People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 November 1893 — A TRUE HEROINE. [ARTICLE]

A TRUE HEROINE.

la Trying to gave » Pupil a SchoolmUtresa Is Burned to Death. Nunda, N. Y.. Nov. 16 —The little school-house at Coopersville, a village 2 miles north of here, caught fire Tuesday afternoon and was totally destroyed. The teacher, May Porter, and a little boy, Willard Johnson, were caught by the flames and burned to death. Before she died Miss Porter braved death in a most horrible form to save her pupils, and it was in making a hopeless effort to rescue the boy Johnson, the last one in the building, that she lost her life. There were twenty scholars in the school Tuesday morning, and they were all at their studies shortly after the noon recess when the building was discovered in flames. The house was a frame structure, lightly built, and the fire spread with awful rapidity. | The children were panic-stricken and rushed up to the teacher’s desk, screaming and begging her to save them. So sudden was the outbreak of the flames that the teacher was for a moment paralyzed with fear. Burdened : with the struggling children, many of whom clung to her dress, she could not [ for a moment move. She recovered her presence of mind quickly, however, and began to tight her way to the door, around which the flames were already creeping. As she j reached it she saw that escape by that direction was impossible. The only j way to save the children was to I drop them out of the windows. Two of the biggest boys, Mulvin and Charley Chambers, dropped out of the window, and to them Miss Porter passed the children. One by one they were dropped out All the time the flames raged about her and the room was black with smoke, which almost stifled her.

She could easily have abandoned her pupils and saved her own life by jumping out of the window, but she remained inside heroically until all had been passed except the boy Johnson. The Chambers boys say that the iittle fellow was panic-stricken and struggled as Miss Porter stepped backward to pick him up. She was surrounded by fire, and flames were leaping from the window through which she had already passed seventeen children. Mulvin Chambers clambered up on the window sill to help her, but was driven back by the flames. He saw her with the Johnson boy in her arms. He climbed up again and saw her tatce a step forward. A great whirl of fire swept arcAmd her, and she stumbled. She made one more effort, and, as the flames drove the boy back from the window, he saw her fall, with the Johnson boy in her arms, into the very heart of the fire, and the nineteen children stood there and saw the schoolhouse reduced to ashes. The district is sparsely settled and it was some time before aid arrived. When it did come there was nothing left but the smoldering ruins. When the news of the Are once got started it traveled rapidly, and in a short time the parents of nearly all the children were gathered at the spot nearly mad with anxiety. Willing hands tore away the ruins, and in a few hours the bodies of Miss Porter and the Johnson boy were found within a yard of where the window was. They were burned beyond recognition, but the larger frame held close in its twisted and blackened arms a little body.