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Transcript

The Suvivors

Of the Peshtigo Fire

Mathias M'leziva

Mathias M'leziva and his wife, Anna, immigrated to the U.S from Bohemia (Czech Republic). They settled near Brussels, Wisconsin and they began a homestead. The story goes that Mathias left on foot to travel near West Kewaunee to look for a job. When he returned home, he found his family dead, badly burned, hanging over a fence with two piglets in sacks on their backs. After that, Mathias refused to go back to that area ever again. He remarried in 1881.

Flora and Thomas Frank

Flora and her husband came back to Peshtigo from Vesper Services on October 8th the same day the fire started. They noticed extreme heat and yelled, "Oh my, we're in for an awful siege." Flora and Thomas burried their one prize item, a tool chest, because he was a carpenter. The tool chest after the fire was their only possesion. They survived the fire by going into the river and staying in the river for the next day and night. After the fire all they had to eat was a dead cow but, they were afraid it spoiled in the heat of the fire.

Augusta Bruce

Augusta Bruce was born August 4th, 1869

in Washington Island, Door County. The

Bruce Family moved to Peshtigo before the

fire. When the fire began, they took cover in

the Peshtigo River. Augusta remembered her

dad telling her about the fire and how it

claimed 1,000 lives. After the fire, Augusta

and her family moved to Green Bay.

In 1886 she married Henry Bruce, a

timbercamp foreman. In 1909 Henry

and Augusta moved to Park Falls,

Wisconsin. Henry died in 1940.

Augusta Bruce moved to California

after his death. She returned to Wis-

consin a short time later. She died at

the age of 104.

David Carter

David Carter was 21when the Great Pehtigo Fire started. He took refuge in the river during the fire. After the fire he moved to Marinette and stayed there until he died.

Bagnall Family

The Bagnall family moved to Peshtigo because they wanted to make it easier to get milk for their baby. After they survived the Peshtigo fire, they helped clean up other dead bodies and took and cared for a family that was badly burned, until they recovered.

Joseph Duffeler

Joseph Duffeler was a Belgian and a beekeeper. His wife was Amelie. They had three daughters, ages 21, 19, and 14. It's not stated how Joseph and his family escaped the fire, but he left a little tin can time capsle. "It must have been a demostration that, 'Yes, we're survivors and we rebuilt our lives.'"

There was an article for the August 1874 American Bee Journal shows that h was struggling to keep his bees living after the burning of his farm, because his bees had develped dysentery. After that, he omved to South Dakota. In 1903, Duffeler came back to Green Bay to visit some family. While therehe got hit by a streetcar and died sometime afterwards from troubles after the amputation of one of his feet.

Charlie

Coon

Charlie Coon lived in Peshtigo during the fire. He lived there with his little boys. Sadly, they all died in the fire. Charlie's sister, Martha Coon, wrote a letter talking about the experiance. This is how it goes,

"Oh what a horribledeath. There was a tornado of fire swept over the farming district and on us very suddenly; Charlie and his family had to flee."

Charlie and his boys tried to save themselves by jumping on a little pool. They didn't make it.

Survivor Tidbits

Some survivors said the fire moved like a tornado. Some people trying to flee the fire, burst into flames. There was a story about a man who thought he was carrying his wife to safty at the river, then he went crazy because he found out the woman wasn't his wife. There is a story about a thirteen-year-old German immigrant girl who survived the fire by holding onto the horn of a cow in teh Peshtigo River.

When news of the fire reached Madison, on October 10, 1871, Governor Fairchild was away at Chicago helping out there. Frances Fairchild, the governor's wife, heard about the fire, and commanded a boxcar full of supplies that were headed to Chicago, to Peshtigo instead.

The

End

(cc) photo by Metro Centric on Flickr

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