Thursday, February 17, 2011

1895 Near Tragedy

The Lockwood Exchange, a wooden structure located at the northeast corner of Church Street and South Grand Avenue, burned at the turn of the century, but a few years earlier, the following article appeared in The Fowlerville Review:

A Narrow Escape~~Fowlerville came very close to having a pretty large bonfire on the evening of July 4. Dr. C.H. Lamoreaux discovered a nice little blaze on the roof of J.A. Lockwood's hotel and on getting upon the roof it was found that the shingles had been burned off a space about a foot in diameter, but fortunately the fire was in the middle of a wide roof-board and none of it had dropped through into the attic or serious results would have no doubt followed. The roof was dry as tinder and it was thought to have caught from some of the fireworks that had been exploded earlier in the evening. Mr. Lockwood had been upon the roof but a little time before to see that everything was all right but did not discover any signs of fire.

So many fires occurred in the early days of Fowlerville, it only seemed evitable that eventually the entire downtown would be reconstructed with brick instead of wood.

This might be a good time to remind those reading these History Lessons -- if you are interested in a particular era of Fowlerville history, I am splitting these articles in 25-year segments. If you look under the Labels section, you will see such notations as 1836-1860 history, 1861-1886 history, etc. Click on any one of those labels to go to any articles that have been posted for that time period.

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