Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 January 1874 — A EIRE TRAGEDY. [ARTICLE]

A EIRE TRAGEDY.

The Wife and Daughter of Jacob Steiner Perish in the Flames of their Burning Dwelling in New York City —The Father Killed by Leaping from a Second Story Window—The Daughter Refuses to Leave the Side of her Mother and Escape Alone. Just before daybreak on the morning of the 13th of January, a laborer going to his work through Fifty-eighth street, New York, near Central Park, was startled by seeing flames and dense masses of smoke pouring from the rear windows of a brown stone mansion two blocks above, belonging to Jacob Steiner, An alarm was given and the firemen came quickly, when it was discovered thatthe mansion was thoroughly in possession of the flames, and that the only thing that could be done was to stay its progress in other directions. - ■■■ Mr. Steiner, his wife and two daughters had returned late from some place of amusement, and were in deep sleep when the Are broke out. One of the sons was awakened by the stuoke, jumped up and hurried back to his room to dress, supposing that his father, mother and sisters would be able to escape. Mr. Steiner, it seems, was awakened, and leaped from the third-story window into an area in the rear. He struck an iron fence in his descent and was instantly killed. His wife and one of his daughters were cjpsumed to cinders in their apartments. After the fire was extinguished the remains of Mrs. Steiner were found across the bed, one arm over the face as though to shut out the smoke. Her hair and features were utterly burned away. The flesh was baked dry on her jeweled hands and on her arms and bosom it was roasted. Half on the same bed, and half on a chair by its side, reclined the form of her daughter. She was even more terribly burned than her mother. Her head was also clasped by one arm, but the arm was burned almost to a cinder. On the finger bone, from which the flesh had been burned, shone a plain gold engagement ring. With the other hand she had tried to keep out the smoke by crowding a piece of the bedding into her mouth. But the fire had afterward reached her face and bosom and left hardly a semblance of humanity. The origin of the fire was supposed to have been a defective flue. In attempting to assist the inmates of the house to escape, a neighbor had called upon the deceased daughter to reach out to him and let him rescue her—which might have been done at the time—but she said she could not leave her mother to die alone. Mr. Steiner was one of the most energetic business men In Jtew York.' He was born in Bohemia, where he married at an early age. For a few years he transacted business in Jamaica, where, having lost his first wife, he married the lady whose death occurred almost simultaneously with his own. He came to New York in 1839, and in the following year heMnd his foster brother Joseph established themselves as tea merchants in a small way. The brothers remained in partnership until 1809, at which time they separated, and a sharp rivalry sprang up between them, each managing and expanding his own business, until the words “Steiner” and “tea” In New York became almost inseperably connected in the mind of the reader of signs. Their tea-stofes were always painted red, and when one of the brothers opened a new one, the other was sure to follow his example, and to plant himself within provo kingly short radge of his rival, Their custom was to reward a faithful clerk or salesman by

giving him charge of a Steiner tea-store and making him a partner, and under the Steiner name there are now in that city no fewer than fifty-eight red-fronted tea-stores, all doing a prosperous trade.