The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
1803 firefighting relic moving to City Hall
Pumper, which replaced bucket brigades, is gift of Middlesex Mutual
MIDDLETOWN — An invaluable piece of city history displayed at a downtown insurance company, dating back to the origins of the fire department, soon will enjoy the appreciation of a much larger audience.
Middletown’s first fire pumper, originally used by the Mattabesett Fire Company No. 1 and purchased by the city in February 1803, now is housed in the lobby of the Middlesex Mutual Assurance Co. on Court Street. Renovations to the building inspired MiddleOak CEO Gary Vallo to find a more public location where the apparatus could be displayed in perpetuity.
“To me, it’s priceless,” said Vallo. In mid-November, the beautifully restored, early 19th-century piece will move to the lobby of City Hall on deKoven Drive.
There wasn’t enough room at the Middlesex County Historical Society’s Gen. Mansfield House on Main Street to house the pumper, but the board of directors is committed to keeping it in Middletown, said Executive Director Deborah D. Shapiro.
This engine, plus the ladder-and-bucket brigade recognized on a plaque, “seem hardly adequate protection from fire”; Middletown, however, was better equipped in 1836 than most towns for preventing and fighting fires, according to Middlesex Mutual. Each was powered by either strong men or drawn by horses.
The pumper showcases the risks and considerations insurance officers made as they reviewed applications for the firm’s first customers, Vallo said. “We are happy that it will be displayed in the City Hall to be enjoyed by all residents and visitors, given that it represents some of the earliest city services provided to its citizens,” he said.
The engine last was used in 1936 for the insurance company’s 300th anniversary, when it took part in an active firefighting demonstration alongside contemporary
equipment. “I would have loved to have seen that,” Vallo said.
Middlesex Mutual, first formed as a fire insurance outfit, is affiliated with Holyoke Mutual Insurance Co. of Salem, Mass., which has a number of such antique pieces, including a glass ball about the size of a baseball, which resembles a snow globe, Vallo said. It was filled with water and kept near the fireplace in Colonial times.
“You could take the glass ball and throw it at the fire, and the glass would break. It would have a little bit of water in it to put out the fire. It’s amazing,” he said.
Middletown Fire Chief Robert Kronenberger said he was struck most by how much manpower it took to operate equipment like the pumper . “I’ve got one guy who can control the water into and out of his truck. You take a look at a pumper like that, where you need three or four people on each side just to move water, and we’ve certainly come a long way.”
Some of the earliest firefighting was done by bucket brigades.
Middletown passed an ordinance in 1803 that required “every resident or owner of a house, store or office to keep in constant readiness and repair one good leather bucket containing not less than two gallons,” Vallo said. Many of these receptacles are on view throughout the Middlesex Mutual building as well as the historical society.
The initials or last names
of the people who owned the buckets were painted on the side, Shapiro said. “When there was a fire, someone would pull the lever on the alarm call box (some of which can still be spotted on utility poles in the city), and everyone in the vicinity would run out with their buckets,” she said.
“They would form a big line between the nearest source of water and the fire, and the person at the end would fill the bucket, and they would just keep getting passed down along the way. They would run back to the beginning, so there was a continuous flow,” said Shapiro, adding it was a highly efficient means of extinguishing blazes at the time.
The pumper, too, was quite an advancement for the day.
“It was something better than what we had — throwing buckets of water on a fire,” Kronenberger said. Later, crews used steam pumpers and other motorized apparatus.
“It’s still amazing to think the building I’m sitting in right now (at fire headquarters), back in 1899, everything coming out of here was pulled by horses,” the chief said.
There is some evidence of the city’s firefighting past in the 533 Main St. facility, including different-colored bricks at the rear at the site of a former hayloft for horses that drew fire apparatus. “The building has transformed, but all firefighting equipment certainly has excelled over the last century-plus. But, if you look at fire apparatus, the one thing that has not changed, specifically in this station downtown, is the size of the doors,” Kronenberger said.
Every time he’s charged with purchasing apparatus, the chief has to be sure the new equipment fits inside the station’s antique bays. “We’re at the mercy of how they built it in 1899,” he said.
There were private fire companies at that time in Middletown, owned by different industries, such as the Russell Manufacturing Co. textile mill, Shapiro said.
In the Confederation Period, the city was divided into three wards, each consisting of at least one school district, according to the J.B. Beers “History of Middlesex County, Connecticut.” During the time of the American Revolution, the population of Middletown, now estimated at 46,478 during the last U.S. Census, was 5,600 in 1776.
Fire wardens were charged with examining chimneys, fireplaces, hearths, stoves and ash receptacles in homes three times a year, according to the historical volume. Also, there originally were several volunteer fire companies in the city, including Hotchkiss, Hubbard, and Douglas hose, and O.V. Coffin Hook and Ladder, all of which were folded into the downtown station.