A few years ago, Our Rural Heritage featured an article on “Fire!”, illustrating this threat to life and of livelihood in the 18th and 19th centuries. The need for an efficient and organized method of dealing with fires, beyond the “bucket brigade” of yore, was clear. The consequential development of our fire department has been chronicled in a number of articles, usually in correlation with a referendum on equipment or facility needs.
There is no section of town that has not suffered from fires, as evidenced in remaining chimneys and cellar holes throughout Hampton. And there is no section that has not benefitted from the efforts of the fire department in saving lives and salvaging property. However, as we explore the village and its venerable buildings – the Town Hall, the school, the churches, the Little River Grange, Fletcher Memorial Library — we can’t exclude from the discussion the Firehouse itself, which has been an integral part of the center of town for a century, in its first, second, and final location.
Fire was a tremendous risk and reality in our town’s early years. The use of kerosene lamps, the necessity of hay for livestock, and the proximity of barns to homes all contributed to a relatively regular tragedy. The 2022 article “Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn”, a structure so prevalent in New England that this phrase was a rhyme children recited, described this architectural style. In these “connected farmsteads”, the family lived in the “big house”, the kitchen was in the “little house”, farm implements, carriages and wagons were stored in the “back house”, and the “barn” was for the farm’s livestock. While this architectural structure made movement from one area to another easier, especially in winter, it also facilitated fires. At one time there were probably several houses which were destroyed due to this arrangement. We have one eye-witness account in Alison Davis’ “Hampton Remembers”:
I was getting ready to go out to do the chores one morning and my sisters came running down the stairs with “Hopkins house is afire!” They could see it from their bedroom window. So I ran out to the barn and told the menfolks… The house went, and the horse barn that was attached to it.
Harold Stone
Accidents were not the only cause of fires. Newspaper articles from that era report several instances of arson. And barns were not the only vulnerable buildings. Fire destroyed the General Store three times, in 1890, 1911, and 1939; the first was the work of an incendiary, the second, carelessness, the third succumbed to flames “because the well on the property was so close to the fire as to be inaccessible”. Other notable fires included a factory in Howard Valley, the Congregational Church steeple after lightening struck it, a portion of the railroad bridge, the mansion of famed surveyor, builder and abolitionist Jonathan Clarke, and the village law office of Governor Cleveland.
Until the development of the Fire Department, residents responded to the sound of the church bell ringing with wagons transporting receptacles to fill with water.
The fire department – that was the bucket brigade. Everyone went with their pails and their buckets…everybody come from here and yonder galloping away either on horseback or with their wagons full of pails and they dragged water from wherever they could get it – to put it out.
Gertrude Pearl from Hampton Remembers
In 1920, the Hampton Betterment Society was formed to develop strategies to fight fires. The plan replaced the church bells with a telephone signal of ten rings, and a 40 gallon soda acid extinguisher stored in a shed at the Congregational Church in the summertime and the Chelsea Inn in the winter. We have no record of whether or not it successfully extinguished any fires, but we have this account:
The fire company had a two-wheeled fire extinguisher narrow enough to go through doors…It was soda acid. What a mess that could make! If it got onto your clothes and they got into water they just disappeared!
Harold Stone from Hampton Remembers
The Fire Department was organized in 1929 with 32 members. The following year the first Fire House was erected on the corner of Old Route 6 West and Main Street. This building housed the department’s equipment, including the first fire truck, an American LaFrance, which was purchased for $900 in 1930.
In 1930, we built a firehouse and then we needed money to buy a truck. Some large donations were given but we had to make a lot of money so we had all sorts of money-making affairs at that firehouse every week until we got our bills paid. We had whist parties, minstrel shows, clambakes, dances, auctions, plays, bake sales. It took a great deal of work to get that fire company started. At the end of 1930 we bought our first fire truck, a rebuilt American LaFrance. All the firemen rode on the truck, hanging onto a rail along the sides.
Anna McDermott from Hampton Remembers
This building would serve as a firehouse for the next thirty years. It wasn’t until the department acquired a 1941 International Tank Truck and a 1953 American LaFrance Pumper that the need for a larger structure grew apparent. In 1960, the parcel across the street and a quarter of a mile west from the original building was purchased, and a new firehouse was erected there in 1961. Fundraising, donations of goods and services, and resident volunteers contributed their time and expertise to complete the construction of the facility that continues to house the department’s trucks and equipment. Photographs reveal the community effort: Selectman John Burelle, Fire Chief Richard Jaworski and Building Committee Chairman Leon Pawlikowski reviewing floor plans, Wendell Davis nailing a rafter on the roof, Henry and Billy Becker cementing the floor.
The department sold the original firehouse to the Town to serve as the Town Hall for the next thirty years, eventually moving across the street and a quarter of a mile south to its present location in the building which was once the Consolidated School, examples that prove Hampton has a proud tradition of repurposing its facilities to meet present needs.
The new Firehouse continued to expand due to requirements and equipment. An addition was built in 1969, a second story in 1987, and in 2005, a larger door was installed to accommodate the five fire trucks, gator, trailer, and water rescue boat. At one time a siren sounded to alert the members of the Fire Department of an emergency, and the location was written on a chalk board by the door for members who arrived after the vehicles left. Modern communication has made those features obsolete. In 2018, voters approved a half a million to fund needed improvements, which included repair of the roof and the siding, energy efficient windows and doors, insulation, and a new electrical system. Another addition was also required to provide access to emergency vehicles in order to respond expediently to all calls. This proved crucial with the closing of the Hampton-Chaplin Ambulance Corps, as members of the Fire Department now serve as the first responders to medical emergencies in town, a local ambulance service providing transport when necessary.
Our Firehouse is in its 62nd year of existence. A sturdy, bright red building, lined with bright yellow hydrants, the façade draped with black cloth when mourning the loss of one of the department’s members, its flag at half-mast. It is strung with lights for the holidays, a cornucopia of autumn symbols — cornstalks, a scarecrow, pumpkins — in the fall, a sign that displays important seasonal messages – reminding us to clean our chimneys on the advent of woodstove season, to watch for black ice on winter roads and children on bicycles in the summertime. And throughout the year, it stands as a testament of volunteerism.
In April, residents approved the $1,088,000 purchase of a new fire truck That’s a far cry from the $900 purchase of the first fire truck in 1930. There is far less distance between the fundraising described by those who helped build that first fire house and buy that first truck and last month’s Annual Ham and Bean Dinner, an honored town tradition, where the men and women responding to our emergencies roll up their sleeves for a different purpose, to raise funds in the same way as the volunteers of one hundred years ago. And as we gather there as a community, to enjoy ham and beans, or soup and salad, and the company of our neighbors, the firehouse is another one of those places — like the library, the general store, the grange — reminiscent of home.