Volume 2, Number 8 - Summer 1966
The Day Ben Houseman’s House Caught Fire
By Elmo Ingenthron
It was one day in the late 1890’s, when it was cold enough to warrant a hot fire in the stove, that the ordeal happened.
Ben Houseman and his most devoted wife lived in a typical log house of the times, having a clapboard roof with a stove pipe extending through the ceiling and out the roof. There was an opening in the ceiling with a ladder attached to the wall leading to the attic where the family often stored things that weren’t often used.
On that fateful day Ben Houseman and a neighbor named Charley Allen were fixing fence some distance from the house when Allen, who happened to be facing the house, noticed that the roof of Ben’s house was on fire. Allen immediately called Ben’s attention to the catastrophe, where upon they both made a run for the house in hopes of saving it. Ben dropped whatever tools he was using so not to impede his speed and raced to the house hollowing at the top of his voice to attract the attention of his wife. Charley Allen, carrying whatever tools he had in his hands, raced after Ben.
Mrs. Houseman was unaware that the roof of their house was on fire. She was attracted to the door by Ben’s cries for help where she observed her husband coming toward the house in a dead run and Charley Allen carrying something in his hands closely pursuing him.
Ben had no time to inform his wife of their dilemma and dashed through the house, up the ladder and into the attic. Just as he reached the attic, Charley Allen in great haste, entered the house.
Mrs. Houseman had hastely sized up the evidence at hand and assumed that the men had
[23]
"fallen out," about something and that a fight was imminent. Seizing a chair, she "floored" Charley Allen the instant he entered the door. Before he could rise to his feet he was clobbered again and again until finally the smell of smoke or some other circumstance brought her to the realization that the house was on fire and there was no ill feeling between the men.
Despite all the handicaps, Charley and Ben managed to knock some shingles off the roof from the attic and extinguish the fire, thus saving Ben's house.
(The above incident is an example of our pioneer women’s courage and loyalty to their menfolk.)
[24]
This volume: Next Article | Table of Contents | Other Issues
Other Volumes | Keyword Search | White River Valley Quarterly Home | Local History Home
Copyright © White River Valley Historical Quarterly
