(cheerful theme music) - [Narrator] "Illinois Stories" is brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

(cheerful theme music) Thank you.

(cheerful theme music) - Hello, welcome to "Illinois Stories".

I'm Mark McDonald in Quincy with the Quincy.

This is the old pumper from 1839, and every once in a great while, the Quincy Fire Department gets it out and shows its stuff.

Special occasions and things like this, and we're very glad today that they considered "Illinois Story" a special enough occasion to get the old pumper out.

Let's take a look at how this thing works.

Cole Miller, I called it the number one, 'cause I guess, that's what they called it way back when.

Some folks were calling it rough and ready.

- Mmhm.

- Some people were calling it pumper number one.

But at any rate, whatever you call it, in 1839, this was the state of the art, wasn't it?

- This was high tech firefighting apparatus.

- Yeah, tell us, how would you get this to the site of a fire?

How would you get it moving, where you needed to go?

- When alarm came in, you would have to have your fire crew, which were all volunteer at the time.

They would come to the fire station.

This would be stored with the tongue.

This is the tongue, and the tongue would be stored up.

They'd just lower the tongue.

Guys would grab the tongue, guys would grab the brakes and a rope, and they would pull it by hand to the fire.

- Manpower.

- Manpower.

- Okay, so no horses, nothing like that.

- No horses, you need digs for horses.

- Two guys would get on, one guy on each side and they'd just haul it, huh?

- Mmhm, yep.

- They had to be in pretty good shape to do that, too.

- Yes, probably.

Big, tough guys.

- 'Cause it's heavy.

I imagine it's heavy.

- Yeah, 1600 pounds is what this weigh.

- And that's when it's empty.

Of course, when you get it full of water, of course you're not pulling it, but then you're gonna pull the water.

- You're not moving it then.

- It's a beautiful thing, let's take a look at this insignia that shows where it was made.

That gives you an idea right there, it was made in New York City.

I mean, they were building a lot of these, 'cause the way communities were growing in the 1830s and '40s, everybody needed one of these, didn't they?

- Right, yes, yeah.

Every major city would've had one.

And at the time, major cities were lot smaller than major cities today, of course.

But Quincy was a major city in Illinois at that time.

- Yeah.

- They were pretty much close to the size of Chicago, about equal.

So no one really knew exactly who was gonna be the city in Illinois at that time.

- Now, we're gonna see this thing operate again, and we're gonna see how the water gets.

Where it goes to the fire.

Comes through the hose and it shoots to the fire.

But let's start at the back end, 'cause that's where the real business happens.

- Right, right, that's the important part.

- Now, you're not gonna have one of these set up in the street.

- Right, this is a modern, portable dump tank, collapsible tank for firefighting when you don't have a water supply, hydrants nowadays.

But back in the day, back in the Quincy's day, they had cisterns around town.

And every house pretty much had its own cistern, but there was public cisterns throughout the city too.

Which throughout the city, we were looking probably eight or 10 square blocks.

- And they would've engineered this into the plan, because knowing that a pumper was gonna need water, or even if you didn't have a pumper, if you had a bucket brigade, you were gonna need cisterns.

- You gonna need water from somewhere.

- Okay, so you had systems designed into the city plan.

- Correct.

- And it wouldn't look like this, but it would've been a vessel for water.

- Yes.

- Okay.

- And in fact, John Wood mansion had a cistern there somewhere on the grounds, a large one.

And they were said to be interconnected with other cisterns around the neighborhood.

And that way they all maintain that same level of water.

And so one would never run dry from (indistinct) - [Mark] Oh, that makes a lot of sense, yeah, a network.

Okay, so let's assume, would this pipe or this... That's not a pipe.

- [Cole] Hard suction is what they call that.

- [Mark] Would that have been down in the cistern then?

- [Cole] Yes.

- [Mark] Okay.

- [Cole] Essentially a lot like this, with a strainer.

It would be lowered down into the cistern.

- [Mark] Okay, let's go take a look inside.

- [Cole] Okay.

So this is the back of the engine.

Right now we have a modern pressure gauge, there's a plug that would've been in there.

This hard suction travels through the back, and is connected to this intake pipe.

And that's how then they would've lowered it into the cistern.

And that's how they were running it today.

Without a water supply, such as a cistern, the back end would be capped where the hard suction leads into, and this would've been lined with pitch or lead.

This lid would be propped open, and you'd have a bucketgade or line of people passing buckets to dump into the tub.

- [Mark] (chuckles) Goodness.

Oh.

- [Cole] And to keep water in there while the guys pumped it.

- [Mark] That would've been a challenge.

- It would've been a lot of work, a lot of teamwork.

- Yeah.

- So you would've most likely recruited.

Not everybody could be firefighters, that's a simple job that any man, woman and child could have done.

- Yep.

- With the threat of fire in these older buildings, it was all hands on deck.

- I like the cistern idea a whole lot better.

- Yeah, I think that they did too.

- Bucket brigade, I bet they did.

- Yeah, so this particular fire engine wasn't lined.

It doesn't appear to be lined with anything.

So that leads you to believe that it wasn't designed to hold water.

So it was probably drawing water from a cistern or from a static water supply instead.

I know with adding lead to it would've just made it even heavier too back in the day.

- [Mark] That's for sure, for sure, okay.

- So we'll take the cabinet off here, and you'll be able to see exactly how it works.

Again, that's why they call this the tub, 'cause it's essentially a tub to hold the water.

This would've just been flooded if you used it that way.

You see a drain hole there.

- [Mark] Right.

- But today, the way we have it with a hard suction, it's drawn in to this manifold down below these two cylinders.

As you pump, there's piston, it's all brass.

It would've had a leather gaskets in there or cups.

- [Mark] Which of course, would've worn out regularly, or had to be replaced.

- [Cole] Right, or kept oiled.

They would've had to keep 'em oiled, whale oil or whatever they used then.

And so essentially what you're doing is you're pumping, when you raise the brake.

- [Mark] Yeah, go ahead.

- You're drawing the water up into this cylinder.

While at the same time, this cylinder is full of water.

It is pumping it into another manifold with a one way valve, and it's filling this tank back behind here.

So one is always drawing in water, suction.

The other is pumping it into this pressure tank.

- Right, and the idea is to keep this thing as full as possible.

- Correct, yes.

- Because the air at the top provides the pressure that pumps the water through the hose.

- That's right, there's a siphon tube that runs all the way down the bottom.

Towards the bottom, as you pump water into this tank.

You see about right in here is about 30 PSI is what you'll have in air pressure.

You get it up to here, you got 15 P, I'm sorry, you have 15 down here, you got 30 up here.

And then so the harder you're pumping, the men are pumping.

The more water you're getting, the higher the pressure is getting, and so the farther you're spraying.

- How far do you think it'll spray if you get all the pressure you can get?

- I bet if you were working this back in the day, when it was originally, you'd probably get 125, 150 foot foot water stream.

- Wow, that's way taller than any building would've been.

Yeah.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can see why this was such a big deal when it came to Quincy, that this is high tech stuff.

- Yeah.

- And this was the first, believed to be the first one of these in the state of Illinois at the time.

- Is that right?

- Mmhm.

- Okay, and do these panels lift up or ( indistinct) - No, those are all bolted down.

- Oh, okay.

- So they're all just part of the chassis is what those.

- [Mark] Okay, so don't they don't move, they don't do anything.

- [Cole] No.

- [Mark] The moving parts are all right here.

- Yes, that's it, yep.

- Okay.

Now, you we've got the fire department here.

- Yes.

- And it's perfect 'cause they know what they're doing.

- That's right.

- And they're young and healthy, and they can pump this thing.

- Right.

- So let's get this thing working, huh?

- Okay.

- What you say, huh?

- Okay.

(water pump engine roaring) - That's pretty good range.

- It is with just four guys on it.

- Oh, you mean if you had more than four, you'd get better range?

- You can pump anything, yeah.

- Okay.

- It's all based on manpower.

- [Mark] Let's see what we got here.

Is that hard work?

- [Cole] It's hard work, yeah.

- [Mark] Yeah, especially on a hot, humid morning.

- Yeah, they would have guys switching out as they're pumping.

They would just rotate in and out.

- Do you mind if I handle that, is it gonna throw me?

- No, it will not.

- Wow, it is heavy though, it's full of water.

- [Cole] It is, yeah.

There is back pressure.

I mean, they may have 20, 25 pounds on it now.

- And look right down there, there's your newest pumper there, huh?

- [Cole] That's right, that's the newest one.

- [Mark] We're gonna take a look at that too, if that's okay.

- [Cole] It sounds good.

- [Mark] Let me hand this back to you.

- [Cole] All right.

- How'd they get this thing here from New York City?

- They shipped it by boat to the Gulf of Mexico, to the mouth of Mississippi on a steam ship.

- They're slacking, they're slacking.

And then you can see, boy, it doesn't take long for the water pressure to run out, does it?

- That's right, yeah.

- One more time guys, one more.

- Sure?

- Okay, let's see it.

- Ready?

- Let's see it, yeah, let's see how long it takes to build up, no time at all.

- Yeah, once you have water in it, and have the system primed, it's just a matter of pumping.

(water pump engine roaring) Just manpower.

- They won't need to lift weights today.

- No, they're workouts done.

- Yeah, I cut you off.

They delivered if by river?

- Yes, up the Mississippi, and then onto coaches, on a, where they easy stage, I think they called it.

So they just shipped it by land from there.

The train system wasn't very reliable out here at that time.

- Yeah.

- So they took it up the long route.

- So this will never see service again.

- No - It won't have to because you've got all this.

But it does get out every once in a while for the public to see it.

- Yep, yeah, and we let anybody wants to pump it, can just welcome to you want to.

- I know you invited me, but I don't wanna work that hard.

- (laughs) You see what it is.

- Well, you can see, I mean, those guys are working hard.

- Nobody really wants to pump it, everybody wants to spray it.

Yeah, that's what we found when we get it out, yeah.

- Well, make sure you tell these guys thanks for coming out and helping us do this, okay.

- Absolutely, they're happy to, everybody's happy to get it out.

When I go to get guys for it, I get plenty of people who are anxious to help, it's kinda fun, get to do it.

- [Mark] Rob Mellon, now, the pumper lives in this building.

- [Rob] It does.

- [Mark] And we call it the stables, but it's not really the stables.

John Wood had his stables at this location.

- [Rob] That's right, yes.

- It was later, those were torn down and this was built as a garage.

It's still historical though.

- Sure, yeah.

- And it's got a lot of history either.

We're looking at John.

- A lot of cool stuff.

- That sign actually was on his stables.

- That sign was on his stables that sat here.

There was a whole complex here.

John Wood really loved horses, and carriages, and taking horseback rides and so forth.

So he had a pretty large stable complex.

- Okay, and that would've been stretched on both ways out from there.

- Probably, yes.

- Yeah, okay, now this is an interesting building because when you have it open for tours, you'll open this up too.

And the pumper would be right where our cameraman is standing, right there.

- That's right.

- You also have this really beautiful hearse.

And I'm not sure what the history of this hearse is, but that kind of shows you what it was like in the day, doesn't it?

- [Rob] It shows what it was like in the day, and that goes back to the Northern part of the county.

Of course, we're the historical society for the entire Adams County.

And so that kind of celebrates the Northern part of the county's history.

- [Mark] A person who could afford this hearse would've been well off.

- [Rob] Really well off.

- [Mark] To help be buried by this hearse, that would've been something that only the upper crust would've been able to afford, I assume.

- And I think you've seen in some of the Lincoln processions, he had a pretty elaborate hearse, and that's pretty elaborate for the Northern part of Adams County.

- And the pumper that we've been talking about would usually go right here.

And if we go outside, we can see that the fellow that restored it actually has built a dolly for, I guess it's a dolly, a rolling dolly there to put it on.

And you can see it's not a piece of cake taking it out because it takes a forklift.

- [Rob] Well, it takes a forklift to get it off of its stand and so forth.

- [Mark] Yeah.

- [Rob] He did that to take pressure off the wheels.

Because 1838 is a long time ago when it was constructed.

And of course, it went into operation in 1839.

And so this way just kind of helps preserve it.

- [Mark] Sure.

- [Rob] So it's a way to take pressure off of those wheels.

- Yeah, there was a time, and let's walk out here because what we can do is we can go take another look at it.

We saw what pristine condition it's in.

But when it came back, well, let's still talk about the history of it first.

It went from Quincy after just being in service for, I think maybe nine years, to Shebina, Missouri.

- That's right.

- And I guess they wanted to upgrade, and they got a newer one, so they could afford to get rid of the old pump number one, right.

- That's right.

- Okay.

- They sold it to Shelbina, and they had it for a while.

And then after a number of years, while it was in service in Missouri, the Fireman's Benevolence Association decided to get it back.

And so that's when they brought it back to town.

And it's lived in Quincy ever since then.

- [Mark] But it didn't look like this.

- [Rob] It didn't look like that, a little rougher, yeah.

- I mean, it looks beautiful.

it's pristine, like I said.

- [Rob] That's awesome.

- [Mark] So how did that happen?

- [Rob] Well, it's been refurbished on a couple of different occasions.

YOu had Mr. Bickhaus, A.C. Bickhaus, his names on the side.

He was really instrumental in bringing it back.

He was a local alderman here, and he had a lot of influence.

He wanted to make sure this was protected.

So when they initially refurbished it, they were gonna build this structure and so forth, and put it in, similar to that.

So people can come and check it out.

Eventually it went to the fire department, it went to city hall, it went to Highland Park, which is on the Northern part of town.

- [Mark] Wow, way up, oh, okay, this Highland Park, okay.

- [Rob] Just ours.

- [Mark] Gotcha.

- [Rob] Nowadays.

- [Mark] Yeah.

- [Rob] And so the fire pumpers lived in different places.

By the 1990s, been pretty rough at that point.

- [Mark] Yeah.

- [Rob] And that's when a local businessman stepped in, grandson of A.C. Bickhaus, and refurbished it.

And of course, the man's a brilliant machinist.

So he's the reason why it's in the condition it's in today.

Several different names throughout its iteration.

Is called the Quincy, Quincy number one, old rough and ready, and even the A.C Bickhaus.

So it's had a lot of different names.

- Well, it deserves a lot of names because it is spectacular.

I think I mused with you about this earlier.

There were thousands of these because every city had to have one before steam became possible.

- Sure.

- But very few of them I think are probably in existence, and especially not in this kind of condition.

- Not in that condition.

- Yeah.

- You need someone like I mentioned, that businessman who had that type of knowhow, and like I said, he's a genius in terms of machinery.

He's the one that got it into the condition it's in today.

And then operational, from 1838 when it was constructed, to today, and now we're out spraying it today.

That's pretty amazing.

- Well, and he had a lot of work to do, because all of that pumping action, I'm sure those were all leaking, and the pressure was gone, and he had to repair all that stuff.

- He had to repair it all.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- You know what else the fire department did, they brought their newest pumper.

And so we gotta get a chance to contrast what was used to be 1839.

- Absolutely.

Yes.

- With what's used in 2022, which is kind of interesting.

So we're gonna go take a look at this.

- Absolutely.

- Okay.

Well, Cole, we're sitting in technology that's 180 years newer than that pumper, but this is also a pumper, isn't it?

- Yes.

- It's just the most modern pumper in the fleet.

- That's right, the principal's still the same.

It's just everything around it has changed for sure.

- And this happens to be the one that you drive, right, okay.

- Yes, it is, yes, this is engine five.

- Point us out the features.

Now, you've just had another alarm.

- Yes.

- [Mark] And you pull up to the fire, what's the first thing you do?

- Well, the first thing we do is we would stop, put the transmission into neutral and set our parking brake.

There's a valve over here, a lever that operates a valve, a switch that switches it from road mode to pump mode.

- [Mark] Uhuh.

- So once you disengage the transmission from the drive train, it engages to the water pump.

Then you'd put the transmission back into gear, and that would start the pump spinning.

- [Mark] Okay.

- Once that's done, and it gives you the okay that it's ready to pump, you leave the cab, and then you'd start flowing water.

- Okay, and that's when you head this way, right?

- While I'm doing this, the rest of the crew is going to be assessing what the situation is, of course.

If there's a fire, they're gonna be deploying an attack line, which it would be off the front bumper or off the back.

And they're pre connected to the pipe, typing that would go to the pump.

So as soon as they get the hose out, and get up to ready to the fire.

We have 750 gallons of water in here.

I'd open a valve to allow the water to flow to the pump, which instead of the piston pump, we have a centripetal pump.

So it spins the water and throws it out, creates the pressure.

And then once the tank is open to the pump, water is pressurized.

And then I would pull another valve, depending on what line they have.

And it would send water to them.

And I could control the pressure that they have.

You lose pressure through friction loss through the hose, and the nozzle has to operate properly at a certain.

So you have to figure calculations.

- So we're talking about water that's already on this truck, its been loaded on.

- Already on the truck, yes.

- How many gallons are we talking?

- 750.

- 750, that would go pretty quick, wouldn't it?

- It can, a handline would operate for a little bit, but if you're gonna use the deck gun on top, a master stream device they call those.

- Yeah.

- Those can flow a thousand gallons a minute.

So if you get that going, you're less than a minute of water.

- So what you have to do, and maybe what we do is go around.

What you have to do is trust that the next unit that's coming is gonna locate a fire hydrant and get water to you?

- Yes, and they will know that that's their job.

It's set up that way when we're deployed, when we're dispatched out.

The first engine knows that it's the attack engine.

The second engine knows it's water supply.

They'll locate a hydrant.

We have the technologies to where we can see where the hydrant is before we get there.

They will stop at the hydrant.

They'll stage if we haven't.

It will call for water supply if we need to lay a line.

And then they will leave a guy at the hydrant.

They'll start deploying supply line to the scene, to where we are.

And when they get to us, they disconnect.

They connect that five inch supply line to our intake.

And then I would open this valve, and this pipe goes straight into the pump.

And then we wouldn't need the tank on, water tank anymore.

- Okay, so how many pumpers, would normally two pumpers respond or?

- Normally is three apparatus.

- Three, okay.

- It'd be three trucks that could pump.

One is a ladder truck, so we try to keep it as a ladder truck when we can, but it does pump too.

A general arm is three apparatus, and then the assistant chief that's on duty that day, the shift chief.

- One more stop, if we can go to the rear.

- Sure.

- And you can show us how these hoses get utilized.

- Yes, when we load hose, we load 'em in a certain way, and there's different methods of doing it, depending on the department.

We try to standardize it in our department.

So everybody knows if you're on a different truck, you know how things work.

This is called a minute man load.

So we have a hundred feet of hose on top of 150 feet.

The fireman would come back, pull this top section out, load it on his shoulder.

He'd reach back and grab these loops, and he'd just start walking.

And it would deploy this 150 feet.

And then he would flake off the rest a hundred off his in whatever pattern he was ready.

And then get up to the door, start putting his air pack on, his mask, getting ready to go make entry and fire attack.

- That hose is heavy, I bet.

- It is.

- I mean, you got it on your back plus your hauling it.

- It is, you gotta stay fit for it, for the job.

- Yeah, well, we saw 'em, we saw.

- Yeah, that hasn't changed either, you still gotta be fit.

'Cause we also have, this is inch and three quarter.

This is our standard attack line.

This is two and a half inch.

So it's quite a bear to move.

- Yeah.

- You wanna have at least two people on that all the time, but yep, that's another attack.

That's a bigger fire, used bigger water.

And then this would be our five inch supply line.

And this is what they would hook up to the hydrant, and then they would hook it up to the engine.

And once that's laid out, it's not going anywhere.

It just stays where it is.

- Yeah.

Rob, I don't know if you know this or not, but if our viewers have a really good memory, 19 years ago we shot our first Illinois story.

In fact, the man who's holding that camera actually shot it.

19 years ago, this was our first Illinois story.

When this cabin, this log cabin was moved down State Street, and planted here at the John Woods mansion grounds.

- That's right.

- It's pretty neat.

- That's really neat, yes.

Of course, as you probably know from the story, the cabin was actually in Perry, Missouri inside a farmhouse, and when they took that farmhouse down, discovered the cabin, the Lewis family purchased it, moved it to Quincy, which was way out on State Street, beyond the edge of the town.

And then when they decided to give it to the historical society, which we use it for a couple of different reasons.

The historic reason, and the fact that John Wood lived in a log cabin very similar to this right before he moved into the mansion.

- Huh, what an upgrade for him, huh?

- A little bit.

There's an amazing story about the kids telling the story, Daniel Wood tells the story as a young kid walking in for the first time, to this living from a log cabin into the mansion.

- His eyes popped out, I'm sure.

- It was like a palace.

- Oh yeah.

- Yes.

- And this was a nice cabin.

- It's a nice cabin.

- It's got a sleeping loft, it's got a lot of room in it.

A lot of Americans weren't living this good.

- That's right, yeah, John Wood was.

- Yeah, John Wood was, 1835 though.

- Not many, not many.

- Some of 'em were probably still living in sod, not long cabins like this.

Now, it's interesting, you mentioned the family that gave this to, or I guess gave it to the historical society.

- Yes, sure.

- They also sort of endowed you with money to keep it up, didn't they?

- That's right, and a log cabin is very difficult to maintain.

Just recently, and we normally have an Amish crew come in and do the restorations when we need that to happen.

And you can kind of see the difference in the chinking, and the color of the chinking.

The things that we've had to repair over time.

But we just did that last summer actually.

So it's an ongoing process to maintain.

Well, the mansion takes us a little bit to maintain as well, - [Mark] Sure.

- But so does the cabin, and we make sure that we take care of it.

- Can we go in?

- Absolutely.

- Yeah, this would be wonderful for school trips, to be able to come through here and see.

I mean, you can tell kids how it was back in the day, but they have to see it, feel it, and smell it.

And you can smell the old wood in here, you can smell it.

- I love it.

- You can, you can.

And this is exactly what we do.

It was part of the process when we moved it here.

Not only do the history of it and the connection with John Wood, but also we have a very robust third grade program.

And they come to the cabin.

We have them right in ink, they go to the herb garden.

We have a native American story we tell out on the grounds.

And that's part of our third grade, what we call the third grade log cabin program.

- [Mark] Mmhm, mmhm, I don't know if the steps would've been built like this.

I know a lot of the lofts that I've seen had ladders going up to the loft.

- [Rob] Right.

- [Mark] But this one appears to actually have had a staircase, which is a pretty classy deal too.

- [Rob] That is.

- [Mark] And there would've been room up there for, oh, if you had a family of four, probably very ample space if you stay there.

- [Rob] Ample space, if you go up there, you'd be surprised on how much spacers is upstairs, yeah.

- [Mark] And you have some historical items here.

A loom over here, and just things to peak kids interest.

- That's right.

- That might've, or may not have been in this log cabin, but they would've been normal use at that time, wouldn't they?

- Right, our collections manager, the chair of that committee, is currently in the process of going through all of this, make sure it's all period correct.

Because that's the next step for here.

Makes sure that everything even inside is period correct.

- [Mark] Yeah, it's really very nice.

The brick fireplace, that's not a fireplace.

What is the brick for, is that just a support, or?

- [Rob] That used to be a fireplace, yeah.

- [Mark] Okay, oh, it was, okay.

It's just not used for that now.

Well, yes, I guess it is 'cause the stove pipe goes into the chimney, so that's how it works, okay.

Well, thank you for everything today.

- [Randy] You're very welcome, you're very welcome.

- This has been a very, very interesting day.

For the fire department to send their men down here, and do all that for us was a real hoot.

And we couldn't have done it without you getting the pumper out, so thank you very much.

- You're very welcome.

- Okay.

On the John Woods grounds here, this is of course the home for the Quincy and Adams County Historical Society.

And this cabin is viewable, the mansion is tourable.

And if the stables are open, you can even get inside to take a look at that pumper.

With another Illinois story in Quincy, I'm Mark McDonald.

Thanks for watching.

(cheerful theme music) - [Narrator] "Illinois Stories" is brought to you by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you, thank you.

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