were many woodsmen, railroad men, and others, strangers in town. Up to Saturday eighty- eight bodies had been found and registered, while fully as many more were mixed with charred bones and indistintuishable remains. There were twenty-two corpses among the fifteen families at Birch Creek, and half as many up the Menominee." Before the fire, Peshtigo was in all respects the most beautiful village between Green Bay and Mar- quette. A six mile railroad extended to it from the mouth of the river, where were situated the great Ogden mill and pier. It contained the works of the Peshtigo Company, including the great tub and pail factory, machine shop, foundry, saw, flour and planing milles. The pail factory alone cost over $250,000 and was the largest of its kind in the United States. The Company's property in the village was estimated at a million dollars. They employed over five hundred workmen. The village proper, on both sides of the river, covered about a mile square, and at the time of its destruction num- bered about fourteen hundred people. The whole burned district in Wisconsin takes in Brown county, at the head of the Bay, and most of the country - say fifty miles west and seventy miles north on the west, and nearly the whole peninsula Page 378 [image Church of the Holy Name & St. Paul's Church] Page 379 on the east to Lake Michigan. It also took in a strip ten to twenty miles wide on the Fox river, between Lake Winnebago and Green Bay. The fire raged in this section, more or less, for two months. It is estimated that about a third of the standing timber was killed by the fire. Up to the time of the great tornado on the 8th, settlers gen- erally had been able to save their buildings and crops, but lost heavily in fences, bridges, culverts, corduroy roads, and all wood property. The track of the great Sunday night tornado, on the west side, commenced about 6 miles north of Oconto, extending fifteen miles in width, and run- ning parallel thirty miles northward down the bay. The track on the east side, commencing in the town of Humbolt, twelve miles east from here, ranged ten miles in width, sweeping northeast forty miles to Big Sturgeon Bay. The west side district took in the village of Peshtigo, the Sugar Bush Settle- ments, the village of Menekaune, at the mouth of the Menominee, and the Birch Creek Settlement, eight miles beyond in the borders of Michigan. All were swept out of existence. The Green Bay region was not so sparsely popu- lated as is usually supposed. The census tables of 1870 show that Oconto county then contained 8,322 people; Door county, 4,869; Kewaunee county, 10,281; Brown county, 25,180. Nearly every township in the three last named counties contained settlements of people engaged in farming, and many villages clustered about the saw mills. Page 380 The people in Oconto county were generally found in villages, occupied at this season of the year in the saw mills or manufacturing establishments. The villages of Oconto, Peshtigo, Marinette and Pen- saukee had, in the aggregate, over 5,000 inhabi- tants. Besides the counties above named, large portions of the following counties have been par- tially swept by the fires: Manitowoc, having 33,369 people; Calumet, 12,334; Outagamie, 18,435. All the Green Bay region has increased in the numbers of its people at least one-fifth. Of the losses in the farming districts immediately contiguous and tributary to Peshtigo, the Peshtigo an Marinette Eagle of October 21st, says: "Allow- ing, at least, two townships of good farming land to have been entirely devastated by the fire, one- half of the same was more or less improved. Esti- mating the loss on improvements, stock and farm products to have been $1,000 to each forty acres of such land, the loss amounts to $576,000. Valuing the timber on the entire tract at $500 per forty acres, and we have of loss $576,000 more. We think the foregoing estimate low enough in all con- science. This makes a grand total loss of property in Peshtigo village and vicinity of $2,883,800. Add losses at Menekaune, at Menominee, and the farms up Menominee river, and the Menomi- nee pine, the mill property in the vicinity and settlements, and the total loss will reach nearly $4,000,000 on that fatal and long-to-be-remembered Sunday night." Page 381 The roll of actual sufferers, not including those who had means to help themselves, was 3,500; the roll of the dead who perished in these terrible flames, about 1,500. A civil engineer doing business in Peshtigo, in a letter describing his escape, says: "I went to bed about 9 o'clock, but did not go to sleep, as there was considerable noise in the house (the Peshtigo Hotel). Before long the bells rang and the whistles blew for fire, but this had happened almost every night for a fortnight. I looked out of my window, but as the sky was black, I went to bed again. Be- fore long I looked again, and the sky was red. I then threw open the window, and the loud roar which I heard warned me of approaching danger." The writer dressed and looked out into the street, and though he saw no flames then, he had only time to assist two friends to carry out their trunks before the sparks flew in clouds and the smoke became suffocating. He immediately started for the bridge, and when he reached it the fire had not extended to the river. Before he could cross, a mill at the other end was in flames, presenting a fiery blockade. "I turned back," he says, "and for the first time the horror of the situation burst upon me. Fire on all sides; the bridge I stood on afire; the air hot and full of flame; crowds of people screeching, cattle bellowing, horses dashing through the crowds and the wind blowing a hurricane. A wooden ware factory blew in before the fire touched it." He struggled back to the other end of the bridge, Page 382 though knocked down once by cattle, threw himself into the water and made the best of his way up stream, sometimes swimming and then wading, as the depth allowed, to get as far from the burning buildings as possible. "The heat increased so rapidly," he continues, "as things got well afire, that, when about 400 feet from the bridge and the nearest building, I was obliged to lie down behind a log that was aground in about two feet of water, and by going under water now and then, and holding my head close to the water behind the log, I man- aged to breathe. There was a dozen others behind the same log. If I had succeeded in crossing the river and gone among the buildings on the other side, probably I should have been lost, as many were. It was thought at first that the fire would not cross the river, as it is here four or five hundred feet wide; but it proved to be no obstacle at all, and those who crossed were glad enough to get back into the water. For about an hour I lay and gasped for breath, but after that the worst was over and I crawled upon the log to get out of the water, for it was very cold and I was chilled through. I lay there an hour and a half, and then was able to go ashore. It was so smoky we could not go near the burning ruins, so we built a rousing fire on the shore and tried to get dry and keep warm until morning. My watch ran through it all, and there- fore I knew the length of time I was in the water. Had it not been for the watch I would have thought I was there four hours at least." Page 383 Another statement will be all that is necessary to give the reader an idea of this terrible scene. Mr. James B. Clark, of Detroit, who was at Uniontown, Wisconsin, writes: "Fires were blazing through the forests and along the prairies in every direction. At sundown there was a strong breeze, which at 9 o'clock increased to a furious gale, blowing toward the lake. The whole surface of the country to the westward, eastward and southward seemed to be one mass of flame, which almost reached to the lowering clouds, and rushed along at race-horse speed. Beyond, toward the lake, was the settle- ment of Williamson's Mills, comprising about four- teen families. The fire suddenly made a rush like the flash of a train of gun-powder, and swept in the shape of a crescent around the settlement. It is almost impossible to conceive the frightful rapidity of the advance of the flames. The rushing fire seemed to eat up and annhilate the trees. He says the roar of the blast was as loud as the whir of a great mill. As we stood looking on, say at about 10 o'clock, we heard another strange sound. Straining our eyes toward the fire - about seven miles distant - we could just discern something moving; now it would appear like a black mass, then it would separate into fragments, swaying to and fro, and bobbing up and down. It came toward us directly from the lurid wall of flame. So intense was the glare of light all about us that our eyes were dazed; they ran with water, and we could see only by constantly using our handkerchiefs. At Page 384 last we made out by sight and sound that the moving mass was a stampede of cattle and horses thundering toward us away from the flames, bellow- ing neighing and moaning as they galloped on. Finally they came rushing past with fearful speed, their eyeballs dilated and glaring with terror, and every motion betokening delirium of fright. Some had been badly burned, and must have plunged through a long space of flame in the desperate effort to escape. Following considerably behind came a solitary horse, panting and snorting and nearly ex- hausted. He was saddled and bridled, and, as we first thought, had a bag lashed to his back. As he came up we were startled at the sight of a young lad lying fallen over the animal's neck, the bri- dle wound around his hands, and the mane being clinched by the fingers. Little effort was needed to stop the jaded horse, and at once release the helpless boy. He was taken into the house, and all that we could do was done; but he had inhaled the smoke, and was seemingly dying. Some time elapsed and he revived enough to speak. He told his name - Patrick Byrnes - and said: 'Father and mother and the children got into the wagon. I don't know what became of them. Everything is burned up. I am dying. Oh, is hell any worse than this?' "The poor fellow lay in critical condition when I left. The next morning we drove down to the settlement. The first house we came to was that of Patrick Byrnes, father of the lad before spoken Page 385 of. It was a heap of ashes. The brick chimney, the cooking stove and iron portions of farm tools were the only remnants of the place. The forest was burnt down close to the ground, the stumps only being left, smouldering and smoking. Every- thing was hot. Even the road was baked and cracked by the heat. About a mile further on we came to a horrible spectacle. Along side the road in a gully lay the bodies of six persons and two horses, roasted to a crisp. The iron tires of the wheels, and braces and bolts of the wagon were scattered about. Here the fire had surrounded and engulfed them. Evidently the animals in their mad struggles had reared, plunged, and fallen head- long from the road to where they died. "We hurried on. All along the road lay the carcasses of cattle, sheep, hogs and dogs, burned to a crisp. The smaller animals were almost entirely consumed. Now we came to the village. Nothing was left but piles of ashes, smoking and smouldering. In the cellar of one house we found eight bodies. One of a man was in a stooping position over that of a child, as though he died trying to ward off the flames. This was very likely the body of Mr. Williamson, the owner of the mills, who, with his entire family, is said to have perished. In the rear of the yard of the next house were four bodies, apparently those of a mother and her children. They were scorched, not burnt crisp, and one cheek of the youngest, a girl of six, retained an expression of calmness that seemed to indicate a painless death Page 386 of suffocation. But the most horrible of all was at Boorman's well. Mr. Boorman's house was the largest in the village, and in the centre of the yard, mid- way between the house and barn, was a large but shallow well. Several of the neighbors were supplied with water from this fountain, and it is likely that in the conflagration, when all hope was cut off, the neighbors, insane with terror thronged with one pur- pose to this well. The ordinary chain and wheel pump used in that place had been removed, and the wretched people had leaped into the well as the last refuge. Boards had been thrown down to prevent them being drowned; but evidently the relentless fury of the fire drove them pell mell into the pit, to struggle with each other and die - some by drowning, and others by fire and suffocation. None escaped. Thirty-two bodies were found there. They were in every imaginable position; but the contortions of their limbs and the agonizing expressions of their faces told the awful tale." ========================================================================== SOURCE: The great conflagration : Chicago, its past, present and future : embracing a detailed narrative of the great conflagration in the north, south and west divisions, origin, progress and results of the fire : prominent buildings burned, character of buildings, losses and insurance, graphic description of the flames, scenes and incidents, loss of life, the flight of the people : also, a condensed history of Chicago, its population, growth and great public works : and a statement of all the great fires of the world. Sheahan, James W. Chicago, Ill.: Union Pub. Co., 1871, 458 pgs.