When citizens of Atlanta returned to their city shortly after the Federal occupation was ended, each part of the city's governmental infrastructure found it had to start over, almost from scratch. The city's firefighting force - which was then all volunteers - were particularly in dire need, since they discovered their firefighting apparatus had either been smashed by Sherman's troops or was missing altogether.

Speculation began that the missing apparatus had been confiscated by the Federal troops and shipped north. But few people knew what had really happened to the fire equipment. Yet Barnard's photographs answer the question definitively. As the picture on the right illustrates, at least some of Atlanta's fire equipment definitely was loaded onto a northbound train.

The Atlanta Volunteer Fire Department was established in January 1860 around four formerly independent fire brigades: Engine Co. 1, Mechanic's Fire Department No. 2, Atlanta Hook and Ladeer Co. 1 and Tallulah Fire Co. No. 3. There were at least two other , private, firefighting units in the city, but the Atlanta force combined those four companies into a single, central command.

People who have seen the movie "Gone With The Wind" may be under the impression that these fire units were equiped with horse-drawn fire engines with steam-powered pumps. Although such equipment was available in some cities, Atlanta was making do with simpler, hand-drawn wagons on which were mounted manually operated pumps. Firefighters answering an alarm raced to the scene on foot, some pulling the pumper wagon along with them while others pulled along a large cart on which was mounted a reel of hose. Once at the scene of the fire, a hose from the back end of the pumper would be dropped into a well or cistern, while the firefighting hose was attached at the end of a long pipe that was mounted in a frame holding it a few feet over the pumper. The pump itself was also manually operated. Teams of 12 men would stand six to a side of the pumper and each side would grab hold of a handle that was attached like a seesaw to the pumping mechanism. Each team would alternate between pushing up on the handle and pulling down, drawing the water up out of the cistern, into the pump and out the end of the firefighting hose. It was hard work, and other teams stood by to relieve the other fiiremen working the pump, for no one could do it for very long. When the firefighting teams were working at their best, those manning the hose could depend ofn a steady, high-pressure stream of water that could travel some 130 feet.

A major manufacturer of these hand-pumped (or "handtub") wagons was William Hunneman & Co. of Roxbury, Mass. Atlanta's first fire company, organized in 1852, ordered a pumper from that company for which the city paid $319.95.

Mechanic's Fire Co. No. 2, being composed of mechanics and other workers from the Georgia Railroad, were very specific about the equipment they wanted and commissioned Hunneman to create a special order for them. There is no information about what kind of equipment was purchased for the Hook and Ladder Co. 1 or Tallulah Fire Co. No. 3.

Most Hunnemans of that era are recognizable for their "squirrel-tail" design, in that there was a long pipe that stretched across the top of the pumping levers with a hose attached to the back in a curving manner similar to that of the rodent's tail.

During the war, some of the Atlanta fire companies banded together into military units, doing double duty as firefighters and a home guard. They made other sacrifices as well, including the brass bells that had been used at the various firehouses to call the volunteers into action. Those bells, which had been rung in a special code telling firemen where a specific fire was, were melted down and turned into cannon for the military. Thereafter, if a fire broke out in the city, the firemen would have to listen out for a series of gunshots firing in a coded sequence.

Once Federal forces entered the city, the firefighters - like everyone else - were forced to evacuate the city and Sherman's troops made use of the department's buildings and equipment as it saw fit. The main fire headquarters building, located on the northern side of the Broad Street bridge spanning the railroad gulch, was used as a barracks. The new headquarters being built directly across the street - the completion of which was stopped due to the war - was used by Federal troops as a hay and feed depot. Also used to shelter horses was the truck house for the Hook and Ladder company and the headquarters of Tallulah Co. No. 3. Meanwhile the firehouse of Mechanic's Co. No. 2, located at the end of Alabama Street, was converted into a prison for captured Confederate soldiers. The truck house for the Hook and Ladder company was also turned into a stable for Federal troops.

Engine Co. No. 1, located at the Broad Street headquarters, had been particularly proud of that first Hunneman which had been purchased for $140, and called it "Blue Dick." When they returned to their city, members of Co. 1 discovered that Federal troops had smashed "Blue Dick's" pistons, rendering

it useless. Mechanic Co. No. 2's custom-built Hunneman had suffered a similar fate, having been run off the edge of an embankment located behind their firehouse and destroyed. The equipment of both the Hook and Ladder Co. and Tallulah No. 3, was missing. Fire Department historians have always said the equipment had been shipped north, but the actual evidence of that has been missing, since - to my knowledge - none of that equipment was ever located, identified or returned to Atlanta.

But the photo on this page clearly indicates the fate of at least some of that equipment. In one half of a stereograph Barnard took of the Atlanta Intelligencer building and the Atlana Hotel, one can see a mass of some kind of gear piled onto a flat car connected by two box cars. When I looked at the high definition version of that photograph, I could make out what that equipment was. The photo shows at least three pieces of equipment - two pumpers separated by a small cart carrying a reel of hose. The two pumpers match the museum-example of the Hunneman handtub shown in the inset, right down to the "squirrel tail." As is clear from the photo, the flat car is at the end of a train which is facing left. Those tracks lead past the northwestern end of the city and on to Chattanooga and points north.

I do not know if anyone has ever noticed this fire equipment in this picture, which has been reproduced many times in articles and histories about the war. I have found no reference to the equipment in anything I have read. If it has never been noticed before, perhaps it is because people did not recognize it as firefighting equipment, since it looks nothing like the steam pumpers depicted in "Gone With the Wind."

Sources

History of Service: Atlanta Fire Department Commemorative Yearbook, published by Turner Publishing Company.

Dave Williams, unoffical historian of the Atlanta Fire Department, private correspondence