The Anthony Waynes and the rival companies

1839–1874 · THE VOLUNTEER ERA

The first fire house: Five years after the 1834 organization, the town leased from William G. Ewing, for three years at six dollars a year, a part of lot 70 of the original plat, at the northeast corner of Clinton and Main streets, and there the first fire house was erected. The original company was reorganized there; its 1839 membership roll reads like the town's directory of leading men — Francis Comparet, Hugh McCulloch, Samuel Hanna, William Rockhill, Thomas Hamilton, Samuel Edsall, Robert Brackenridge Jr. and some fifty more. A marker at the first Central Fire House site dates "the first volunteer fire company" to 1839; Griswold's account gives the paper organization of 1833–34 and the reorganization of 1839 that built the house, and the two datings are printed here as the record gives them.

The Anthony Waynes: In 1841 the reorganized company was blended into the famous "Anthony Waynes," the first Fort Wayne company to be equipped with apparatus: a Jeffries "gallery" engine with side brakes, and a two-wheeled cart carrying about five hundred feet of riveted leather hose, quartered in the Ewing-lot fire house. In November 1845 the council contracted with Mason and Rose and O. P. Silver to build a new engine house on city property for $337.78, Mayor M. W. Huxford superintending; the old house was sold, and the company received $25 a year "for keeping the engine in order." A carriage for the hooks and ladders followed in April 1846.

The Hermans: In June 1848 a second company, the "Hermans," was formed of the city's German citizens, and the council voted to put the fire engine "in possession of some of our German citizens who are to organize themselves into a fire company and work the old engine until the city can procure a new one." The Hermans headquartered on the west side of Clinton street, north of Berry. In 1849, on the agent Lewis Wolke's errand, the city bought an improved side-brake hand engine from L. Button and Company of Waterford, New York; John A. Colerick's inspection the same year reported engine No. 1 "greatly out of repair," and George Buchanan and Socrates Bacon rebuilt it for $268.

The company system: The 1850s and 1860s multiplied companies until firefighting was a system of rival clubs. The Alert engine and hose company and the Mechanics engine and hose company were both organized in 1856; the Wideawake fire company in 1858; the Protection engine and hose company late in 1859, the year the council also created the Fort Wayne Fire Association — seven members from each company, Alerts, Mechanics and Wideawakes — "with the purpose of adopting uniform and harmonizing rules for fire-fighting." The Torrent engine and hose company followed in 1860 by Griswold's account (the Torrents' own letter in the Sentinel of 22 May 1878 dates their organization to 1873 — a reorganization or an error, printed here as found); the Eagle engine company and the Protection engine company were organized in 1863. Griswold, looking back, names the Mechanics, the Alerts, the Vigilants, the Ed Slocum and the Eagle organizations as "rivals for the highest honors of the times" — companies that raced each other to fires, guarded their honors at parades, and quarreled in the newspapers. In 1874 the system cracked: the Vigilants and the Torrents withdrew from the department and formed an independent company, the United Vigilants and Torrents, while the Mechanics company was organized as part of the city department.

Sources:

1. Griswold, Pictorial History (1917), Ch. XXV — the Ewing lease, the 1839 roll, the Anthony Waynes' apparatus, the 1845 engine house, the Hermans, the Button engine, and the company organizations of 1856–1874.
2. Historical Marker Database, inscription of the first Central Fire House marker (the 1839 dating and the 1860 house), as reproduced on the Allen County Genealogical Society's fire-station pages (acgsi.org).
3. Donald A. Weber, History of the Fort Wayne Fire Department: Extracts from Fort Wayne, Indiana, Newspapers, Part 3 — the Torrents' letter, Fort Wayne Daily Sentinel, 22 May 1878.