Mercer, Pennsylvania
Mercer County Court House
Fire
December 15, 1907
On the night of Sunday, December 15, 1907,
for the second time in just over forty years,
fire again visited the Mercer County Court
House.
The Western Press reported the discovery
of the fire as follows:
Will Boston,
of Findley, was in Mercer Sunday night, and his
best girl had pointed to the parlor clock, which
indicated ten-thirty. On gaining the street he
thought to verify the maiden's warning by the
town clock. He looked up at the steeple and
discovered the blaze. He neglected, however, to
see the time of night at all. It was Mr. Boston
who discovered the fire through being sent home
at the psychological
moment.
A special to the Mercer Dispatch dated
December 16th offered this report:
The exact cause of the fire is not known and the
reasons assigned are conflicting. Night Watch
Robert Fruit
had gone on duty, and passed the Court House a
few minutes before 10 o'clock, and gone to the
Red Leather Restaurant. A few minutes after the
tower clock had struck 10 o'clock smoke was seen
coming out of the cupola, which was followed by
an explosion. The fire, when first detected,
appeared to be in the attic, beneath the belfry
, and not in the part of the cupola occupied by
the clock.
Despite the above report it is generally held
that the arrangement for the gas piping to the
lights that illuminated the clock's dials was
somehow faulty, and a build-up in gas was
ignited by a spark from an unknown source which
resulted in the conflagration. Regardless of how
the fire started all accounts agree that brisk
winds helped fan the flames and low water
pressure prevented any effective counter
measures. The Sharon Herald reported that
the firemen's hose could only throw a stream
twenty feet. The call went out to the Greenville
Fire Department for assistance but was withdrawn
when it became clear that there was no hope of
containing the flames. With that realization the
volunteer firemen turned their attention to
saving the records from the non-fireproofed
Clerk of Courts Office.
Despite these efforts to save the county's
precious documents
Judge Williams refused to let anyone
try to save materials from his second floor
office which included papers from pending court
cases and his collection of law books. The Bar
Association's Law Library was also destroyed and
was, like Judge
Williams' law books, uninsured. Also
destroyed were numerous "old records" stored in
the attic which had provided excellent fuel for
the fire. Probably among these were the county's
early tax lists and the Commissioners' minutes.
Luckily, the bulk of the county's records were
saved by the fireproof vaults and other measures
that were part of the 1896 improvements.
Fortunate circumstances also allowed for saving
the records from the Clerk of Courts Office
which, although not fireproof, was located on
the ground floor. As was mentioned above, when
it became apparent that the fire could not be
contained with the means at hand the volunteer
firemen turned their attention to saving these
records, which they accomplished before the fire
reached the first floor. Additionally, the
building's relative isolation at the center of
the Court House Park, along with the blanket of
snow that covered nearby buildings, prevented
embers that were blown by the brisk wind from
igniting further blazes which could have led to
an even greater calamity.
By daybreak the picture of destruction became
clear. All that was left of the Court House were
the exterior walls surrounding debris and the
fireproof vaults that had saved the county's
records. That Monday must have been a somber day
in Mercer Borough though a busy one too.
Fuhrman, Robert B., Hail Temple Built
to Justice; A History of Mercer County's Court
Houses, 1994
 Search
for more information on the Mercer County Court
House Fire
and other disasters in the Historic
Newspapers Collection. The number of
newspapers on line has recently doubled - search
over 1000 different newspapers. Use this
Free trial to search for your ancestors.
Search
for your ancestors from Mercer, PA among the
billions of names at ancestry.com
Find birth records, census images, immigration
lists and genealogy other databases for your
surnames. Use this
Free Trial to
search for your ancestors.
Search Hundreds of Pennsylvania Family Genealogies and Local History Books
for your ancestors. Use this
Free trial for all US Records at ancestry to
find your ancestors.
|
