Gazetteer of the State of Maine, 1882 page 465
Click on the image to view a larger, bitmap (.bmp) image suitable for printing.

HOME PAGE ... REFERENCE PAGE ... THIS GAZETTEER’S PAGE



Click on the image above for a larger, bitmap image suitable for printing.


Gazetteer of the State of Maine With Numerous Illustrations, by Geo. J. Varney

BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY B. B. RUSSELL, 57 CORNHILL. 1882. Public domain image from

On the 4th of July, 1866, a carelessly thrown cracker set fire to a
boat-builder’s shop on Commercial street, whence the flames were soon
communicated to Brown’s Sugar House; whence it swept on diago-
nally through the city, spreading like a fan as it went. Entire streets
were swept away, .'ncluding massive warehouses, lofty churches, splen-
did mansions, ancestral houses and the dwellings of the poor, in the
oldest and most crowded parts of the city in one common ruin. For
nearly half a day, and through the night until the small hours of the
morning, the vast volumes of flame and smoke held sway, sending ter-
ror and anguish among the whole population. The fire ended near
Munjoy’s Hill. The morning saw fifteen hundred buildings laid in
ashes ; fifty-eight streets and courts reduced to a wilderness of chim-
neys, amid which the most familiar inhabitant lost himself; ten thou-

sand people made homeless, and ten millions of property destroyed.
Villages of .tents and barracks sprang up on Munjoy, and generous
contributions from abroad flowed in, providing food, shelter and cloth-
ing for the penniless.

In rebuilding, old streets were widened and straightened, and new
ones opened; and, after a lapse of ten years, the waste places were
almost wholly rebuilt, far more roomy, convenient and handsome than
before. Meantime the increase of the business facilities of the city
went on. In 1873, the Boston and Maine Railroad was extended from
South Berwick to Portland, taking on its way Old Orchard Beach. In
187o, the Portland and Rochester Railroad completed its connections

30


PREVIOUS PAGE ... NEXT PAGE

This page was written in HTML using a program written in Python 3.2