1872

This volume includes actual letters from a victim of the Great Boston Fire. While the conflagration was a tragic event and remains one of the biggest urban fires in history, the disaster had several interesting events associated with its aftermath: Author Oliver Wendell Holmes watched the fire from a balcony and wrote a poem about the event entitled "After the Fire." While never actually published, Alexander Graham Bell wrote his own eyewitness account of the fire and submitted it to The Boston Globe. The flames and smoke from the fire were reportedly seen from ships off the coast of Maine. And while the fire left hundreds of businesses destroyed and thousands of Bostonians out of work and homes, the burned district was rebuilt in less than two years.