Transcription
The $100,000 fire of Dumfries in 1927 is still remembered as a "terrifying experience" by several oldtimers in the town.
Mrs. Rowena Brawner, 76, remembers waking up to the sound of cracking glass.
The Brawners were next door to the IOOF Hall in Dumfries, where the fire broke out the night of Jan 14. Rowena and her husband, Warfield, and their young daughter, Jane (now Mrs. Ed Fraley) and Libbie (Mrs. Curtis Elam), had just moved into the apartment above their general merchandise store in Novemeber, Our store was where the town hall is now," said Mrs. Brawner. "I used to say we sold everything from groceries to nails."
She recalls her late husband rushed out on the upstairs porch and yelled "fire, fire," to try to wake up the neighbors across the street.
"He didn't want us to go back and get anything because there was kerosene stored in there," said Mrs. Brawner. The family lost almost everything they had except for some baby clothes that Mrs. Brawner managed to take with her.
By daylight, the town was to lose six buildings in all.
Bad luck, bad roads and lack of telephones was to hamper firefighters.
Cecil Garrison, 79, a native of Dumfries, and still active in the town's civic affairs, remembers he was attending a meeting at the IOOF Hall the night of the fire.
"I'm sure we had a steak dinner that night on the lower floor, "said. Garrison, who joined the Odd Fellows in 1918.
Garrison remembers seeing the fire from his home on Duke Street, Where he still lives.
I couldn't believe my eyes," he said. It was he who went back to town and couldn't find a telephone to alert the fire department.
"Hell, there wasn't a telephone anywhere," said Garrison. He drove his Model A to the nearest fire department at the Quantico Marine Base.
After getting permission to use the military engine, the truck raced to town, but broke its wheel in a chuckhole in Triangle. The truck never made it to town.
But, the Marines still came through and help save more of the town from burning by forming a water brigade, passing water buckets man to man from Quantico creek. Despite their efforts, the town also lost almost completed Junior order of Merchanics Building (similiar to the Odd Fellows), Dr. Cline's garage and several residences across the street from the only salon and G.l. Oleyar's Law office now stand.
"The Junior owner was never able to hold a meeting in its building. Instead they met at the stage Coach Inn."
After the fire it was learned that it was most likely caused by a janitor banking the coal furnace too much and causing gas combustion from the coals.
The IOOF Hall was soon building its present building right near the spot where the old one stood. Still visible is the capped well where townspeople once came with their buckets to pull water from the well which had been a few feet from the old building.
Francis 9Pappy) Keys of Triangle, a charter member of the Dumfries-Triangle Volunteer Fire Department and its Rescue squad, was working in Alexandria at the time of the fire but can still remember seeing it several days later.
Unfortunatley the fire department wasn't in operation in 1927.
However, Keys has in his posession a copy of the roster of the 1819 Dumfries fire company which listed some 45 members, giving evidence that Dumfries was still struggling as a town at that time.
He hopes to present the roster, in a frame, for a place in the present firehouse.
The fire is just one of the things that Dumfries old-timers remember about the old town.
But the old-timers are getting fewer (Mrs. Brawner and Garrison are about the town's oldest).
Garrison, whose grandmother had slaves, remembers the old slave block in town and hearing about Gallows Hill, near where he lives now. Where horse thieves were to be hung.
Dumfries town was the site of many grocery stores and folks used to come from quite a distance to buy supplies and food, eggs and butter were traded by the townsfolks for grocries.
Garrison's ancestors came from Scotland settling in Stafford in an area where everybody living there was named Garrison. The area still carries the name of those families- Garrisonville.
"Now, there's only one Garrison left there," Garrison said. Garrison also counts among his relatives a blacksmith who shoed horses for the federal troops during the Civil War.
Mrs. Brawner, like many did in Dumfries, ran a successful tourist home for 30 years at her home in town. Her guests were mostly young service couples. Buses were operated between Dumfries and Quantico for the Marine couples who found houses scarce in those days.
"I've seen Dumfries grow from a mud puddle to getting sidewalks," Mrs. Brawner said.Transcriber
Rachel HughesLanguage
English