Excerpt from The Colt Fire
As Amanda stared at the black smoke rising in the gray dawn, a feeling of dread came over her. Sammy! He had gone to Colt’s hoping to start his new job. And now the armory was on fire. Amanda found herself running as fast as she could. She had to make sure that Sammy was all right.
“What’s all the commotion?” called a woman who had come out onto her porch in her nightgown. She looked bewildered, as if she had just gotten up.
“Fire at the armory!” Amanda called without stopping.
“Fire? At Colt’s? Why aren’t the church bells ringing?” Without stopping to put on an overcoat the woman ran into the street.
As if in response to her comment, the bells of a distant church began to peal. Almost immediately a second church bell picked up the warning, and within a few minutes all of the churches in Hartford were ringing out the news of the fire.
Even though it was after eight o’clock, there wasn’t much traffic on the streets. Amanda would have preferred to hitch a ride but the only wagon she saw was delivering milk, and the driver didn’t seem to notice the fire alarm. Amanda decided she would run all the way if she had to.
It was twelve blocks to the armory. At first she kept a strong pace, but the cold air made her lungs ache, and she knew that it would be impossible to run all the way without stopping. By the time Amanda rounded the corner onto Charter Oak Avenue, her legs were throbbing. In the middle of the next block she developed a cramp, and had to slow down. At the corner of Union Street she was feeling faint, her lungs raw with pain. She stopped, gasping for breath, tears running down her cheeks. She closed her eyes, bent over, and tried to slow her forced breathing.
After a while she opened her eyes. As she did, she saw a fire engine company coming towards her. Pulled by volunteers, the Charter Oak steamer was not making great speed, but Amanda was so glad to see them that she didn’t even think about how slowly the men were going on the icy road. As the firemen ran past her, her excitement returned and she forgot about her aching lungs. She started to run again, but slipped on the ice and fell, tearing her dress and bruising her cheek on the frozen ground. Undaunted, she got up and continued on towards the armory.
The Coltsville Fire is illustrated by Stacey Peterson. Each chapter comes with its own drawing, and the story has its own distinctive logo.
Note: This story comes with a separate history page about Samuel Colt.
Teacher's Guide
The Colt fire was a real event. On Friday, February 5, 1864, at about 8:15 the steam gong at Colt Patent Firearms in the South Meadows in Hartford, Connecticut began blaring out the horrible news that the armory was on fire. The fire seems to have started on the third floor in or near the polishing room.
A number of factors contributed to the rapid spread of the blaze: there was a lot of cotton material in the polishing room that quickly caught fire, the wooden floors were soaked with oil and grease, and the roof timbers were exposed and so dry that when the flames reached the roof, the fire spread quickly and the eastern wing of the armory was doomed. By 9:00 the blue onion dome collapsed and in another hour the walls had fallen in. The ruins continued to smolder all that day and the fire companies stayed into the night to ensure that the fire didn’t restart.
The Hartford Fire Department was ill–equipped to fight the fire. Ladders used to help rescue the workers were not tall enough to reach the second floor, the water pressure in the hydrants was not strong enough to supply the hoses, and most of the firemen were untrained volunteers. Even the response time was poor, as the fire engines were pulled by the firemen themselves, and on the icy February streets this was a challenging task.
As a result of the fire the Hartford Fire Department was reorganized. A full time staff was hired, horses were acquired to pull the engines, and new equipment was purchased. The Colt armory was rebuilt according to safety standards that made it one of the best working environments in the world.
Much of this story has been written using the newspaper accounts of the
Hartford Courant. The characters are all fictional although every effort has been made to make the characters as historically accurate as possible.
