Description:
Leather fire bucket marked "H. Stebbins" and "2", which may have belong to Henry Stebbins (1806-1870) son of Asa (1767-1844), but there is no proof. The bucket was given to the donor in 1951 by a Mrs. Elizabeth Brackett Alsberg; the Bracketts (old Marblehead family) had it for many years and used it to hold kindling by the fireplace. Much of the paint is missing due to the fact the bucket fell into a burning fire and got scorched. 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. The cylindrical container's handle is missing,; it is held together with vertical stitching on one side. 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.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+81.073 |
