Thursday, August 15, 1901
BIG FIRE IN MARLINTON
Friday, near noon, fire broke out in the kitchen of Samuel Cooper’s above the store of Samuel Cooper & Co. Cooking was being done by means of a stove heated by kerosene oil. Miss Rose Cooper was gone from the room some minutes, and when she came back, the room was a sheet of flame.
When the alarm was given the fire did not show on the outside, but a thin curl of smoke forced itself from the eaves of the building. There were no ladders or buckets available. And practically no water. Men jumped around like shot on a shovel and yelled different orders. A few buckets were obtained and one ladder, but the flames were bursting through the windows, and it was plain to be seen that the block would be burned.
It consisted of a Marlinton skyscraper 20 x 80 feet, a residence annex occupied by the owner, an icehouse and large stable. Boyd Bartlett’s house was 20 feet to the north, the fine three-story brick block of the Bank of Marlinton 70 feet south.
The large stores of A. Harrison & Co. and B. F. Hamilton were about the same distance on either side.
The nearest exposure was the acetylene gas plant of the Bank of Marlinton, 10 feet of the burning wall of the building. The retorts were full of gas. The lock was knocked away with an ax, and a ton of calcium carbide was carried out, and the plumber, B. B. Slaven went in and cut the pipes liberating the gas. The building was burned down shortly.
Hundreds of people collected and carried out store goods and furniture. The day was still, and the fire and smoke ascended, and, while the heat was stifling, the flames did not spread. A number of persons were prostrated by the heat and their exertions.
Boyd Bartlett’s house was nearest and caught time and again and was given up by all except Track Supervisor Anderson of the C & O Railway. He returned to the fight and succeeded in saving the cottage by a fine display of pluck.
A one-armed man by the name of Charles Maher brought six kegs of explosive powder out of the store.
The fire did not spread. It began at 11:45 and by 1 o’clock it was dying down…
PRISONERS GET GAY
Last Wednesday night before the customary time for the jailer, J. A. Sharp, to lock each one of his charges up in his little cell and hear him say his “now I lay me,” word was brought to him that the prisoners were breaking jail. He has a little class of eight which he pronounces as being the worst combination he has ever had to work with. He took Will Burns with him and stationed him at the door and went in.
The prisoners had punched a hole in the cement floor between the first and second stories of the cells and had gathered upstairs where Jerome Kellison and Houston Fogus are confined. When so ordered, the proper ones crawled down through the aperture they had made, and they were locked in their respective cells…
LETTER FROM BALTIMORE
Dear Pocahontas Times:
I wish I knew how to write you a real nice, good letter to tell how I thank you for your weekly visit to 438 E 22. Street. You take me up out of this hot, dry, dusty conglomeration of asphalt, red and yellow bricks, enlivened by the music of numberless flies and the now famous mosquitoes and other semi-tropical luxuries, to the sweet cool green mountains, with their soft azure background, their silvery cascades, their rich embroidery of many-hued flowers. Oh, it is a luxury to breathe that delicious atmosphere, even in imagination!
SNAKE COMMITS SUICIDE
The fine black rattlesnake which was taken by means of a dull and put on exhibition in the window of Echols’ drug store, tired of a life of confinement last week and struck itself with its fangs and died.
It has been an open question with naturalists whether snakes deliberately commit suicide. It is well known that when desperately wounded, they strike themselves in the paroxysm of pain or fright. This, however, is a case in which the snake, kindly treated and in good quarters, killed itself. It was found with its fangs still in the wound.
