Middlebury, Vermont, USA (East Middlebury) (Farmingdale)
1816 - Middlebury, Vermont, May 8. GREAT FIRE!
At 2 o'clock on Sunday morning last, the inhabitants of this Village were called to witness the most destructive fire with which we were ever visited. - It commenced in the kitchen of Mr. Campbell's Hotel, lately occupied, and still owned by Mr. Heart, and spread, with astonishing rapidity to the body of the house, on the one hand, and the outhouses and barns on the other, until the whole presented one entire sheet of flame. The wind blowing fresh from the southeast, very soon communicated the flames to the adjoining dwelling house of Samuel Mattocks, Esq. from which they extended to the large building containing the store of Messrs. Hagar & Ripley, the office of B. Parks, Esq. the printing office of Timothy C. Strong, the goldsmith's shop of Edward Eells, together with a tailor's and a shoemaker's shop, and a spacious lodge room; extending back, at the same time to two barns belonging to Mr. Mattocks, and one of Mrs. Miller.
It is a fact, disgraceful to our village, that after repeated visitations of this awful calamity, we remain without an organized fire company, without fire-hooks, without ladders, without buckets, a very few excepted, and without an ENGINE!
The whole loss of property in this conflagration cannot be estimated at less than ten thousand dollars. Of this $2000 was insured to Benj. Heart, on the Hotel by the Hartford Insurance Company.
Albany Advertiser
Albany, New York
May 10, 1816
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