HISTORICAL TRIVIA 1936-1940 - Fulton County Public Library

watched flames ravage the same territory as the frame structures of that
period went up in smoke.
And, by a singular twist, it was then, as now, that the blaze
started in a building owned by the late William H. Deniston. Then, as
now, the Peru Fire Department gave a helping hand. And quite
significant too, is the fact that both conflagrations were discovered at
about 9 oclock. The fire of 75 at 9 a.m.; the blaze of 36 at 9 p.m.
The Fire of 1875
On the occasion of the other fire which wiped out half of the 800
block on Main street in 1875, Byron Dawson, brother of George V.
Dawson, and then a correspondent for the Chicago Inter Ocean, wrote:
The largest fire ever experienced here, broke out this morning at
9 oclock in the room occupied by the C.C. Wolf jewelry store, between
South and Pearl streets on Main street, a small frame building owned by
Deniston & Van Trump, from which place it moved north and south,
licking up all buildings in its path, and leaving only a mass of
smoldering ruins, where a few hours before stood the towns business
block.
The losses, beginning at the south limit (now the Mrs. Minta
Holeman building, Levi Dry Goods store) are as follows: G.M. Sargent
building, $400; E. Flynn, saloon, $500; Mrs. L.W. Holeman and Son
building, $400; C.C. Wolf, jeweler, $1,000; G. Holzman, dry goods,
$1,000; H.B. Jamison, attorney, $100; Utopia Dancing Club, $50; Feder
& Silberberg, clothing, $1,000; Hugh Miller heirs, building, $3,200;
Creditors of William Ashton, bankrupt, $4,500; Weidner & Bailey,
saloon, $250; L.M. Downey building, $1,000; Mrs. G.L. Miller,
millinery, $100; A.T. Bitters, Rochester Sentinel, $400; Calkins &
Bick,, attorneys, $100; and notes belonging to clients, $3,000; J.
Dawson, drugs; Courthouse cost, $50. Total loss: $20,100.
Forty-five minutes after the telegram was sent to the Peru Fire
Department, a locomotive on the I.P. & C. R.R. Steamed into town,
bringing the apparatus; and Miami County firemen were at work trying
to save their neighboring city from destruction.
So great was the excitement and interest that farmers poured
into town from all the surrounding countryside. The Rochester schools
were dismissed at ten oclock in order that school children might
witness the most disasterous fire Rochester had ever known.
(9)