Rensselaer Republican, Volume 28, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 December 1896 — Wash ngton as Fireman. [ARTICLE]

Wash ngton as Fireman.

Some interesting little stories are told of George Washington in connection — “with the “Friendship Fire Company,” organized in 1774, in his home, Alexandria. At first the company consisted of citizens wlio, out of “mutual friendship,” agreed to carry to every fire “two leathern buckets and one great bag of oznaburg or wider linneu.” Washington was made an honorary member, j and when he went as a delegate to the Congress of 1774 at Philadelphia, he examined the fire-engines in use there. On his return to Philadelphia to the Continental Congress in 1775, he bought from a man named Gibbs a small fourth-class engine, for the sum of eighty pounds'ten shillings, and just before lie set out for Boston Heights to become commander-in-chief, he dispatched this little engine to the Friendship gomp;|ny. During his younger days he always attended fires in Alexandria and helped to extinguish them. In the last year of his life a fire occurred near the market.' lie was riding down King street at the time, followed by his servant, who was alsq on horseback. Washington saw that the Friendship engine was insufficiently planned, and > riding up- to a group of well-dressed gentlemen standing near the scene of action, he called out authoritatively: “Why are you idle there, gentlemen? It in your business to lead in these matters.” After which he leaped off his horse, • and, seizing the brakes, was followed by a crowd that gave tire engine such a, shaking up as it had not had for many a day.