Stop 1 – The Origins of Fire Departments
FROM BUCKET BRIGADE TO THE FIRE HOSE
Welcome to the museum. Let's start at the very beginning.
For most of its early history, the United States had no professional firefighters. Government-run fire departments didn't really appear until around the time of the Civil War. Before that, fighting fires was up to amateur fire brigades, and they would race each other to be first on the scene, because insurance companies paid the brigade that saved the building.
Some very famous Americans served as volunteer firefighters. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Paul Revere were all among them. So were Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and even Benedict Arnold, along with Presidents James Buchanan and Millard Fillmore.
As Americans moved west, they brought the idea of volunteer fire companies with them, and many early departments were organized just like the ones back east.
The red stamp on this panel was issued by the Post Office in October of nineteen forty-eight, marking three hundred years of volunteer firefighting in America. The portrait is Peter Stuyvesant, who organized the first volunteer firefighters in the country.
SETTLING NEBRASKA CITY AND THE BUCKET BRIGADE
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was signed in eighteen fifty-four, opening the territory to settlement. On July tenth of that year, the first survey stake was driven, marking the founding of Nebraska City, and by the following March the town was officially platted.
Nebraska City became a jumping-off point for the Overland Trails to California, Oregon, Utah, and the mining fields. People were always coming and going, and that constant turnover made life hard for the town's early fire companies.
In eighteen fifty-six, just two years after the city was settled, A. F. Mollring organized the first bucket brigade, in the neighborhood known as Kearney Heights. It became the first fire department in the Nebraska Territory, and later in the State of Nebraska.
Their equipment was simple: twelve short ladders and a supply of leather buckets, placed around the business district. When a fire broke out, volunteers and any able-bodied citizens formed two lines. One line passed full buckets from a stock tank or stream to the fire. The other passed the empty buckets back to be refilled. Even so, losses were often heavy.
Those early companies usually lasted only three to five years before members moved on or disagreed and the company broke up. But each time, other citizens stepped up, re-formed the company, and carried on.