August 12, 1890: Fire Consumes W.M. Jacobs & Co. Cigar Factory

Ed.: This week, as The Boyertown Area Expression ends a full year of publishing Margaret Leidy Harner’s vignettes from her book One Day at a Time: A Social History of Boyertown, PA, we thank her for a heroic effort sharing some of Boyertown’s highs and lows. Those who have followed along throughout the year have seen the “best” of Boyertown’s men and women as well as the worst. It gives us pause to remember that utilizing our diverse skills and abilities to their best advantage is our mission, meeting daily challenges is our heritage, that death and disease are part of life, that tragic personal moments and unwise decisions remain part of being human.

That our forefathers accomplished much in building this community, weathering life’s storms together is of some comfort and hopefully reminds us to celebrate one another’s victories—both large and small—whenever we are able. We are not alone in our life journeys and not the first or last to walk the streets of this “special kind of place” in hopes of making life better for ourselves and future generations.

Preparing these daily vignettes for publication has provided a unique view of our community, a valuable education in the ways of the world in earlier times and how the people who came before us coped, and an inspiration for living intentionally. We hope you have enjoyed the year with us—one day at a time.

By Margaret Leidy Harner from her book One Day at a Time: A Social History of Boyertown, PA.

August 12, 1890: One of Boyertown’s chief businesses has been reduced to ashes, and 60 workers have lost their jobs. The first alarm startled residents about 9 p.m., when a rapidly-spreading conflagration at the W.M. Jacobs & Co. cigar factory, opposite the railroad station on Third Street, was discovered. Dense volumes of smoke and flames were issuing out of the building.

The Boyertown fire companies were promptly at the scene, but the fire was making such rapid headway that it was obvious the building was doomed, so efforts were directed to saving the surrounding properties, all of which were frame buildings in dangerous proximity to the factory.

Next to it was the Leaver lumber yard, at the corner of South Washington and Third Streets, where stacks of wood were piled eight feet away from the destroyed building. Beyond that was a large two-story lumber warehouse. It appeared that this building was ready to burst into flames, but the fire companies, with the aid of the citizen bucket brigades, saved it from destruction. The alert firemen also saved the factory’s stable. Had that structure burned down, the Wren Brothers’ box factory, which is attached to it, would have been consumed.

“Not enough praise can be accorded our fireman and citizens in their heroic efforts to save the surrounding property; had it not been for their well-directed and united action, nothing could have prevented a general conflagration” in that part of town, known then as Petersburg.

The fire, apparently attracted several Pottstown “roughs” who began bantering the firemen about their methods of fighting the fires; when the hose was turned on them, they left more hastily than gracefully, “no doubt a smidgen cleaner and fresher-smelling than when they arrived in the borough.”

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