Assessing the damage

The appearance of modern Portsmouth, with its low brick buildings, is a direct result of the three December fires. The Brick Act of 1814 banned wooden construction downtown. City historic zoning still clings to the "modern" industrial image of Portsmouth forged in that era two centuries past.

We can also trace the rise of modern fire prevention from the three winter infernos. Wooden hand "pumpers" were wholly inadequate and "fire societies" usually served only members who could afford to join. Surprisingly, the main task of early volunteers was not to battle Nature, but to recoup their member’s material goods. Society members carried "bed keys" used to dissemble the valuable family bed for hasty removal. They wore black bags to carry off dishes and silver which they would protect from vandals, who some accused of setting the fires to reap the spoils. One would-be benefactor who rushed to donate $2,000 to charity found his pocket cut away and the money stolen.

Newspaper accounts document the devastation and the recovery from fire. We read about throngs of volunteers from as far away as Newburyport and Salem who rushed to spell the exhausted workers, both men and women, in the leather-bucket brigades. We can track the dollars lost as the most populated part of town burned and burned again. Damage to 200 homes and shops in 1802 came to $200,000 in dollars of that era. A document in the Portsmouth Athenaeum records charitable gifts of $45,410.43 for that fire.

A letter recently discovered in an online auction and now at the Athenaeum shows that native son Tobias Lear, former secretary to George Washington, contributed $200 to the sufferers of the fire of 1813. In his letter thanking Lear, Portsmouth’s John Langdon described the city as "a wilderness of naked chimneys". Langdon’s own mansion with its wide lawn at the corner of Court and Pleasant streets was spared, but the elderly politician was shaken. "We have great reason to fear and tremble seeing we have the Mighty hand of the God of Jacob upon us," he told Lear.

CONTINUE FIRES