Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/494

480 found in the town records of Boston, Mr. Newhall makes the following comment:

"This order, it will be observed, is permissive rather than imperative; and there has been a question whether they did contract for an engine, or, if they did, whether the contract was ever fulfilled, for it is asserted that Boston had no engine till after the great fire in November, 1676, at which time some forty-six dwellings were destroyed, besides shops, warehouses, and 'a meeting house of considerable bigness' An opportune rain is mentioned as having done much toward arresting the flames, and some buildings were blown up. But nothing is said about an engine being there. Pemberton seems to have thought that as late as 1711 Boston had no fire engine. Yet on the 9th of March, 1702, the town voted that the selectmen should 'procure two water engines suitable for the extinguishing of fire, either by sending for them to England, or otherwise to provide them' This must have been in addition to one before had, for it was on the same day voted that 'the Selectmen are desired to get the Water Engine for the quenching of fire repaired, as also the house for keeping the same in.' Now, might not the one referred to as needing repairs in 1702 have been manufactured by Mr. Jenks, on the order of 1654? It would have been an old 'machine' to be sure, but was, no doubt, constructed in a thorough manner, and not very frequently called into use."

Mr. Caleb H. Snow, in his history of Boston, published in 1828, doubts if the engine ordered in 1654 was ever made. He states, however, that in 1679 a fire engine is mentioned as having lately come from England. If this be true, there is a bare possibility that this is the engine referred to as needing repairs in 1702.

It seems extremely doubtful whether a fire engine was manufactured for Boston as early as 1654. The town was then but twenty-four years old, and what money was not used in keeping the wolf from the door was probably fully expended in the meager village improvements and in paying men to repel the continually obnoxious Indians. The inhabitants would hardly have cared to go to the expense of buying a doubtful invention for the extinguishment of the then rarely occurring fires. Nevertheless, Mr. Jenks, from what we know of his mechanical genius, was probably fully capable of making a successful fire engine, had any of the towns in the widely separated and struggling colonies cared to buy one. Had this engine been built, it would not only have been the first made in this country, but it would have been the first one used here, many English engines being introduced later. But, as will be seen later, without taking this engine into consideration, Boston holds priority in the ownership of a fire engine. Besides authorizing the purchase of an engine