Daniel James Brown

"By 3:45 P.M., things were happening fast in Hinckley. Everyone, indoors and out, could hear the deep rumbling of what was approaching now. A searing wind was blowing dense black smoke, cinders, and firebrands through the dusty streets. When Nels Anderson’s house went up in flames and Chief Craig thundered by on his horse shouting, 'We can’t save the town!' Angus Hay was four blocks from his office. He took off running in that direction, and by the time he got there large cinders were falling all around him. He and his typographer, James Willard, tried to gather together some of the Enterprise’s equipment and files, but through the back door he could see that fist-sized coals were already raining down in the yard. Through the front window, he could see people running past outside on Third Street, yelling and looking for their spouses and children. Judging it to be the most valuable thing in the office, Hay grabbed his subscription book and ran outside to help.

A woman with three children stumbled down the street, blinded by the smoke. Hay took her baby from her arms and carried it to a man who was heading toward the Eastern depot in a buggy. Then he led the woman and the rest of her children, running northward and eastward through the streets to the flooded gravel pit behind the Eastern Minnesota depot where he urged them to get in the shallow, green water.

Hay ran back across town to help more people, but rounding the corner in front of the Morrison Hotel, trying to head south on Main Street, he quickly found that he couldn’t endure the heat blowing up the street, and he began running east, back toward the gravel pit. Running at full tilt now, he looked to the south to see how far away the fire was. A block down he saw a woman he knew only as Mrs. Blanchard with her eleven-year-old son. As Hay watched, Blanchard tripped on a rail on the Eastern Minnesota tracks and didn’t get up. Her boy crumpled to the ground next to her. The heat was too withering in that direction to allow Hay to go to their aid.

A man plunged by with a child in one arm, dragging another by the arm, shouting, 'My God, we’ll die! My God, we’ll die!'"