480 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



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 con- 

 tract 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 manu- 

 factured 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. Never- 

 theless, 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 



