News: Willard - Clair fire (07 Jan 1910)

Contact: Stan
Email: stan@wiclarkcountyhistory.org 

Surnames: Clair, Dammeier, Altenbern

----Source: Greenwood Gleaner (Greenwood, Clark Co., Wis.) (13 Jan 1910)

Last Friday afternoon the little home of A.L. Clair, with its entire contents of household goods, was totally destroyed by fire at Willard.

Mr. Clair had gone to Neillsville that morning to be in attendance at the school convention, which was being held there Friday and Saturday, while Mrs. Clair, at the time of the fire, was watering the stock. The time being about two-thirty o'clock, when she thought she heard a crackling sound, such as a fire always makes, and opened the kitchen door to investigate, when she was greeted with a dense cloud of smoke. Terribly frightened and almost frantic for the safety of her little ones, whom she had left playing in the kitchen, Mrs. Clair rushed into the smoke filled room, and but for the great presence of mind of the older child, there is no doubt but what the two children would have suffocated from the smoke long before the mother knew that there was a fire about to destroy their little home.

Little Allen is only about four years old, but with all the strength he could muster into his little body he put forth in his heroic and successful effort in dragging his little eighteen-month-old sister into another room and out of danger as he supposed, and it was there that the mother found them. Taking the children in her arms, Mrs. Clair rushed from the house and spread the alarm, and immediately a gang of twelve sturdy men who were working nearby, promptly answered to the call, and they, with several others, worked valiantly to subdue the flames, but they had gained too much of a head start and could not be checked; all that could be done was to silently watch the work of destruction.

The homeless people were taken into the home of Mr. and Mrs. William Dammeier, where they were made welcome and given most comfortable quarters, and where they will live until other shelter can be provided for them.

The loss is a total one and the family has the sympathy, in a most subatantial way, of every person in their immediate neighborhood, and through the agency of A.C. Altenbern, the Greenwood citizens also contribute generously to their needs.

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