| Notes |
- A Terrible AffairOn Friday morning about six o'clock the log residence, a one story structure, situated three miles south of this city, and owned and occupied by Albert Cooley and family, was discovered on fire by neighbors in the near vicinity. When discovered the house was completely wrapped in flames.
The building was constructed of [illegible] popular, facing to the north. On the south side was an addition or shed-like, in which Mr. Cooley labored during the winter months, making axe-helves and doing odd jobs. The living room was about square, containing two beds, the cook stove, chairs, table, etc. A garret over-head of the main building answered the purpose of a store-room.
The evidence goes to show that Mr. and Mrs. Cooley were up most of the night previous attending a sick child, that Mrs. Cooley and the baby were in bed and that he renewed the fire in the stove, and probably took up the ashes which he placed in the corner of the shed, and when he had started the fire, retired again to bed.
The facts lead to the conclusion that about six o'clock he awoke to find the house on fire and calling his wife ran up into the garret and pitched a trunk out of the window and then returned to help his family out. The front door had been barred and banked up to keep out the cold, and the windows, three in number, were closed in tight, so that there was but one way out, and that through the rear shed. While Mr. Cooley was up stairs his wife doubtless opened the door to the shed and was met with a dense smoke and forks of flames which prostrated her and the baby she carried in her arms.
Mr. Cooley reached the bottom of the stairs and near a window where he was prostrated. Both Mr. and Mrs. Cooley were seen, the former leaning upon the window-sill and the latter apparently between the outer door and the stove, as the dense smoke and flame was lifted by the heavy south-wind from the burning building. The two elder boys were doubtless burned in the bed or near to it.
~North Iowa Times, Thursday, February 11, 1886
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1856 - 1886 (29 years)
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