Description:
Leather fire bucket with the top rim painted reddish-brown, over a large scene with a banner encircling an urn on a square plinth, in red, yellow, brown, black and gold. The banner is inscribed, "PROTECTION/ IN DANGER/ JOHN HURD./ No. 1"; and the urn is inscribed with a "W" (this may be a designation for the Washington Fire Society of Charlestown, Massachusetts), and the plinth with the date, "1814." The back of the bucket is covered with black paint and has impressed stamps on the seam lines: "A. C./ I.FENNO" and "I.FENNO" (maker), and "Charlestown" painted in yellow. The cylindrical container has a thick leather-covered handle attached to bucket's shaped leather-covered iron rim with two iron rings, and is held together with vertical stitching on one side. John Hurd (1789-1862), the bucket's owner, was a direct descendent of Jacob Hurd and Benjamin Hurd of Charlestown, and a merchant and partner in the Charlestown firm of Skinner & Hurd in the West-India goods business. Given the “W”-marked urn, it is possible that Hurd belonged to the Washington Fire Society, organized in 1800. Danger from fires pervaded early American life. James Hunnewell writes in "A Century of Town Life: A History of Charlestown, Massachusetts, 1775-1887" (Boston, 1888): "The old Fire Societies were formed and maintained for the public or social good...There were three organised after the Revolution, the Phoenix (1795), the Washington (1800), and the Jefferson (1810). The oldest was, however, the Ancient, instituted Nov. 8, 1743, composed of householders acting for mutual protection or aid, and maintained until paid public companies took place of such early and more restricted associations...Each member was obliged to keep two leather buckets, two bags (1 1/2 x 3/4 yd.) with his name on them, and a bed-key and, on notice of a fire must 'repair with his bucket, bags, and key, to the place where it happens' and 'use his best endeavors' to save the property of the members." As early as 1686, each NYC household "having two chimneys to his house provide one bucket", and a baker had to have three and a brewer six. In Boston and elsewhere, townspeople were ordered to place buckets of water on their doorsteps at sunset in case of predawn fires. These first buckets were made by shoemakers, who used vegetable tannins as a preservative to render leather hides pliable when dry and resistant to water and rot, and then hand-sewed the buckets, each about three gallons in size. Since people were often required to buy their own buckets, they were well-marked to make sure that they returned to their owner after the fire was out. Buckets were often decorated with the owner's name, address, type of business, dates, and sometimes family coat of arms. Early fire-fighting companies also owned their own buckets, often elaborately painted with insignia and the names of their volunteer organizations. A related fire bucket with "Protection in Danger" motto and urn with "W" on plinth is in the collection of the Chipstone Foundation, Milwaukee, 1996.81, and was made for Samuel Kidder and dated 1800.
Label Text:
Fire buckets became essential and ubiquitous safety equipment in almost every household. It was common practice to keep these containers near the entranceway of one’s home. Constructed of leather with leather-covered rope handles, fire buckets held between two and three gallons of water. Rolled up in each bucket would also have been a large coarse linen bag used to quickly gather up and remove possessions from a burning structure. Fire buckets and bags were typically the property of individual people and their names and bucket number were painted on the side. Once an outbreak of fire occurred, a “bucket brigade” was formed. It consisted of two lines of people extending from either a town well or nearby resident’s well to the fire. Buckets of water were passed down the first line to the fire and empty buckets were returned via the second line back to the well to be refilled. Having a name on the fire bucket allowed for its return to the rightful owner after it was used communally to fight a blaze.
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