By Peter F. Stevens

At 6:50 a.m. on February 3, 1896, locals gaped at Meeting House Hill. Smoke hung heavily in the morning air, and flames crackled and leaped skyward. An irreplaceable part of Dorchester's history vanished as the blaze engulfed the First Parish Church. But not without a game battle by the town's ladder and engine cpmpanies.

A defective furnace flue had begun to overheat in the frigid pre-dawn hours of February 3, 1896. According to the Boston Globe, Fireman Fruen, of Ladder 7 and Engine 15, which stood close to the historic church, and Inspector Neal spotted the flames as they reported for their shifts at the station shortly before 7 a.m. A reporter quickly on the scene wrote, "Box 915 was at once pulled in, and the men of Engines 17, 18 and 21 and Ladder 7 soon found that the old church was in a bad way, and a second alarm was pulled in about 7 o'clock."

Throughout Dorchester, people gathered and peered at the smoke and flames along the crest of Meeting House Hill. The fire crews assembled with ladders and hoses and converged in outside the blaze District Chief Gaylord gave the order "to go in."

According to a reporter, "the apparatus on the scene then was wngines 16, 20 and 24 and ladder 6, and engines 12, 19 and 43 and ladder 4."

As the firemen laid their ladders against the church and prepared to "make their first openings" in the structure, they harbored optimism that they could contain the fire because the smoke was not yet too bad. At the axes' first bites into the door and shuttered windows, however, everything changed. A bystander wrote: "The moment that the first opening was made by the firemen, great volleys of smoke began to pour out, and, as fast as other openings were made, the whole church seemed to have been filled to the roof with smoke anf flame that had been gathering for a half-hour probably."

One of the fireman noted, "...it was a pretty hot nest [we] got into when [we] made the first break. The flames at once shot out through the front door, and then climbed around the base of the steeple, and out through the roof just back of the steeple."

Throughout the battle between the fireman and the blaze, "the old clock on the steeple kept right on with its duty and insisted upon striking the hour of 7. It was the last hour it had a chance to strike, for just a few minutes before 8 the steeple fell."

As the steeple crumbled, timbers crashed into several firemen and others were knocked from ladders by the tumbling and red-hot debris. Firemen carried Captain Blanchard, Lieutenant Riddler, Joe Hoyt, of engine 20, and John Gavin, of Ladder 4, to nearby homes, where physicians who had been called to the scene treated the injured men. The Globe reported: "Capt. Blanchard was quite badly bruised about the face and his back was hurt....Joe Hoyt had his wrist broken, and his leg was badly bruised. Lieut. Riddler was thrown from the second story off a ladder, and besides wrenching his back, his nose is probably broken. It is a wonder he was not killed, as he was thrown face downward upon the pavement, and managed to save himself by catching on his hands a little. Gavin had his back hurt by the timbers."

With the fireman gamely laboring to save the old church, all First Parish Reverend Eugene Shippen and stunned parishioners who watched from a safe distance could do was pray &emdash; in vain. The flames gutted the structure. Still, the firemen battled the blaze. "The men worked very hard and very quickly," the Globe lauded, "notwithstanding that the water froze to their clothing as soon as it struck. Some of the men were masses of moving ice and frozen spray."

Two parishioners &emdash; Judge Churchill and Walter Fox &emdash; who both arrived on the scene within minutes of the first alarm, burst past the firemen, rushed into the building, and emerged with the church's historic clock. According to an eyewitness, "Walter Fox chopped out the clock. He barely got it, for the fire was so hot that he couldn't have remained at the place a half-minute longer."

At 12:40 p.m., the "all out alarm was sounded." As the fire crews backed off, the final flickers of the blaze ebbed, and the once-graceful walls of the church now stood as a charred, roofless, the steeple in a heap. Firemen picked through the wreckage of the steeple and found a copper ball that had been placed beneath the structure's highest popint, a weather-vane. When they opened it, they discovered the Colonial records of the church, which many had long contended was the region's first. The records were unharmed by flame, smoke, or water.

Before anyone could question how such a fire could have spread so quickly with a station house literally across the street, the press put any charges of negligence to rest. The Globe asserted: "At first it seems rather strange that the fire should get such great headway while the house of engine 17 was only about 100 feet away, and a man on duty all the time. This is accounted for, however, by the fact that the church was tightly closed in every part and the fire, which started in the front vestibule, filled the entire church and gained a tremendous headway before there was the slightest outward sign that anything was wrong."

Despite the valiant struggle of the local ladder and engine companies, Dorchester's First Parish Church had gone up in smoke.