Official history of the fire department of the city of Baltimore : together with biographies and portraits of eminent citizens of Baltimore

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Preface

From a primitive beginning the Baltimore City Fire Department has developed into the perfect organism of to-day, coincident with the energy and intelligence that have placed Baltimore in the front rank of American cities.

With a full sense of the scope, dignity and importance of such an undertaking, this work has been prepared. Wherever possible, original sources have been drawn upon and no effort of verification has been spared. The history is founded upon facts gathered by conscientious research.

By unremitting energy, skill and devotion the Fire Department has reached the first rank and justifies the honest pride of the citizens of Baltimore.

The histories of representative men who have done much to shape the destiny of our present great city, have been written with the utmost care.

Every illustration is original and especially engraved or etched for this history.

Thanks are due from the Department and all engaged in this production to many prominent among their fellow-citizens for the constant and cordial co-operation they have given in the production of this work. Without such generous aid the difficulties would have been almost insurmountable and the results far less satisfactory and complete.

Now, at last, however, this work is presented with considerable confidence as an accurate and comprehensive history, and in the hope that it will adequately supply the demands of a justiy exacting public.

The portraits in this history are engraved from photographs principally by Ashman, and a few from photographs by Getz and Cummins.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGB

City Hall Frontispiece

Ferdinand C. Latrobe 130

J. Alexander Preston 132

John F. Hunter 134

George May 136

John J. Ledden 138

David H. Lucchesi 140

Alcaeus Hooper 142

A. RoszEL Cathcart 146

R. H. Gilbert 148

John H. McFaul 150

Wm. T. Malster 152

James C. Muller 154

Charles M. Short 156

Stanley Baker 158

William C. McAfee 160

George J. Linsenmeyer .... • . 162

George W. Horton 164

August Emrich 166

Frederick Branan 168

Fielding H. Lucas 170

Levin H. Burkhardt 172

William H. Hartman 174

Leona Lemon 176

Lewis J. Fresch 252

Henry R. Seippel . . ' 254

George A. Campbell 256

Henry W. Mears 258

James S. Gary 280

James A. Gary 282

John W. Garrett 284

John E. Hurst 286

Eugene Levering 288

Joshua Levering 290

Lloyd L. Jackson 292

Enoch Pratt . 294

John Curlett 296

William F. Burns 298

Henry James 298

John Gregg 300

James Gregg 302

John R. Kelso 304

PAGE

Thomas Wilson 306

James L. McLane 308

Henry Stockbridge, Sr 310

Henry Stockbridge, Jr 310

William J. Albert 312

Talbot J. Albert 312

William A. Fisher 314

Charles J. Bonaparte 316

Abraham Sharp 318

Richard B. Tippett 318

George W. Miltenbbrger 320

Benjamin F. Newcomer 322

William T. Dixon 322

Christian Devries 324

Henry Williams 324

Charles F. Mayer 326

Nelson Perin 328

George Blakistone 328

William A. House 330

Francis White . . 332

Residence of Francis White , . . 332

H. M. Wharton 334

Charles Marshall 336

W. W. Spence 336

Georg W. Gail 338

Residence of Georg W. Gail . . . 338

Thomas Deford 340

Benjamin F. Deford 340

Henry McShane 342

William J. Dickey 342

Joseph H. Rieman 344

John H. Von der Horst 344

Frank H. Sloan 346

J. Henry Conway 346

Charles W. Slagle 348

John E. Searles 348

George F. Patterson 350

Robert Ramsay 350

George J. Appold 352

The ** York River Line *' 352

The Central Savings Bank .... 354

The Builders' Exchange 354

Biographical Sketches 347

Frank H. Sloan, Daniel Conway, Charles W Slagle, John E. Searles, Patterson, Ramsay <Sf Co., Merchants and Miner ^ Transportation Company, York River Line.

OUR FIREMEN.

Chapter I. Baltimore Town

How THE Village Grew — From Acorn to Oak — Founding the Town — Its Description — ^Wooden Buildings Prevailed— Population — Successive Accretions of Land— No Fire Apparatus or Regulations — Town Meeting in 1760 to Discuss Precautions — Lottery in 1763 to Purchase Engines — Primitive Apparatus and Fire Scene.

Baltimore is like a giant oak in growth. Constantly increasing in size, it seems ever to grow outward from the same centre. Pause at the intersection of Baltimore and Charles streets in the heart of Maryland's metropolis ! Here the pivot of the local compass has been established. Strongly fixed in the nomenclature of the inhabitants are the terms "South Baltimore/' "East Baltimore," "West Baltimore" and "North Baltimore," not to mention localities which are proud of adopting for their particular titles the intermediate points of the compass. The phraseology thus adopted effectively divides the city into a number of well-recognized sections, all referred to the pivotal centre. From this centre the system of numbering houses begins, extending eastward and westward from Charles street, and northward and southward from Baltimore street. Streets crossing these thoroughfares have been doubly named by having the words "East" and "West" or "North" and "South" attached to the parts of the street extending laterally from these highways. Not many years ago an ordinance of the municipality provided for the naming of streets in the northern section by number, to conform to the decimal system of numbering houses, which system, as stated begins at the intersection of Baltimore and Charles streets.

View these streets to the limits of the city. Three miles and a half to the northward Charles street avenue crosses the city boundary as a popular driveway. Beautiful suburban homes mark its borders. Reaching southward into the more densely peopled section, the street passes "Charles Street Station," the principal railroad depot in Baltimore. Continuing a block or two, the ultra-fashionable section of the city lies on either side, culminating in the impressive and simple elegance of the homes and edifices surrounding Mount Vernon and Washington Places. Towering there above the surrounding structures stands the majestic massive column which was dedicated to the memory of Washington.

But our street goes onward, and now it runs a course of half a dozen blocks between business houses and some of the city's most noteworthy structures before Baltimore street is reached. These half dozen blocks form the haven for a miscellaneous congregation of shoppers, for upon it and adjacent streets are displayed, in the shop windows, the fabrics and wares that delight the buyer and coax the dollars from his pocket. Sig^s of another half mile of business appear on either hand as we pass onward into South Baltimore, and then our street goes by shop and home and field to the river — a mile and a half from Baltimore street. From end to end Charles street is a thoroughfare used daily by thousands of persons. If the city were limited to two such lines of travel they would be Charles and Baltimore streets. Baltimore street reaches eastward and westward from Charles street two and a half miles in each direction, and is bordered on both sides, throughout nearly its entire length, by wholesale and retail business houses. Bankers, brokers, newspaper proprietors, railroad companies, jewelers, merchants, and representatives of scores of occupations, have established their places of business upon the line of this street. The court houses, city hall, post office, custom house and other public buildings are but one block from Baltimore street. A circle of a half-mile radius circumscribed, with the intersection of Baltimore and Charles streets as its centre, would include most of the city's larger buildings, many of its public institutions, and its commercial and financial establishments. The same point was, approximately, the geographical centre of the city until, within the last decade, the territorial area of the city was enlarged by the annexation of a belt two miles wide on the north and the west, increasing the area to thirty-two and twenty-one one-hundredths miles. There are fifteen hundred other streets, lanes and alleys in Baltimore City, but there is only one Charles street, one Baltimore street ; and there are no others "like unto these." With two or three exceptions, every street railway line passes within three blocks of the centre of the city fixed by so many concurrent circumstances.

What difference does it make whether a city has a recognized centre? Not much, perhaps, but it is a fact of more than passing interest that the centre of the great city of six hundred thousand population, in which progress and conservatism have been so admirably blended, retains within its original site of sixty acres, or the immediate vicinity, the vast and diversified interests which cluster about the centre of Baltimore. Peer perspectively into the past, and the intersection of the streets now known as Charles and Baltimore streets is found to be the juncture of the two more important thoroughfares of the little town laid out at the headwaters of the broader Patapsco, in 1729, as they were the longer streets of

the town.

It is not our province to review the history of this town with elaborate details

until it became a great city, but we must linger briefly upon the size, location and geography of the town, in order that we may intelligently trace the events which developed a fire service that has continued for more than a century.

The establishing of "Baltimore Town" by an act of Assembly is ascribed to the desire of many leading men of Baltimore county to have a port of entry near their homes. The Proprietary government of Maryland received its revenues in payments of tobacco, which necessitated the establishing of tobacco warehouses, and the Baltimore county men petitioned the upper house of Assembly, July 14, 1729, ''for the building of a town on the north side of the Patapsco river, upon the land supposed to belong to Messrs. Charles and Daniel Carroll." A bill was finally passed by the Assembly, July 30, and signed August 8, 1729, by Benedict Leonard Calvert, Governor, on behalf of Charles Calvert, fifth Lord Baltimore, Proprietary of the Province of Maryland and Avalon. The site selected for the town contained sixty acres on the north side of the Patapsco river, and was part of the tract known as Cole's Harbor. The price was less than six hundred dollars in currency of 1896. The site was divided into sixty lots.

Scharf in his "History of Baltimore City and County" wrote "The town lot was shaped like an Indian arrow head — its point toward the west, and the sharpest fluke toward the north. It was traversed by three streets : Long street (afterward Market, and now Baltimore street), running east and west one hundred and thirty-two and three-fourths perches, from about McClellan's alley to the swamp which edged HoUiday street — and four perches wide, intersected at right angles by Calvert street, then not named; fifty-six and one-fourth perches from the hill near the Falls (where the Battle Monument now stands) north, to the river side south — also four perches wide ; and by Forrest street, now Charles street, eighty-nine and one-fourth perches in the same course, and three perches wide. There were also nine lanes of the width of one perch each and of various lengths, since widened and called Second, South, Light, Hanover, East, Belvidere, Lovely, St. Paul's, and German lanes. Thus, the original 'Baltimore Town' was comprised within the westernmost basin of the Patapsco, near the present Exchange Place, on the south ; the chalk hills of Charles and Lexington streets, on the north ; the deep drain, or Uhler's alley, on the southwest ; the present course of McClellan's alley on the west ; and on the east, by the big swamp, which, bordering Jones' Falls, ran up by its western flank as far on the present Holliday street as Lexington or Saratoga streets. Jones' Falls, the absolute easternmost limit, swept round in a deep horseshoe bend, penetrating as far as the corner of Calvert and Lexington streets, and thence going northeastwardly along the fine of Calvert street. The terminus of Calvert street on the south marked the river front, the basin then coming up to about the middle of LomBard street, as it was afterward called." The north end of Calvert street was terminated by a precipice about where the Battle Monument now stands.

The sixty lots laid out contained nearly an acre of ground each, and the act under which the town was laid out provided that the lots were to be built upon within eighteen months after entry, the buildings to cover not less than four hundred square feet. Within ten years from the laying out of the town, about half of the lots were occupied. As the lots were of ample size, the buildings in the town were not closely crowded together. This constituted an element of safety tending to prevent a general conflagration in case of fire. A picture of the town as it appeared in 1752, when most of the buildings originally erected were, no doubt, still in existence, has come down to us from an artist of that time. It shows that the town, although including more territory than the original site, contained only twenty-five houses, one church and two taverns. But four of these structures were of brick. The great preponderance of wooden structures exposed the little community to serious danger from fire. Wooden fences surrounded the houses. There were several houses two stories in height, but the local chronicler says "the town boasted but one brick house, of two stories, without a hip-roof." From an entry in the records of the Commissioners of Baltimore Town, it appears that by order of tfie Commissioners the "materials of the brick house standing opposite to Daniel Barsnet's (?), in the street, which is to be pulled down as a nuisance," was sold at public auction, October 6, 1750.

About the period of this event, the Commissioners had a wooden fence erected about the town (a general subscription having provided for the cost) and their clerk was ordered "to put up advertisements to inform all persons that they have ordered the town fence to be made up, and that they have employed John Walker to keep up the same, and if any persons suffer their hogs, sheep or goose to trespass on the inhabitants as they have hitherto done, that they will immediately order them to be destroyed." It is assumed that the " hogs, sheep and goose" were to be the objects of the Commissioners' vengeance. This same fence 3rielded a choice bit of town scandal before it had been in place eighteen months. Many of the rails were stolen, and the Commissioners sold the rest to Nicholas Rogers, March 9, 1752, at the rate of £5 los. per thousand. Mr. Rogers took 1000 rails, and Mr. Thomas Harrison purchased 1200 more. The Commissioners, according to the records, caused a writ to be issued against William Payne for burning town rails. Mr. Lloyd Buchanan was employed as attorney by the Commissioners, but we are informed that Mr. Buchanan was of opinion that " the Commissioners had no power to bring such action," which appears to have terminated the case so far as the authorities were concerned.

In 1752, the population of Baltimore Town is estimated to have been two hundred. The original area of the town had been increased by an act of Assembly, passed July 11, 1747, adding eighteen acres which lay between the eastern edge of the town and Jones' Falls. The added tract was in the swampy region along the Falls, but it was probably brought into demand by the incorporation of Jones' Town with Baltimore Town in 1745. Jones' Town included the section northeast of the Falls, and extending north and south from Gay street. In 1750, about twenty-five acres north and east of Jones' Town tract were made part of the city. Thirty-five acres west of the basin, and south of the town, were added in 1765. Two years earlier, most of the section east of the Falls, extending to and including Fell's Point, was laid out in streets, but was not added to the town until an act of Assembly was passed in 1773. The addition comprised about eighty acres. Three years later, the owners of the marshy grotmd along Jones' Falls were required to " wharf it in," and cover it with stones, gravel and dirt. Thus, within a half century from the founding of Baltimore Town, it included all the ground from Fell's Point, around the head of the basin, and was a thriving community. Its importance was enhanced in 1768 by the Assembly making provision '' for erecting a court house and public prison for Baltimore County, in the town of Baltimore, and for making sale of the old court house and prison," which were located at Joppa.

The new court house was erected upon a hill at the head of Calvert street, overlooking Jones' Falls on the north. This hill covered the site of the Battle Monument. Several additional tracts on the north and southwest were added to the town before its incorporation in 1796.

It was natural during this period of the town's growth that the houses should be constructed of wood, as wood was plentiful in the vicinity. We have a description of the town by the Hon. John P. Kennedy. Referring to the period at the close of the Revolutionary War, Mr. Kennedy speaks of Market street (now Baltimore) extending as far as Sharp street '' with its hive of low-browed, hippedroofed wooden houses in disorderly array, standing forward and back, after the manner of a regiment of militia, with many an interval between the files. Some of these structures were painted blue and white and some yellow, and here and there sprang up a more magnificent mansion of brick."

A third of a century elapsed from the founding of the town before any permanent organization in the nature of a fire company was effected. This failure to organize would seem to evidence the fact that, despite the use of wood for building purposes, the town was comparatively free from disastrous fires. The records are very meagre upon the subject. The first recorded fire in Baltimore occurred March 16, 1749, at the house of Greenbury Dorsey. In this fire one man, four children and a colored girl were burned to death.

A dearth of special regulations with regard to fires existed in the early days of the town, and none was provided until 1747. When the act was passed in July, 1747, to which reference has been made, enlarging the town, a section was added to the act providing ** that any inhabitants in the said town who shall after the first day of December next ensuing permit his, her or their chimney to take fire so as to blaze out at the top shall forfeit and pay the sum of ten shillings current money for every such offence, and any person having a house in the said town with a chimney in use, who shall not after the first said day of December keep a ladder high enough to extend to the top of the roof of such house, shall also forfeit and pay ten shillings current money."

In commenting upon this section, Scharf says " it would seem that the fine of ten shillings and the tall ladders combined, served to keep down fires for a good many years, for it was not until 1760 that any further safeguards appear to have been considered necessary." The town records show that the Commissioners took steps to have the act complied with, but experienced difficulty in obtaining prompt acquiescence on the part of the inhabitants. The Commissioners, on January 28, 1748, ordered their clerk to set public notices up that " any inhabitant of any house in town wherein there is a chimney in use, do provide themselves with a ladder to reach to the top of the roof of the house, by the last of March next, under the penalties of the said act ; also, if any chimney is found blazing out at the top under the like penalties." Again, February 6, 1750, the Commissioners ordered the clerk to put up advertisements for the inhabitants of the town to provide themsdves with ladders before the twenty-fifth of March next. Another year passed by, and under date of March 28, 1751, appears this entry, " The Commissioners taking into consideration that several of the inhabitants of the town have not supplied themselves with ladders within the time appointed at their last meeting, viz., 25th March, and considering that several of them live in rented houses, and may imagine that their landlords are obliged to find such ladders, have therefore thought, proper to allow them until the fifth of April next, and ordered the clerk to put up notices accordingly." March 9, 1752, Messrs. William Rogers and Brian Philpot, Jr., and Dr. William Lyon were appointed to '' inspect the boundaries of lots, and ladders to each chimney, according to the act of Assembly, annually, and to return an account of what are wanted." At last, an aggressive course had been adopted,, and violators of the law were to be made known. That this regulation existed many years, and was enforced with more or less rigor, we have proof from an entry in the account book of Dr. Aitken, who there recorded toward the end of the eighteenth century that he had paid a fine for the blazing out of his chimney at the top. Dr. Aitken was a leading citizen, and the first apothecary in the town. His home, from which the "blazing out" occurred, was at the southwest comer of Baltimore and South streets.

A town meeting was held in 1760 to discuss provisions for more effectually securing the safety of property from fire, but whether any plan was formulated and carried out is doubtful. Certain it is that no fire company was organized at that time. No such organization took place until 1763. Prior to the organization of a fire company, the Maryland Gazette published the following advertisement:

"Baltimore Town, July i6th, 1763. — ^The following scheme of lottery is humbly proposed to the Public for raising the sum of 510 Pounds Current Money, to be applied towards completing the Market House in Baltimore Town, in Baltimore County, Buying Two Fire Engines, and a Parcel of Leather Bucketts, for the Use of the said Town, Enlarging the present Public Wharf, and Building a New One."

This was called "The Baltimore Fire-Engine and Wharf Lottery," and was drawn in the market-house, December 26, 1763.

The scheme provided for the sale of three thousand tickets at twenty shillings each, yielding three thousand pounds in money, and after deducting the five hundred and ten pounds desired for the use of the town, the balance was to be distributed in 1062 prizes. This scheme would have resulted in the drawing of 1938 blanks. The managers of this lottery were Messrs. John Ridgely, Brian Philpot, John Smith, John Moale, Jonathan Plowman, Barnabas Hughes, James Steret, William Lux, Andrew Buchanan, William Aisquith, Benjamin Rogers, Nicholas Jones, Mark Alexander, John Hartz, and Melchoir Keener. These names establish the fact that the managers were the leading citizens. Lotteries as a means of raising revenue for town purposes subsequently became frequent, but this sceme of 1763 appears to have been among the earlier, if not actually the first, lottery attempted in the town. The scheme failed, or at least resulted in accomplishing only a small part of the benefits which had been anticipated. It is certainly known that the fire engines were not purchased. The market-house which was to be completed was on the lot at the northwest corner of Baltimore and Gay streets. The lot was leased from Mr. TRomas Harrison, at eight pounds a year, and the market-house was erected with money collected from citizens, and returns from the lottery. This was the first market-house, and was the antecedent of Marsh, or Center, Market, which is now located two squares east of the old market. The suggestion which the reference to fire engines in the lottery scheme conveys to us now, is that the thriving town by the Patapsco did not wish to be less enterprising than its neighbor on the Severn. The local chronicles bear witness to the fact that "on the 8th of May, 1755, there was landed at Annapolis for the use of the city a very fine engine made by Newsham & Ragg, No. 1800, which the inhabitants last year generously subscribed for. It throws water one hundred and fifty-six feet perpendicular."

The reference to " Leather Bucketts " in the lottery scheme recalls the primitive methods of fighting fires. Without engines or other fire apparatus of improved pattern, the most natural course was to use buckets for carrying water to a burning building. Leather as a non-inflammable material possessed decided advantages over wood for use in the form of buckets, while metallic buckets would have been too expensive, and were probably not on the market of the town at that time. The adoption of these buckets as a part of the household furniture appears to have been voluntary on the part of many inhabitants of the town. The buckets were marked with their owners' names, and were taken to a fire by the owners, or were set out so that a passer-by could take them. It is related that when a fire had been extinguished, the buckets which had been used were thrown together and the Town Crier shouted in a loud voice, " Hear ye, oh 1 I pray ye lords and masters, claim your buckets." Upon the sounding of this call, young lads scampered from all directions to the spot, and a scramble occurred to get the buckets belonging to wealthy persons, as the boys who returned those buckets to the owners were generally the recipients of a fee or some other kindness.

The use of buckets and the temporary formation of bucket brigades at fires continued long after the organization of a fire company and the introduction of the fire engine, and one writer has remarked that 'The attachment of the early inhabitants to the leather buckets seems to have been nearly as great as that of the poet to the 'old oaken bucket that hung in the well,' and if they were not regarded with quite so much sentiment, they were certainly made to render fully as valuable service." Before the introduction of engines, water from the buckets was applied directly to the fire. After the first engine came into use the buckets were used in conveying water to supply the engines, as hose and fire plugs were not then in use.

The scene at a fire in those early days of the town forms a contrast with the fire scenes, of our own time. Then everybody became a fireman, and with the primitive appliances at hand attempted to extinguish the flames. Now, the few fight the flames and the many are spectators. In those olden days the people formed in long lines. The words "hand along the buckets" were frequently heard, as the filled buckets were passed up one line and the empty buckets returned by another. Any attempt to break the lines by a curious spectator or idler met with a rebuff, and he was admonished to 'Tall in." There were no clanging alarm bells, no clattering wheels of swiftly speeding apparatus, but the terrifying, if not more alarming, cry of "Fire ! Fire ! " resounded through the streets and quickly passed from lip to lip, until the whole town echoed the cry, and the people rushed from their homes to join the hurrying throng bound for the scene of excitement. Breathless and anxious, they gave their aid to stop the progress of the flames. Every man felt that a fire in the town was a matter of direct concern to himself, and he lent his best efforts to save his fellow-townsman from loss. Those were primitive days and primitive ways, but the community was united by bonds of sympathy which proves the maxim that "A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind."

Chapter II. Early Fire Companies

The Pioneer Company — Its Prominence in Local Affairs — Acquires the First Engine — Assists in Entertaining George Washington — "The Dutchman" — Burning of the Almshouse, 1776 — Sterrett's Brewery Destroyed, 1783 — Union Fire Company Formed, 1782 — Located at Hanover Market Site — Friendship Company — Deptford Company, First in East Baltimore — Liberty Fire Company — Revived Interest IN Fire Precautions — Conference of Fire Companies — Recommendations— Embryonic Department.

The Mechanical Fire Company had the proud distinction of being the first of many companies organized in Baltimore to systematically combat fires. The organization of this company took place in 1763, shortly after the lottery scheme for the purchase of fire engines was announced. There is little doubt that the company was formed in anticipation of engines being acquired for the company's use by means of the lottery. Moreover, the organizers and members of the company, and the managers of the lottery were the leading citizens of the town, so that we are led to believe that there was a common purpose in the two enterprises. The failure of the lottery to yield the requisite revenue deferred the introduction of an engine to aid the company. Although the gratification of their hopes was deferred the members maintained their organization, which for nearly a score of years was the only company of its kind in the town. Until 1769, its appliances were restricted to the axes, ladders and other crude implements of the bucket brigade, and we can readily believe that the company was, in fact, scarcely an3rthing more than a bucket brigade, which held itself ready to "fall in" regularly in case of fire, and maintained a more methodical way of attacking a fire than was customary with the the unorganized ''brigade."