Photo credits: Public Domain from the files of Brookside Museum, Ballston Spa NY
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| Church Avenue looking north, 1925 |
NOTE: There is a companion video to this story available at youtube.com.
It all probably started with an overheated oil or wood stove.[1] At least that’s what they said after it was all over. 6 dead, all in one family, a destroyed house, demands better fire service. “The most terrible [tragedy] that ever occurred in this village [and it has] cast a gloom over the entire community.”[2]
Early on the morning of November 6, 1925, the Union Fire Department was alerted, and fire trucks were deployed to the scene, the home of George Kemp, his wife, and a family of 5 children. The fire department was only located on Bath Street, so it was less than a mile to the scene of the early morning (12:30 AM) fire; presumably, it would not be a long trip but factors related to a fire in later years to almost the same location may have impacted response time. The fire department was not legally obligated to deal with the fire as it was outside the “corporation” (village) of Ballston Spa. And negotiating the hills from the village to the scene of the fire was difficult for the fire apparatus, which had to use low gear just to get there.[3]
The nearest fire hydrant was a quarter-mile away, north into the village of Ballston Spa. Thus quite a distance away from the Schenectady-Ballston road, or Church Avenue, house located about two buildings south of the present Stewart’s convenience mart.4 Laying all those hoses, which were reported to be about 1000 feet in length, would certainly have taken a considerable amount of time.
When the firemen arrived, they found a “seething furnace”[5], which they were unable to enter until some of the flames and heat had been quelled. Neighbors told of one of the children in the family, Beatrice (age 16), who had climbed out of a window, her clothes afire. She screamed for a neighbor who quickly extinguished the girl’s clothes, probably saving her from death. The entire side of the house broke into flames shortly after the girl escaped.
Neighbors at the time told of a fire that seemed to center in the chimney area in the house. That led to some speculation that the fire began in the woodstove, although other reports suggested that the chimney itself was not operational; it had previously been blown down in a wind storm.[6] Yet even other reports indicated that the chimney had been repaired only two weeks ago and was functional.[7]
When firefighters were able to enter the remains of the home, they found five bodies huddled together; all were burned beyond recognition. A sixth body was found in another room of the one-story four room house. The dead were George (age 40) and Sarah Kemp (age 32-3); Mrs. Kemp’s daughters from a previous marriage, Viola (14), Carol (10), and Myrtle (9) Allen; and another child from Kemp’s earlier marriage, Marthenia (11). Identifications could only be made by size alone. The position and location of the five bodies led to the belief that the father had tried to move a chiffonier, a tall dresser often with a mirror on top, away from a window to facilitate the escape of the family but that he and the others may have been overcome before he could accomplish the task.[8] The investigators also noted that the father’s body, with his wife and three children, was in a room other than the one in which he slept, indicating that he may well have been trying to herd them to allow them to make their escape from the flames together.
Near Mr. Kemp’s body was found his revolver, as he had been a deputy sheriff for Saratoga County. All the cartridges had been discharged by the intense heat, and one of the bullets had gone through his wife’s head, probably after her death in the fire.[9]
A horrifying scene, to say the least.
In 1957, 32 years after that tragic fire, Deputy Sheriff Wendell Townley, who at the time of the fire was also the village fire chief, spoke about that night and what may have started the fire. He speculated that, based on the positions of the bodies, it was possible that the use of kerosene stoves in many rooms of the house had consumed large amounts of oxygen and that someone who was oxygen-starved may have fallen and tipped over one of the stoves. Or there may have been an accumulation of gases in the home and, when a draft of air entered the house, it may well have caused an explosion.10 But, he readily admits, we will never know what happened.
The one survivor, Beatrice, in 1957 married and living in Saratoga, really does not remember much more than the fact that she felt very lucky to have even survived the fire on that day. Her recovery was a very long one, especially when coupled with the fact that she reportedly had typhoid pneumonia when first admitted to the hospital.[11]
Reaction to the horrific fire was swift. In a day when news traveled far more slowly than in present times, the story was in newspapers far and wide. Healdsville, California, about one hour north of San Francisco, carried the story on the same day as the fire, November 6, but with a byline of Albany NY. Closer to home, Buffalo and Syracuse newspapers ran the story on their front pages, giving it top billing on the front pages. The local Albany Times Union carried the story the day after the fire, and the Schenectady Gazette ran an article a few days later about businesses in the area closing during one hour in the afternoon of the funerals as a sign of respect to the family. Hundreds of people lined the streets through which six cars carried the bodies of the dead members of the family.
The Saratogian, a local newspaper, in a rather opinion-laced article the day after the fire, stated, “Ballston Spa has been put to shame by visitors and residents of neighboring communities who have far better equipment with their inadequate firefighting equipment.” The article continued by contrasting what is to what should be. “At that time, as pedestrians heard the fire alarm, they …..would say, ‘Here comes our boys’ The trucks would then pass. With proper and up-to-date equipment, the same pedestrians could and would proudly say, ‘There goes our boys.’”[12]
The day after the fire, a group of 30-40 concerned and influential citizens of the village met to discuss fire protection in Ballston Spa. This fire plus one earlier at the Ballston Knit Glove Company had made it clear that getting to fires quickly was not happening, and access to water, especially for areas just outside the village, was a problem. There was a need for a pumper as a water supply and for a system by which volunteers could be immediately informed of the location of the event, just allowing them to reach a fire in a timely fashion. Officials who were involved in such alarm systems were present at that meeting. Fire Chief Townley stated that supplying each of the three stations in town, the Union Fire Department, the Eagle Fire Department, and the Matt Lee Fire Department, with a pumper, would cost about $20,000; many others said one pumper centrally located would suffice. A committee was established, and they were to meet the following Thursday to discuss specifics and make recommendations for upgrading fire protection in the city.[13]
About a week later, there were petitions circulating in town to ask the village Board of Trustees to call for a $20,000 bond issue to be floated at a special election. The bond would cover the cost of one pumper for the fire department, the installation of a fire alarm system, and the creation of a three-man paid fire department. However, the village trustees made it clear they did not feel the bond issue would pass as the continuing cost of maintaining the equipment and the cost of the paid firemen would be beyond what the public was willing to spend. The other question discussed by people was what to do with the three existing volunteer fire companies and whether they would even be amenable to this new plan.[14]
So what does all this tell us or, should we say, what has history taught us? There are now many more safety rules for uses of stoves in the home, particularly in light of a stove being one of the possible causes of this fire. Also, much is made in recent years of having a fire escape plan with no obstacles in the way. Maybe if the placement of the chiffonier had been different, the result of this fire, too, would have been different. And, quite obviously, fire equipment has improved dramatically, the procedures by which the fire trucks get to the location of the fire today have been improved, and most large population areas have paid employees trained to fight fires, a demand of the petitioners in Ballston Spa after this event.
Location of hydrants for access to water as well as a backup plan to use in case the hydrants are at a considerable distance become significant issues. Pumper trucks, as requested by the people in Ballston Spa village, become much more common.
And, coincidentally, six years later, July 23, 1931, the garage where George Kemp had worked, the Tuper Garage, had a fire. The garage was a couple of doors away from the Kemp house tragedy, and this fire brought back memories of that fateful night six years before. In this latest fire, a freight train blocked the roadway that the fire trucks could have used to get from the Bath Street station to the fire in the Church Avenue garage; that probably delayed the firemen by a minute or two.[15] However, “the timely arrival of the Ballston Spa fire department… prevented a serious loss.”[16] So the firemen’s arrival, although inhibited a bit, did not seem to impact the situation greatly. But, the dramatic increase in the number of cars on the road, cars filled with people who wanted to be as near to the excitement as possible, did make firefighting more difficult. And, often, drivers paid no attention to the hoses all over the roads and repeatedly drove over them! [17]So, all of the problems of firefighting are far from resolved six years after the Kemp house fire.
But, even more importantly, this fire was extinguished quite quickly with far less damage and injury partly because the fire department now had a “booster truck,” a pumper which contained water which could be used until the hoses were laid and hooked up to the hydrant well up the street.
But the road to that pumper was not without major hurdles. The village board had set up a special election to be held on December 12, 1925, just a few days over a month since the Kemp tragedy. The choice included two propositions: the purchase of 3 new trucks and the purchase of one truck, the latter of better quality than the trucks in the former proposition. Each choice was estimated to cost $20,000. Residents could vote yes or no on either or both propositions included on the ballot. Both propositions included three paid firefighters and an alarm system as well.
Much public discussion was held over what would be the best way to protect the citizens of the village and its surrounding areas. The local Ballston Spa Daily Journal was replete with opinions and advertisements for and against the propositions as well as detailed explanations of the mechanics of how to vote on December 12.[18]
One also has to wonder how much the realization that the population of the Ballston Spa area was growing after some decline during the years of World War I. From 1920-1930, the village’s population increase was more than double what it had been in the decade before the war and Saratoga County’s increase was almost four times what it had been during the same decades. Those kinds of increases would surely have been noted by the people offering services to the people in the village and beyond.[19]
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| Union Fire Station, 1910 |
There was a significant turnout on “election day,” and both propositions were resoundingly defeated: 1 truck, 53 yes to 279 no, and three trucks, 164 yes to 317 no. The prevailing reason why the one truck proposition failed seemed to lie in the fact that the decision of what make of truck should not have been pre-decided but rather left to the firemen at a later date. The three truck proposition seemed excessive to many residents; it contained too many paid firefighters and too many trucks for the village’s needs.[20]
The debate continued in the village, among the residents, and between the existing firemen. Some suggested buying two trucks; others suggested combining the three fire departments into two. In February 1926, the village board decided to offer a new proposition to the residents of the village: 3 trucks (because doing only two and thus discriminating against one of the companies could create bad feelings) and allowing the firemen with knowledge of their craft to decide on the makes for the equipment. Again, $20,000 was proposed to complete this deal in this March 1926 election. But, again, the proposition was defeated.
Laws at the time did not permit this kind of proposition to go before the public again. So the Eagle Fire Department, one of the three in the village, took the matter into their own hands. “Feeling that a great emergency exists for another winter in the matter of fire protection, we, members of the Eagle Fire Department do, therefore, volunteer with the aid and sanction of the Board of Trustees and the other hose companies, to raise by contribution and otherwise, a sum sufficient to either buy a new triple combination or new pump and chassis to put under our present equipment.”[21] They proceeded to do just so: raise money by “subscription,” or donations from the public.
On August 30, 1926, the local newspaper pictured and described the new combination pump, chemical, and hose truck, state of the art for its time, the truck that would help save lives and structures in the years to come in Ballston Spa.[22] It was not paid for, but the subscriptions had, at that point, produced enough money for the down payment.[24]
Ten months after the Kemp family tragedy and, after much discussion and interpretation, success has been attained. The fire’s aftermath had produced a change in firefighting in Ballston Spa.
1 “Only Survivor of Boston Fire is Dying,” Albany Times Union, November 7, 1925: 1
2 “Six of Kemp Family Burned to Death,” Ballston Spa Daily Journal, November 6, 1925: 1
3 “Begin Movement to Modernize Fire Department,” Saratogian, November 7, 1925: 6
4 Deeds, Thomas and Bridgett McNamara and George Kemp, May 1, 1923; Congress Gas and Oil and 180 Church Ave., August 27, 2004, Saratoga County Clerk’s Office
5 “Six Dead, One Dying, in Ballston Spa Holocaust,” Greenfield Daily Recorder, November 6, 1925: 1
6 “Only Survivor of Ballston Fire is Dying,” Albany Times Union, November 7, 1925: 1
7 “Discuss Fire Apparatus Need,” Ballston Spa Daily Journal, November 7, 1925: 1
8 “Six in Family Die in Burning Home,” Buffalo Evening News, November 6, 1925: 1
9 “Only Survivor of Ballston Fire is Dying,” Albany Times Union, November 7, 1925: 1
10 “Saratoga Woman only one of Kemp Family of 7 to Survive 1925 Ballston Fire,” Saratogian, July 3, 1957: 8
11 “Only Survivor of Boston Fire is Dying,” Albany Times Union, November 7, 1925: 1
12 “Begin Movement to Modernize Fire Department,” Saratogian, November 7, 1925: 6
13 “Begin Movement to Modernize Fire Department,” Saratogian, November 7, 1925: 6
14 “Petitions Calling for Vote on Bond Issue Circulated,” Saratogian, November 13, 1925: 6
15 “Firemen Save Tuper Garage,” Ballston Spa Daily Journal, December 8, 1931: 1
16 “Firemen Check Menacing Blaze in Tuper Garage,” Saratogian, July 23, 1931: 8
17 “Tuper Fire Brings out Auto Parade,” Ballston Spa Daily Journal, July 23, 1931: 8
18 “How to Vote on Fire Trucks,” Ballston Spa Daily Journal, December 10, 1925: 1
19 “Historical Population of Ballston Spa village for the period 1810-2014,” population.us/ny/ballston-spa and “Historical Population of Saratoga County for the period 1800-2014,” population.us/county/ny/saratoga-county
20 “Vote Down Both Firetrucks,” Ballston Spa Daily Journal, December 14, 1925: 3
21 “Eagle Fire Co A Go-Getter,” Ballston Spa Daily Journal, May 18, 1926: 3
22 “The New Fire Truck of Eagle Fire Co. No. 1 Arrives,” Ballston Spa Daily Journal, August 30, 1926: 3
23 “Fire Truck Tomorrow, “Ballston Spa Daily Journal, August 27, 1926: 5
About the author: Rick Reynolds, has been Historian for the town of Ballston, Saratoga County, NY since 2004 (rreynolds@townofballstonny.org). A teacher for almost 40 years, he was also the National American History Teacher of the Year in 2003 and one of the authors of “Wilderness to Community: The Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake Central School District” in 2005.
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