Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1893 — BIG BLAZE AT HANNIBAL. [ARTICLE]

BIG BLAZE AT HANNIBAL.

Property Worth 8265,000. Wiped Out— Help from Quincy. The total loss by Saturday night's fire at Hannibal, Mo., foots up to if265,000, on which there is insurance aggregating $155,000. The fire broke out about 6 o'clock and resulted from the explosion of a lamp in the establishment of the Williams-Voorhis Dry-Goods company, the largest store in the city, occupying a three-stury block on the corner of Main and Church streets. In ten minutes the building was a mass of flames, and the gale which prevailed carried the fire through the block and across the street. The Hannibal fire department was helpless, and two steamers from Quincy, 111., were fighting the flames within an hour after the lamp explosion. The combined forces were only able to confine the flames to the. blocks first visited. The telegraph and telephone lines were inoperative, and the storm of ice and sleet which followed further crippled the wires in all directions.

A verdict was rendered in Brooklyn for $17,000 against S. V. White & Co., the brokers, in favor of Eugene Palmer, who charges that he lost that amount in a transaction with White's Chicago house.