Easton, Pennsylvania
Sawmill & Ice House
Fire
October 18, 1884
FIRE AT EASTON
Daring Act of an Employe at Burning Mill -
Narrow Escape
Easton, Oct. 19. An incendiary
fire here, early yesterday morning, destroyed
W. U. Stocker
& Co.'s saw mill,
Bernard Coyle & Son's ice house, a
stable and Taylor
& Co.'s store, saw mill and ice house. The
fire started in the ice house and rapidly spread
to the saw mill, store and stable, raging
furiously through the frame structures and
burning all to their foundations. After
the engine house of the saw mill caught fire the
steam gauge showed a pressure of eighty pounds,
and at every moment it was expected the boiler
would explode, until
George Koehler, an employe of the
mill, courageously rushed in at the risk of his
life and removed the safety valve. When he
raised the valve, about which the flames were
licking, an iron pin, driven with terrific force
from the boiler, narrowly missed his head.
Attached to the ice house was a small room
occupied by John Bellis,
an aged and infirm shoemaker. He was
asleep when the fire started, shortly after
midnight. The neighbors rescued him just
as the flames broke into his room. The
terrified old man was carried out in his night
attire through the smoke that thickly wrapped
his apartment.
The saw mill, a frame building 40 by 80 feet,
contained 10,000 feet of the best sawed lumber,
3000 bandies, 2,500 wagon felloes and 6,000
hickory spokes. A frame building attached
to it, containing 40,000 feet of lumber, was
also destroyed. Of the machinery, only
three saws were saved. The mill and other
buildings stood on Dock street, a thoroughfare
skirting the Lehigh, in the southern part of the
town. Stocker's
loss is $15,000; insurance $2,000.
Coyle & Son's
loss is $3,000; insurance $1,000.
Daily Gazette and Bulletin,
Williamsport, PA 20 Oct 1884
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