By Brendan Denehy
BROOKLINE, NH – April 27th marks the 102nd anniversary of one of the largest fires in Brookline history. Five houses were destroyed, several more were damaged, but without the efforts of local fire fighters and volunteers the devastation could have been much worse.
Growing up, I was aware that there had been a big fire in town. My great-grandparents Joe and Marie Ouellette lived on Canal Street for many years and had just moved to Mason Road a few years before; the Canal Street house they had rented burned in the fire. My grandparents Wilfred and Alvina Soucy were living at 11 Meetinghouse Hill Road. One of the family stories is how Alvina’s 18-year-old brother Leo Ouellette ran out of this house, slipped on a cooling pot of chicken fat, and fought the fire covered in chicken grease. But until I researched this fire further, I had no idea how devastating it truly was, and how close the whole town had come to disaster.
According to the April 28, 1923 Nashua Telegraph, a young boy playing with matches started the fire about 2pm the day before. Mrs. Mary Homoliski found and rescued the boy but by then the fire was quickly spreading, driven by a high wind. Soon the shed and adjacent home were ablaze. News of the fire also quickly spread as the ringing of church bells and the shrieks of the steam whistles at the Fresh Pond Ice House and the O. D. Fessenden mills alerted residents throughout town that something was very wrong.
Brookline’s volunteer Fire Department at that time had limited equipment to fight such a conflagration. It consisted of the 1919 Ford Model T pumper, and two “hand tubs”, which were powered by firefighters and volunteers pushing up and down on long handles to create a stream of water. Fortunately, the Nissitissit River was close enough to provide a steady supply of water. Also, trucks from Pepperell and Milford responded as quickly as the muddy roads allowed. As a comparison, the 1919 truck could pump about 250 gallons of water per minute; one of Brookline’s current trucks can pump 1,500-2,000 gallons per minute.
It was soon clear that the first house and another large one adjacent could not be saved. The focus then became ensuring that the fire did not spread. In the closely packed village, an additional dozen homes did catch fire as the wind sent embers and debris into the air; many feared the whole village would be lost. One thing that helped save these houses was that the Ice House employees wore spiked boots. This allowed these men to climb steep roofs and put out embers from the fire, keeping it from spreading further.
At the end of the day, four houses were destroyed, and one was badly damaged. Most of these houses were never rebuilt, and until recently the foundations could still be seen. Fortunately, no one died and there are no reports of injuries. The Ice House provided their dormitory building (now Camp Tevya’s Dining Hall) for the newly homeless to stay in that night.
In researching this story, I found the following statement in the Milford Cabinet newspaper responding to criticism that the Milford fire truck was sent to Brookline: “Nobody wants to see the home fire station left without a ladder, a reel of hose, or a man. But the person who would refuse all possible help to a neighboring town in distress is a curious individual who ought to be living in a cave in the primitive days before civilized men learned to count on mutual assistance in time of trouble.” This is as true today as it was over one hundred years ago.
Hollis Brookline News
By Brendan Denehy
April 24, 2025
https://hollisbrooklinenews.org/the-revolutionaries-of-raby-nh-introduction-p10771-297.htm