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Show Volunteer Fireman True Public Spirit of the First i President Is Shown in Significant Signi-ficant A tf ion Recorded One of the facts in the history of George Washington which most historians his-torians fail to mention is that he was a volunteer fireman. About 1750 he enrolled himself in the volunteer fire company at Alexandria, Va. It is related that on more than one occasion when Washington learned that there was a fire in the vicinity of Alexandia which had called out the firemen he mounted his horse and rode thither from Mount Vernon. The records of the place show that when the volunteer fire department was organized or-ganized each member agreed "out of mutual friendship" to carry to every fire "two leathern buckets and one great bag of oznaburg or wider linen," which was the primitive means of extinguishing ex-tinguishing a fire. The Friendship Fire company of Alexandria was organized in 1774, at which time Washington was a delegate dele-gate to the Continental congress in Philadelphia. The members of the company, remembering Washington's former services as a fireman, elected him an honorary member at their first meeting, and forwarded him a copy of the minutes. To show his appreciation of the compliment, he at once made a thorough thor-ough inspection of the different kinds of fire engines in use in Philadelphia, and upon his second return there in 1775, he bought from one Gibbs a small fourth-class engine for 80 pounds and ten shillings, and just before be-fore he set out for Boston to become commander-in-chief of the Continental Continen-tal army sent this little engine as a present to the Friendship company. Washington did not lose his interest inter-est in fire matters through his elevation eleva-tion to position and power. Upon his retirement to Mount Vernon, after his second term as president, and when his fame spread around the world, ' he continued to take active interest in the volunteer fire department, and aided it in many ways. |
