Firestorm

October 1871 — 149 years ago. The small family of Engelbert and Barbara Zeiser and their children had recently moved from their home in Pennsylvania to the bustling frontier town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin.

All through the late summer and early autumn the skies had been hazy and the air smelled of smoke. On the edges of the Zeiser property lay piles of tinder dry slash. Just a generation before, the land they had purchased to farm had been solid forest. Before a plow could be sunk into the rich, but thin forest soil, hundreds of stumps needed to be pulled up and/or dynamited. Hard and dangerous work.

On the night of October 8, the Zeiser’s world exploded. The many little fires that had been burning throughout the previous unseasonably hot and dry weeks coalesced into a monster. There was just time to put as many family possessions as possible into the root cellar and head for safety. The family was fortunate. They survived. Somewhere between 1,200 and 2,000 people did not. And while the family’s possessions in the root cellar also survived, their homestead did not. So they packed up what remained and moved to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where a year layer, their daughter Emma, my grandmother was born.

Today, on my shelf sits a teapot. It is black, ornamented with medallions of enameled flowers. Teapots like it were made by the tens of thousands in England for export to America, where the teapots, cups, and saucers were sold cheap. I could walk into just about any decent antique store and find a twin to my teapot for about $40.00. Ah, but mine is unique. It survived the Peshtigo fire.