Zwicker Fire January 26, 1920 Danvers, Massachusetts

For the past five Mondays I have been posting pages from my Grandmother’s 1920 diary.  She was only fifteen years old during the year of this diary, and I’ve enjoyed transcribing and scanning the pages.  Her entries are of her school days, sports, family illnesses, weather reports, and local news in her hometown of Beverly, Massachusetts.  One of the events she recorded was the January 24^th fire which destroyed a local farm. 

You can read the January 24^th entry HERE.  When I posted this entry I was having trouble reading the name of the property owner.  I didn’t know if it was SWICHE or some other name.  During a trip to the Beverly Historical Society the staff had a hard time helping me find information on this conflagration because we didn’t have the correct name.  Fortunately, after I posted the story, a reader named Betty Fredericks commented that there was a ZWICKER family living nearby in Danvers, Massachusetts.

Betty’s clue helped me to find an online insurance report on the Zwicker fire in Danvers.  Unfortunately for me, the Beverly Newspaper from this time period is not online.  Several other readers wrote to me from Beverly, and offered to help find more information.  One of these blog readers was Laurel Stevens of Beverly.  She found the newspaper article in the Beverly Evening Times dated January 26, 1920 at the Beverly public library.  Laurel wrote to me “The fire made the front page top right corner and was continued to page 8.  It's interesting. Sorry one section of what house it spread to isn't clear.  I am assuming it was their house but could have been the smoke house as the smoke house is commented on as the possible cause.  There's an interesting story about who responded to the fire and what happened.”

Thank you very much, to both of you, Betty and Laurel!

Transcription

Page 1

TWENTY-FIVE COWS, FOUR

 HORSES, TWO BARNS AND 25

TONS OF HAY DESTROYED

Disastrous Fire on the Zwicker Estate Just Across

 the Danvers Line.  Loss Will be About $20,000

Partially Covered by Insurance.  Apparatus

Delayed by Snow

Fire destroyed a big cow barn, an-

other barn, both more than a hundred

feet long, a carriage shed, sixty feet

long, gutted the dwelling house, caus-

ed the loss of life of twenty-five cows

and four horses, and destroyed twenty-

five tons of hay and many farming im-

plements, a total loss of close to $20,-

000, partially covered by insurance, at

The Zwicker estate, the former A.J.

Bradstreet place, off Bridge Street,

Danvers, late Saturday night.  While

the bulidlings are located in Danvers a

call for the Beverly department was

rung in and two pieces of Beverly kit

responded.  The local firemen did

dffective work, the Danvers motor kit

being delayed in arriving on account

of the heavy fall of snow.

     The fire was discovered by Mrs.

Alvah J. Bradstreet and her mother,

Mrs. Eben Lovett, who live nearby.

Mrs. Bradstreet pulled in the box in

Danvers, located near the place, while

Mrs. Lovett telephoned to the Beverly

department and later Box 9 was rung.

The fire started in the carriage shed

adjoining the barn and spread rapidly.

The Danvers combination had trouble

with the transmission soon after leav-

Ing the house and the Danvers pump-

Ing engine became stuck in a big drift

and had to be worked out, delaying the

arrival.  Combination Threet at Ryal

Side was the first of fire fighting

kit to reach the blaze and two-lines

of hose were laid.  When the Dan-

vers kit arrived two other lines were

laid to fight the flames.

     The fire spread so rapidly that the

cows and horses could not be saved.

The cows were owned by Richard

Fielding, who had recently leased the

place from J. Zwicker, who, with

his son, occupied the house on the es-

tate.  Two of the horses were owned

----------------------------

(Continued on Page Eight)

by Mr. Fielding, one by Former Rep-

presentative Alvah J. Bradstreet and

the other was a pony owned by Major

William B. Morgan, which he sent up

from Texas while he was in command

of Battery F, 101^st Field Artillery

during its tour of duty on the Mexican

border.

    The fire worked through the carriage

shed, the cow barn, the other barn, in-

cluding the house.  There was time enough

to save most of the furniture in the

Zwicker house.  It was a stinging

cold night, with the mercury at 12

above zero and it made hard fighting

for the firemen but they stuck to their

posts bravely.  The Combination

Three men worked until early in the

morning, while the Combination One

went back to the station after the fire

was under c ontrol.  The Danvers

firemen stayed on the job until late

yesterday morning.

     The Zwickers were planning to go

West and had leased the barns to

Mr. Fielding, who is engaged in the

milk business.  Some of the cows

were valuable and the loss falls heavily

on him.  Neighbors did what they

could to help the firemen and saw to it

that they were served with hot coffee

and lunches.

     The ??? was a real test of the motor

fire apparatus and the Beverly kits

came through with a splendid per-

formance.  Chief R. H. Grant, and all

of the firemen were pretty well pleas-

ed over the showing made by the local

apparatus in the face of the hardest storm

of the season.

     An investigation is being made to-

day as to the cause of the fire.  It is

said that the smoke house on the

place was being used for the curing

of hams and it is thought that the fire

might have started from that source.

Click on this link for my original blog post which included my grandmother's diary entry for this fire:

https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2016/12/amanuensis-monday-my-grandmothers-diary_12.html  

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UPDATE 9:30am January 9, 2017

This screen shot of an old map was sent to me via Facebook by reader Bobbie Brooks.  She wrote " I looked up old maps of Danvers. There were two Bradsteet Farms next to one another just off Bridge St where Bridge and Elliot come together.  I would guess that the one with the attached barns and buildings near the road would be the Zwicker Farm (once called Bradstreet Farm).  Seems this would be near or where Bradstreet Ave is now.  Map from Danvers 1897 plate 023."    The solid line on this map designates the Danvers/Beverly townline.

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Zwicker Fire January 26, 1920 Danvers, Massachusetts", Nutfield Genealogy, posted January 4, 2017, (http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2017/01/zwicker-fire-january-26-1920-danvers.html: accessed [access date]).