Detroit, MI Detroit Gazette Office Fire, Apr 1830

A fire broke out in the Detroit Gazette office, on Griswold Street, about 8 o’clock of an April day in the year 1830. The building was destroyed. F. & T. Palmer’s brick store was damaged and the wooden kitchen and carriage house adjoining, on the corner of Jefferson Avenue and Griswold Street, were destroyed. as well. as the wooden dwelling of Judge John McDonnell, adjoining Palmer’s, on Jefferson Avenue. Dr. Thos. B. Clark had his office and a small stock of drugs and medicines in a small building next to McDonnell’s, which was pulled into the street by the citizens to prevent the fire from extending to Major Dequindre’s wooden store and dwelling adjoining it.

This was about the first fire of any consequence that had visited Detroit for some years. Happening, as it did, in the office of the only paper published in Michigan at that time, and threatening the destruction of one of the few brick buildings in the town occupied as a store and residence by a prominent citizen, it brought to the scene nearly the entire community. All joined in, men, women and children, to assist the firemen; also to assist in saving property, furniture, etc.

Many of the first ladies of the city worked like heroines, passing buckets to the fire brigade, and aiding the Palmers and McDonnells in saving as many of their effects as possible. People became almost beside themselves, and there was wild excitement for a time. I remember quite well seeing men throwing looking glasses and frail furniture out of the windows, and carrying feather beds down stairs, and depositing them out of reach of all possible harm.

Thomas Palmer had disposed of the remaining stock of the old firm to Phineas Davis, so was not much of a loser. What losses the other sufferers sustained I do not know.

BEER RAN IN THE DITCH.

Jack Smith’s dwelling, on the corner of Griswold and Woodbridge Streets, was also destroyed, with the stable in the rear. In the lower part of the McDonnell house was the hat store of H. Griswold and auction house of Colonel Edward Brooks. Thos. Owen, the brewer, had about 300 barrels of beer in McDonnell’s cellar which, I think, was a total loss. Beer ran down Griswold Street gutter nearly all the next day—a great chance for free lager. The fire was the work of a drunken or crazy printer (Ulysses J. Smith), who pretended to have some grievance against Sheldon & Reed, the proprietors of the Gazette.

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