100 years ago in The Record
Wednesday, April 17, 1918
Oily smoke from a Front Street fire tonight “filled the atmosphere in the center of the city and was carried by wind over to Watervliet and miles back of there,” The Record reports. “Ice, oil, fire, water, smoke and a dense smudge which spread over a considerable territory for the combination,” our reporter writes as firemen continue to battle the blaze the following morning. The fire breaks out in the cellar of a three-story brick storehouse owned by Howard Renshaw. The cellar is used as storage by Charles H. Dauchy & Co., a paint, oil and varnish business. “The oil barrels in the cellar were buried in ice, and there was a foot of ice about them,” William P. Dauchy says, “We have no idea how the fire started and do not know definitely, of course, what our loss is.” Our writer notes that “it is said the door to the cellar was found broken in when the fire was discovered, but there was nothing there from which the fire could have started.” The fire rises to engulf the stock of the H. S. Dickson Wall Paper company on the second floor, while the third-floor J. Crawford Green Furniture company suffers “nominal “losses, mostly to furniture stored there by customers. While firefighters are still working over the blaze as the Thursday paper goes to press, the fire is deemed under control. The firemen are credited with “splendid work” for preventing the blaze from spread-king to the Tom S. Wotkyns coal barns nearby, despite the distraction of a false alarm that briefly diverted some of the force to Fulton and Fifth.
Evers May Land With Cubs
After quitting the Boston Red Sox this week, Troy baseball hero Johnny Evers expects to be called into action by another major-league team.
The veteran second-baseman, who won three World Series championships with the Chicago Cubs and Boston Braves, rebuffed a minor-league offer from Jersey City Skeeters president Dave Driscoll yesterday. According to Evers, the Red Sox “patched up a nice little place for [him] in Jersey City” after abruptly replacing him as a coach, but the Trojan “didn’t think it was a fair way to treat a man.”
Evers would rather return to the Cubs or join the St. Louis Cardinals. He’s on good terms with Cubs manager Fred Mitchell, who visited Evers’s Lakewood Avenue home recently and reportedly offered him a position at that time. Cardinals manager Jack Hendricks reportedly is “sorely in need of a second baseman.”
Working out daily in Troy, Evers claims that “he was never in better condition in his life.”
-- Kevin Gilbert