Chatham Courier Thursday, 3/1/1934 transcribed by Michael Rivenburg

Fire at Liepshutz building started on Sunday, 2/25/1934

Valatie Fire Recalls 1888 Blizzard and Blazing Mill

Drifting Snow Formed Background of Village’s Worst Blaze When Beaver Mill Burned;
Silas Hoffman Tells Story of Long Fight in That Emergency
A shrilling siren! The midnight sky stained red! Firemen hurrying into boots and coats! A modern, complete fire
fighting equipment called into stirring, efficient action! Breath freezing into frosty visibility on the zero air! Fire in
1934! Crackling, flaming destruction in the heart of the Liepshutz building in Valatie!

Seeing the red demon eat into that structure on that zero morning nearly two weeks ago called to mind stories I
had heard of another red night, way back in 1888, when Valatie’s men of the hose were called out to fight in a
blinding snowstorm another fire that raged through the night.

And who could better tell the story of that other fire that took such heavy toil, so near to where this more recent
one happened, than Silas Hoffman, venerable man of Valatie, who, for more than fifty years now, had made his
home there, and who fought with those other brave men through that March day and night so long ago.

I found Mr. Hoffman, who is in rugged good health, despite his eighty-five winters shoveling snow. He greeted me
cordially and hospitably invited me into his home.

We sat there in the cozy comfort of his warm fire, and chatted of this and that – until the friendly talk came at last
to the thought in my mind.

In a moment I was taken back almost forty-six years as he brought me to reminiscence to that other snowy
afternoon. As he talked, such modern things as electric lights and heated automobiles faded into the white quiet
of March 12, 1888, the day of the great blizzard.

Silas Hoffman, a young man then, had just donned his great coat and boots for his walk in the lowering dusk to the
Village Engine House, where nightly it was his custom there to light the lamp.

“Outside”, Mr. Hoffman’s friendly voice went on, “a blizzard raged - already the world was shimmering white – I
drew my collar closer about my throat.”

The lamp didn’t burn that night, for his walk was interrupted by the warning cry F-I-R-E!! Beaver Mill was aflame!
Even then, it was about 5:45, nearly 150 human beings were at their work, within its walls.

The building, owned by Copeland, May and Main, in which was manufactured cotton cloth, was four stories high.
Fire had broken out, said Mr. Hoffman, in the upper story, near the stack, and was well under way when the hose
company arrived, shortly after the alarm had been sounded.

A hand pumper and two lines of hose, a far cry from today’s efficient motor equipment, was the only fire fighting
apparatus these brave men had. I thought of that recent night, as I stood on Main Street, heard the throbbing of
the pumper, gasoline driven, and saw in imagination those other men in that March of forty-six years ago,
manning their inadequate equipment, standing in a row on each side of it’s clumsy bulk, pumping up and down –
up and down, to bring the saving water to play on the flames – all through that long night.

How times have changed! Man has, through the years of struggle, by invention and diligence, made his work so
much easier and more efficient!

Due to the intensity of the fire, it was impossible, Mr. Hoffman said, to reach the pump in the mill. The nearby
pond was frozen thick and when, after laboriously breaking through the ice, it was found that there was
practically no water there, it was necessary to go to the Davis mill and raise the gates to let water down – but too
late – the mill was a raging furnace – lost! Fortunately, all the mill hands were by now free of the building.

Meantime, the sky flamed crimson, visible miles away. Over in Kinderhook, where there was at that time a story
going about that the world was coming to an end, fear gripped many of the villagers. Cut off by everything by the
storm which had blocked all avenues of communication, in the utter dark, Kinderhook folks viewed the snow, on
which was reflected the ruby glare of the fire, of which they knew nothing as yet, with something akin to horror.
The world was, in truth, coming to an end!

We chuckled, my narrator and I, over the story of a man living out beyond Brightfields, where the red reflection
also reached. His brother called to him as he sat reading “The living room is afire!” Without investigating, so very
real seemed the glare surrounding them, he thereupon threw a pail of water into the living room.

All through the night the firemen fought against tremendous odds – too little pressure for the hose – in snow like
hail cutting their streaming faces – wind howling about them – hampering their movement – icicles freezing in
their beards, on their chins, clinging to their clothes – bravely to conquer this enemy of mankind, but to no avail.

Mr. Hoffman here remembered the incident that sent him home that night. On his ascent of the fire escape on
the outside of the blazing building, he was deluged with icy water – “I froze stiff, all in a moment, and stood there
on that fire escape, like a tree,” smiled Mr. Hoffman in amused remembering. “And I had to go home then”, this
last regretfully.

To my inquiry as to whether help was summoned from the outside, Mr. Hoffman said that, due to the severity of
the storm, which raged for more than thirty-six hours, all telegraph wires were down, and all means of
communication blocked, making a call for assistance impossible.

Only one near incident threatened the firemen, Mr. Hoffman said, when the east wall of the gutted building fell
outward with a resounding crash. No man was injured, however, and the remaining walls, which fell later, toppled
inward.

The charred and crumbling ruins of the Beaver Mill stood there for many years, bleak reminders of Valatie’s
greatest fire, and the great blizzard of ’88 – removed only in recent years for the erection of a spill way by the
Valatie Mills.

The dying light of the late afternoon reminded me of work still undone, and I took my leave of my gracious and
kindly host, Silas Hoffman, whose remembering had taken me back again to the days of long ago.