A long lost piece of Alexandria history was recently recovered due to modern technology and the unlikely convergence of two history buffs separated by nearly 1,700 miles.
It all began when E. Hunt Burke, Senior Executive Vice President, Burke and Herbert Bank, became fascinated with a letter he had discovered dealing with a "missing" fire engine once belonging to the long defunct Sun Fire Company of Alexandria and now housed in the Hudson Museum in New York City.
About the same time Margaret Duffey Corkery of Denver, CO, was trying to find a way to return a minutes book from that same local fire company to the city for historic preservation. It is the original book covering the period 1775 to 1801.
While searching the Internet, Corkery came across an inquiry from Burke concerning the infamous fire engine asking anyone with knowledge of it to contact him. She did and through a series of conversations, Alexandria has clarified another element of its past.
At 2 p.m. on June 17, at The Lyceum, Corkery formally presented the now tattered and age yellowed, legal size, minutes book of the Sun Fire Company to Jean Taylor Federico, Director, Office of Historic Alexandria (OHA). The saga of the engine is part of the minutes of the Sun Fire Company.
Corkery's father, Nelson Edward Duffey, was born in Alexandria in 1905, on "the kitchen table in his grandparents home on North Fairfax street," she explained. The family left Alexandria during World War II. They settled in Norfolk after the war where Corkery spent her childhood.
"I got involved doing a family genealogy on the Internet and came across Hunt's search for the book which he thought might contain a reference to the fire engine," Corkery explained. "He was right, it did."
Corkery further clarified, "The book had been in the possession of the family because my great, great grandfather, Colonel George Duffey, had been secretary of the Sun Fire Company when they disbanded. The family had always wanted to get it back to Alexandria for historical purposes."
DUFFY HAD SERVED as a Confederate colonel. Before leaving to join General Robert E. Lee, he hid the city's colonial records. They were returned to the city after the war. He died in 1890.
His granddaughter, Cora Duffey, who had the minutes book until approximately 1950, was the first woman to serve on a jury in Virginia, according to T. Michael Miller, OHA research historian. At the time she was deputy clerk of the circuit and corporation courts of the City of Alexandria and was named forewoman of that jury which rendered a verdict in favor of the defendant for $20.
Sun Fire Company ceased to exist in 1887 after a series of disagreements and confrontations with the City Council over the ownership and maintenance of its headquarters which had been in a variety of locations throughout the city over the years.
Having come into existence on Jan. 12, 1775, the second fire company in the city after Friendship Fire Company, which organized in 1774, according to the minutes book, Sun decided to erect its first engine house on Dec. 19, 1785.
On Nov. 18, 1874, the minutes reveal, "A meeting of SFC ...Chief Engineer Leadbetter of the fire department was present and addressed the company, advising them to disband and join the Steam Fire Company in which their services would be most effective."
THIS SUGGESTION was opposed by Major Duffey stating, "next year the Company would be 100 years old, that during that time its members had been active and efficient firemen. They now had 65 members and it did not seem right to ask them to disband and join companies that did not have half that number of members but they would annex with the Hydraulion Company provided the latter would occupy Sun's House and work under Sun's name."
The battle between the city and the Sun Fire Company seesawed for seven years as to whether the company was viable or not. Finally, on Jan. 13, 1881, the minutes state,"The long dispute over the possession of the Sun Engine House has at last been settled...This morning Mayor Courtland Smith ... delivered to Mr. John Sullivan, President of the Sun Company, a check for $300 due six months after date. The check being received, the property is at last in possession of the city..."
But what of the fire apparatus? Had the Yankees stolen the engines and carted them off to the north during, and immediately after, the Civil War as had been speculated, or was there another explanation?
Alexandria Mayor Marshall Beverly, who served from 1952 to 1955, was sure he had traced both engines. One he found in Baltimore and the other he located in the museum in New York City. The Baltimore engine returned to Alexandria and is housed in the Friendship Fire House Museum at 107 S. Alfred St.
However, according to Michael Carter, Friendship museum aide, "That engine was not given to the fire house by George Washington and had not been taken by Union forces to Baltimore. Washington never bought an engine. It was built about 1770, probably in London, but we have no idea where it came from. The other engine in our museum was purchased by Friendship in 1851."
However, in "Seaport in Virginia" by Gay Montague Moore, there is a reference that, "the treasurer (of Sun Fire Co.) was requested "to import from London on account of this Company a fire engine value from seventy to eighty pounds sterling."
Could it be?
It was the second engine, known as the "Grace Reynolds," for the woman who was successful in raising the funds, $2,750, to purchase it from the manufacture, Rodgers of Baltimore, in 1855, that has fueled the controversy over the years. It bears her portrait on one of the panels.
"When Beverly tried to convince the New York museum curators that the engine had been stolen from Alexandria and should be returned his story was rejected," according to Burke. "There was then an attempt to free the engine from its captivity by Beverly and others using bolt cutters but this was thwarted by the museum personnel."
HUNT BURKE, working on information garnered through discussions with Miller, took a trip to New York to visit the museum and make inquiries as to how the old pumper got there. He recalled he was met with some initial resistance and distrust.
"It took a while to get them to open up because, even though it was now nearly 50 years since the Beverly raiders, they still remembered the attempt to retake the engine. They were somewhat skeptical of my presence," Burke related.
"I finally convinced them I was not there to make a second attempt at freeing it, only to learn the true story. That is when they said the engine had been purchased from the Sun Fire Company and was legally theirs," he explained. That triggered Burke's search for the minutes book that would have noted the sale.
When Burke's diligence to find the book and Corkery's genealogy quest intersected on the Internet another myth met the hard, cold, pragmatic, light of reality. In an entry dated June 14, 1887, practically 115 years to the day of Corkery's presentation of the book to OHA, it is stated:
"The surviving members of the Old Sun Engine Company of this city have sold their apparatus, the "Grace Reynolds" to the D.W. Woodhouse Mfg. Co. of N.Y. who will fit it up to be used for parade purposes."
Two weeks later the book cites, in an entry dated June 30, 1887, a quote from The New York Evening Sun: "Old Volunteer Fireman gathered on Barclay street, New York, Tuesday afternoon like flies around a sugar bowl. The attraction was the ancient double decker just purchased by the Volunteer Fireman's Association of New York City. It is to be fitted up and used in their contest in Troy on Aug.17...The New York volunteers have great hopes of winning with her aid, the Troy contest. She cost the Association just $300."
IN HIS TREATISE dated Jan. 24, 2002, entitled "The Sun Fire Company and the Sale of its Fire Engine: Additional Notes on the Alexandria Fire Department," Michael Miller cited portions of an article from the Alexandria Gazette dated Oct. 17, 1911. It referred to a letter from Henry C. Adams, who had just visited New York City. He identified himself as the son of "Old Alexandrians" to the Gazette editor. It stated:
"The old fire engine that was subscribed for and paid for by the volunteer Fire Department of Alexandria before the war is here, held by the Retired Fire Department in East 59th Street, New York City. The fine old engine was captured during the war and it is a question whether the North had a right to take it as it was I understand paid for by the citizens of Alexandria and it looks to me the old town of Alexandria should have it."
The articles goes on to explain, "After the Civil War hand engines were superseded by those operated by steam and the Sun Fire Engine Company, so long an honored Alexandria institution, was disbanded and the apparatus sold. It was sold to the Veterans of New York and carried to that city on the steamer John Gibson of the Merchants Steam Line."
Thus ends the myth of the "Grace Reynolds" and those plundering Yankees. Or does it?
As Plutarch once noted, "So very difficult a matter it is to trace and find out the truth of anything by history."