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Up to the autumn of
1871 the huge outlay we had made at Peshtigo on the construction of
factories and mills had brought us no return. The market for
woodenware appeared to be glutted and in some instances we were
forced to sell our product at a loss. Moreover, the expenses of
handling, transporting, and storing, in spite of the reductions we
had made by the use of barges, were still excessive.
To improve these
conditions our efforts had been directed toward securing the
extension of the Northwestern Railroad from the city, of Green Bay
to the Menominee. Mr. Ogden, so long as he remained on the
directorate, was unwilling to use his influence in furthering this
plan for fear his motive might be misinterpreted as a desire to
advance his own interests at Peshtigo. The burden, therefore, fell
principally upon me, and I made a number of trips to New York, not
to speak of many to Chicago, to confer with the railroad officials
and lay the case before them.
Finally we succeeded,
two years alter Mr. Ogden had retired from the directorate. In 1871
the railroad company began to extend its line northward, giving us
the prospect of a much-needed outlet which would enable us to
distribute our products directly throughout the West without the
necessity of reshipment at Chicago. In other respects also the
outlook brightened and we were confident that we had reached a point
at which we could make a profit on our operations.
But in our efforts to
better our position we unwittingly paved the way for disaster. The
summer and autumn of 1871 were unusually dry and the forests and
brush were reduced to tinder. To make conditions worse, the wind
blew almost continuously for day after day from the south-west. When
work on the railroad was begun fires were started to clear the right
of way. The contractors carelessly allowed these to spread and they
ran through the country with startling rapidity, feeding on the dry
forests. In some instances even the marshes and bogs were burned to
a depth of four feet.
For five weeks before
October 8 we had fought small fires in the woods in the vicinity of
Peshtigo and the air was so murky with smoke that people went about
on the streets with red and watering eyes. On afternoon of Saturday,
October 7, I drove from Marinette to the village of Peshligo and
went down to the harbor where the steam sawmill was situated. On my
return on the evening of the same day tongues of flame darting
through the woods were visible from the roadway. These were the
forerunners of the great disaster.
The sporadic fires
seemed only to kindle the forest and bring it to the point of
inflamability to be consumed later. On the night of Sunday, October
8, about nine o'clock, the flames, fanned by a high wind, leaped
into a fury and sweeping in a northeasterly direction over a path
twelve miles wide encompassed the village of Peshtigo, transformed
it into a smoking waste and took toll of its people to the number of
eleven hundred. Gathered into a tornado of fire they rushed on
incredible rapidity, vaulted the river, and died out only when they
reached the impassable barrier of water which confronted them on the
shore of Green Bay, north of Menominee.
In the blackened wake
every form of life was obliterated. In many instances tiny heaps of
white ashes marked the places where men, women, and children had
fallen; and where the forest had been, gaunt disfigured tree trunks
stood like sentinels of death under the low-hanging pall of smoke.
In Peshtigo a number
of people took refuge in the river and stood for an hour or more in
the water, all but blinded and suffocated by the intense heat and
smoke, while the fiery turmoil raged on all sides of them. But most
of the population had been overtaken in their houses or on the
streets by the sudden outburst and were numbered among the missing.
Every house was gone and only twisted ruins marked the places where
the factory, mills, the supply store, and other buildings had been.
Even a mile of our railroad had been burned and the locomotive and
cars were a tangled mass of iron. The loss was complete.
In Marinette we were
struggling with another fire which broke out later and burned
everything from the middle to the lower end of the city. The path of
the flames which had devastated Peshtigo lay just to the north.
Between the two we struggled all night in the blinding smoke and
intense heat, not knowing how soon the seething fringes of fire
would close in upon us. The air itself was livid and seemed to burst
into sheets of flame, and the withering maelstrom spat fiery tongues
that consumed whatever they touched. In some places they overleaped
piles of dry brush which a spark would have ignited, yet burned the
grass to within tell of them. The fire appeared to break out
spontaneously in pockets or dart forward in tortuous flashes instead
of progressing with uniform pace, which accounted for the strange
contrasts it left in its ruined wake. None the less its path from
Peshtigo to the bay was clearly marked and varied little in width
for the entire distance.
Many persons in
Menominee and Marinette, abandoning their homes when they realized
the fury of the raging conflagration, went aboard a steamer which
put out into the bay. Many others, employees of the mill quartered
in the big boarding-house not far away, and women and children, not
knowing where to turn, took refuge with us and huddled in silent
fright in my house and barns wherever they could find room. Ten or
fifteen men in my garden fought back the creeping flames on edge of
the path of the fiery blast which had swept upward from Peshtigo.
When the danger was
greatest my brother-in-law, whose house and barn were not more than
three hundred feet away from my own, ran over to tell me that they
were burning. The buildings would have been consumed had it not been
for one of the antics of the fire. I watched the sheet of flame
sweep toward them, but when it came to the house it merely scorched
one end and stopped and died out. In my own house my family had made
ready to go to the river a short distance away at the moment I gave
the signal.
As is usual in such
crises, most of the people in a panic of fear were as helpless as
children; and even under the shadow of the appalling destruction
that was being wrought some of the incidents that occurred at this
time were of the most ludicrous character. Two hired girls at my
house were aiding the men fighting the fire, and one of them I
instructed to watch over some corn which had been shocked and was
standing in the rear of the garden. Her chief interest, however, was
a little patch of cabbages of her own growing. I discovered that she
watched solicitously over the cabbage patch and kept it drenched
with water, although it could not burn. But the inflammable corn was
left to its fate. It required very violent and peremptory language
to bring the poor woman's wits back to her.
In the midst of our
own dangers we were unaware of the fate of Peshtigo. Many of us kept
our vigil until dawn without rest or respite until the roaring
flames had passed and the embers had been extinguished. in the
morning, not long after I had made a survey of the town, I saw
coming up the road on horseback through the haze of smoke John
Mulligan, an ex-pugilist, whom we had employed as boss of one of our
camps at Peshtigo. He used a rope for a halter and his clothes were
a shirt and trousers. At the sight of him I began to realize that
while we were fighting the fire others had suffered, perhaps,
greater disaster.
"Johnny, what is the
matter?" I asked in alarm. "I haven't heard from Peshtigo this
morning."
"Peshtigo is burned
up," was Mulligan's brief reply. "There isn't a picket left in the
whole village, and a great many people are dead."
In the face of this
greater catastrophe our own troubles were forgotten, and I turned my
attention at once to the succor of the stricken village. I directed
Mulligan to go across the river to Menominee to find my brothers, -
Robert, one of the owners and superintendent of the Ludington, Wells
and Van Schaick Company, and Samuel M. Stephenson, one of the owners
and manager of the Kirby Carpenter Company,— and ask them to send
men and teams to Peshtigo. In the meantime we made preparations for
the care of the injured and refugees. By nightfall we had turned the
Dunlap Hotel in Marinette into a hospital in which forty-three
patients who had been burned were installed.
On Tuesday morning I
drove over to Menominee, while the country was still overhung with a
pall of smoke from the smouldering forest, to send out appeals for
aid. We were isolated from the rest of the world because of the
destruction of the telegraph lines and had not even heard of the
great fire which had swept Chicago and laid it in ruins at the same
hour that we were battling with the flames. I wrote out five
messages to be taken to Green Bay by one of the Northwestern
steamers which was to stop at Menominee on its way from Escanaba at
noon. One of the messages was addressed to the mayor of Green Bay,
one to the mayor of Oshkosh, one to the mayor of Fond du Lac, and
one to the mayor of Milwaukee. The fifth was to be sent. to Governor
Fairchild at Madison. All of them contained information of the
disaster and requests for assistance in caring for the injured and
survivors.
A man was posted on
the dock with the messages who was instructed to let fall a plank
when the boat approached, so that it could find its way through the
smoke which was still thick on the bay. The telegrams were put on
the wire at Green Bay and soon afterward a flood of money and
provisions began to come in and doctors and other persons were on
their way to aid us. Governor Fairchild was not in Madison at the
time, but his wife, without awaiting his return, had a car loaded
with provisions started for Green Bay by midnight. The following day
the work of rescue was well under way. Donations began to arrive and
doctors coming on the boat from Green Bay looked after the burned
and injured.
After making
arrangements to send out the calls for help, on Tuesday morning I
drove over to Peshtigo along the edge of the path the fire had
followed. First I sent men with teams into the farming country in
the vicinity of the obliterated village to build bridges, repair
culverts, and clear the roads of the fallen trees and debris so that
communication could be restored and the transportation of food and
supplies facilitated. In the progress of their work they came upon
an old man named Leach, sitting on a stone smoking his pipe, the
picture of desolation and despair. During the two days following the
fire he had buried eleven of his children and grandchildren and
remained alone with the ruins of his farm about him.
As we worked in the
blackened debris and ashes, at every turn we came upon the horrible
evidence of the destructive fury of the flames. For more than a week
we found bodies or parts of bodies. By Monday or Tuesday we had
collected and interred one hundred and thirty-nine, some of them
whole, some merely ghastly fragments. In many cases, however, there
was nothing left of human beings other than a streak of light ashes
which would scarcely have filled a thimble. In others the bones as
well as the flesh had been consumed and only the teeth remained. The
only means of identification were keys, jack-knives, or other metal
objects. Sometimes the bodies of the victims lay in groups. Near the
factory ten men were discovered lying on their faces within a space
of twelve feet, with their hands covering their eyes.
But the effects of
the fire were not everywhere the same. By the side of the streaks of
white ashes or charred remains were bodies that lay almost as they
had fallen, untouched by flame and bearing no evidence of the
consuming heat, grewsome relics of the frightful holocaust. On first
day of the rescue work we came upon the bodies of a Mrs. Tanner and
her two children, a boy about three years old with flaxen hair and a
girl five or six years old. Mrs. Tanner, we discovered afterwards,
had put the children to bed and gone down town and had evidently
returned to rescue them when the torrent of fire engulfed the
village. The little girl's hand was clasped in hers and the boy's
body lay five or six feet away. Hers was the only body we found face
upward. All the others had fallen forward, some in crouching
positions, apparently trying to shield their eyes from the awful
heat. The clothes had been burned from the children but their hair
remained untouched, scarcely singed by the flames.
Two days after the
grewsome search began we discovered, in a kneeling position with the
face resting on the ground, the body of a man who had been employed
on a street in the rear of the factory. It was clothed in a gray
suit and heavy underwear, and the only evidence of fire was a spot
as large as a man's hand burned through the coat.
These inexplicable
effects of the conflagration, which seemed to avoid some objects as
miraculously as it consumed others, were subsequently made the
subject of close investigation by scientists from various
universities; but whether they arrived at any conclusion with
respect to them I do not know. The heat seemed to have moved in
gusts or currents with such irregularity that in some cases persons
escaped who lived not more than ten feet or more from those who had
been reduced to ashes. It was not a matter of intensity alone. In
our store were sixty dozens of axes which had run together in an
incongruous mass. On a hand fire-engine, called the Black Hawk,
heavy iron was melted at the point of the tongue, and two feet away
the wood was not charred nor the paint even scorched.
With what agony of
despair the victims of the awful catastrophe sought to escape the
withering flames may be imagined faintly from the positions in which
some of the bodies were found. A young man whom I had intended to
make foreman of a camp the following winter had climbed a tree in a
small grove near a church. Every day for a week I had driven by
within thirty feet of the blackened trunk before I observed the
charred corpse, which fell to pieces when it was taken down. Other
persons took refuge in wells, where they were smothered, and one
body was found in a culvert. Of many victims only traces were
discovered and some, I have no doubt, were swallowed up by the
obliterating cataclysm of flame as completely as if the earth had
opened and engulfed them. Shortly before the fire, for example, we
had engaged an expert to establish a system of ditches for the
cranberry marshes in the vicinity of the village. He employed seven
men, all Scandinavians, and all that was left to mark the fact of
their existence was the blades of their shovels.
The work of bringing
order out of the chaos left in the wake of the fire, building
shelter for the survivors, and distributing supplies for the
homeless fell upon me, as manager of the Peshtigo Company. The
attention of Mr. Ogden was absorbed by the disaster which overtook
Chicago at the same time. He first went to Springfield with a
committee from the city to urge General Palmer, the governor of
Illinois, to make arrangements for policing the city, a task which
was performed for a time by General Phil Sheridan. Afterward Mr.
Ogden came to Peshtigo and remained with me for five weeks. His
moral support was of great value to me, but he had little practical
knowledge of the kind required by such a situation and I was left to
my own resources in directing the work of rehabilitation.
On the Sunday
following the fire Governor Fairchild came to Marinette and I met
him when the boat landed at noon. It was necessary for me to go to
Peshtigo immediately afterward, but I saw him again in the evening
and discussed relief arrangements with him. On that day we built the
first shanty at Peshtigo with rough boards.
The work of
distributing supplies was especially difficult. They came from all
parts of the country, even as far away as Vermont, where a minister
who had formerly been stationed at Peshtigo gathered together a
carload coming with it to Green Bay in person. Relief committees
were organized at Peshtigo, Green Bay, and Marinette; but. as always
happens in cases of this kind, the great problem was to give aid
only to those who were in need of it. Taking advantage of the
general distress, many worthless persons, the shiftless, the idle
and vagrant, lived on the commissary all winter, while the worthy,
in many instances, were reluctant to urge their claims or seek
assistance and consequently were sometimes overlooked. We did the
best we could and gradually conditions were restored to a normal
basis. There was no lack of money. The responses to our pleas for
aid were ready and generous, and our funds were greater than our
needs required, the remnant being turned into the state treasury.
Had it not been for the Chicago fire the cash contributions would
probably have exceeded one million dollars.
The buildings of the
Peshtigo Company situated in the village were, of course, in ashes
or ruins, and although we made no attempt to resume operations on
the same scale as before it was imperative that the sawmills be
started without delay. We were in a helpless plight. All of our oxen
and most of our horses, about one hundred and fifty in all, had
shared the common fate, and there was not an animal left alive in
the entire town. I built sheds and houses, and a temporary supply
store of rough boards - which was afterward replaced by the
permanent store, still standing, for the construction of which I
made a contract in five minutes - and restored the bridge across the
river.
In the meantime men
were set to work making yokes, sleighs, and wagons, and we added to
our stock by purchase. Horses and oxen were bought to take the place
of those burned. From the Northwestern Railroad we obtained a
locomotive and a mile of rails, which enabled us to transport from
the steam mill at the harbor the lumber for rebuilding the town. At
the same time there were large quantities of dead and charred timber
that had to be sawed without delay to forestall the ravages of
worms. We established logging camps and during the ensuing winter
hauled something over fifty million feet of lumber. The situation
called for rapid and decisive action and comprehensive management.
Every day for six weeks I was at Peshtigo directing all these
operations, the multiplicity of which may be gathered from the fact
that during this period our telegraph bill alone totaled four
hundred and ninety dollars.
At Chicago the
Peshtigo Company also fared badly. The lumber yard on the lake shore
north of the harbor with the offices and buildings was completely
destroyed. A new barge called the "Green Bay," which had just been
built at Trenton and placed in commission and had carried but one
load of lumber to Chicago, was burned at the dock with a loss of
thirty-five thousand dollars. Our total losses there were
approximately one million dollars.
The second week after
the fire the foundry and machine shop at Peshtigo resumed
operations. During the winter we built a water-mill on the west side
of the river. The sawmill, flourmill, and sash and door factory on
the east side were not rebuilt nor did we take up again the
manufacture of woodenware. The industry upon which we had founded
our hopes was effectually and permanently snuffed out.
The work of
reconstruction had its unexpected difficulties. Instead of clamoring
for employment, as might have been expected, many persons, too lazy
to work, collected around the commissary and did nothing. Others who
had been overwrought by the ordeal through which they passed seemed
to have lost their senses and for weeks were of no aid whatever.
Under these conditions two of the men upon whom I relied much were
Ferdinand Armstrong, foreman of our logging operations, and Tom
Burns, a young man who had been assistant in the pail factory. They
hired men, went about inspecting the progress of the work, reported
to me, and carried out my orders.
The strain I
underwent at this time was a severe one and during the following
spring, upon the advice of my associates, I took a respite from work
for the first time since my arrival in Wisconsin, a dozen years
before, and with five of my friends made a trip down the Mississippi
River to New Orleans and Mobile.
As an aftermath of
the catastrophe which had cost so many lives and so much property,
the Peshtigo Company withdrew the subscription of twenty thousand
dollars it had agreed to make toward the seventy-five thousand
dollars to be paid as a bonus for the extension of the railroad,
although I gave individually $3500. If the railroad company were not
content with the right of way alone, Mr. Ogden said, he would bring
suit to recover damages for the losses we had sustained,— the fire
having been directly due to the carelessness of the contractors.
This proposition they accepted. The work was pushed to completion
and on December 27, 1871, the contractors turned over the road to
the directors. Thus, at length, Marinette, after passing through the
ordeal of fire and narrowly escaping complete destruction, was
placed in direct communication with the outer world, and the days of
travel on Green Bay over the ice during the winter and by vessel
during the summer were over.
During the following
year work was undertaken on the gap that still remained between
Marinette and Escanaba. This was done in as haphazard a fashion as
the work on the extension from Green Bay. While contractors seemed
to have neither credit nor money, and for a time it appeared that
the railroad would not be able to comply with the condition upon
which the State of Michigan had based its grant of land: the
completion of the road by January 1, 1873. In June, 1872, the
directors of the Northwestern came to Marinette and I went through
with them to Marquette, remaining for three days. Beset with
misgivings they asked me if the road would be finished by the end of
the year. I told them frankly it would not be half completed by that
time because of the inefficiency of the contractors. Thereupon
Colonel James H. Howe and other directors proposed that I take up
the work, guaranteeing me against loss in addition to the payment of
a large salary. This I declined to do.
The task was then
turned over to contractors from other railroads, and Marvin Hewitt,
who had just become superintendent, of the Northwestern, came to
Green Bay to obtain horses and equipment to facilitate the work.
Every resource was taxed to the utmost. Every influence was brought
to bear upon the contractors, and the rails were laid with reckless
haste. The road was pushed over hills which afterward had to be cut
down and across boggy sink holes that were filled with trees. When
the final test came, however, fortune smiled on the railroad.
Shortly before the arrival of the commissioners who were to pass
upon the work on behalf of the State of Michigan, a period of cold
weather set in, and the marshes through which the route lay were
frozen solid, making an excellent foundation. A foot of snow
generously hid all traces of the half-finished work on roadbed. On
test run the train was pushed to a speed that would have ended in
disaster at any other season of the year. From the car windows the
commissioners, surrounded with every possible comfort, gazed upon
the snow-covered landscape; and when the journey was completed they
pronounced the conditions complied with, and the grant was made. For
two years afterward the company was at work cutting down the
excessive grades, and making fills in the low places and replacing
twisted iron rails.
But the gap was
bridged, the railroad now extended from Lake Superior to the south,
and the end for which I had labored for ten years was attained.
This was not my last
experience with railroads. When the Northwestern built the line from
Escanaba to Negaunee and Marquette in the sixties, a piece of work
which represented, according to Hewitt, the useless expenditure of
at least a million dollars, I had proposed to the directors that
they follow the old supply road which had led to my camps on the
Upper Escanaba River. This I pointed out, would give them a direct
route to the mining region, stimulate logging, and, after the
forests had been cleared, provide all for the farms that would
inevitably take the place of the wilderness. The plan, although it
was rejected, did not fall on altogether deaf ears. Mr. Tilden, who
was listening to my portrayal of the development that might be
expected in future years, dropped his knife and fork and exclaimed:
"What a magnificent conception!" At the time I declared that I would
myself build a railroad along the route I proposed if there were no
one else to do it. This I did many years later, and the prophecy I
made bids fair to be realized.
In 1872 General Phil
Sheridan, who was an ardent angler, came up to Peshtigo with Daniel
Wells, Governor Ludington, George Walker, of Chicago, General
Strong, secretary of the Peshtigo Company, and several others, for a
fishing trip. I took charge of the expedition and established a camp
for them at the junction of the Peshtigo and Thunder rivers, in the
heart of what was then virgin country. Here they remained for seven
days, during which time they fished for trout, which abounded in
these streams, and abandoned themselves to the pleasure and
relaxation of the out-of-doors.
As a precaution I had
directed a farmer, John Seymour, who lived several miles away, to be
on hand at the camp with his team in case there was any hauling to
be done. He and General Sheridan, who knew nothing of each other's
presence, met face to face in the brush on the banks of the Thunder
River while fishing.
"Who are you?" asked
General Sheridan, surprised at the sight of a strange face in the
wilderness.
"I'm John Seymour,"
was the reply. "And who might you be?"
"I'm General
Sheridan," was the equally frank answer.
"Hell!" said Seymour.
"You ain't Little Phil! You couldn't command a hundred thousand
men."
Sheridan was more
amused at Seymour's scepticism than anyone else and many times
afterward recalled the unexpected meeting in the wilderness.
General Sheridan and
I became very, good friends and he afterwards sent me two army tents
as a reminder of this expedition up the Peshtigo River. When I was
in Congress he came to see me in the House of Representatives and I
visited him frequently at the War Department, and we rehearsed again
the incidents of his fishing trip. |
