Miramichi Fire, The [Laws G24]

DESCRIPTION: A great fire covers an area 42 by 100 miles. In less than a day it burns forest, houses, and towns, killing or wounding vast numbers. There is little for the survivors to do but bury the dead
AUTHOR: John Jardine = Thomas M. Jordan (?)
EARLIEST DATE: 1947 (Manny/Wilson-SongsOfMiramichi)
KEYWORDS: fire death disaster
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Oct 1825 - A great series of forest fires sweeps New Brunswick. Popular legend had it that the damage was done by a single fire
FOUND IN: US(NE) Canada(Mar)
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Laws G24, "The Miramichi Fire"
Creighton-MaritimeFolkSongs, pp. 201-202, "The Miramichi Fire" (1 text, 1 tune)
Ives-DriveDullCareAway-PrinceEdwardIsland, pp. 62-64,250-251, "The Miramichi Fire" (1 text, 1 tune)
Ives-21FolksongsFromPrinceEdwardIsland, pp. 33-37,82, "The Miramichi Fire" (1 text, 1 tune)
Beck-FolkloreOfMaine, pp. 251-254, "The Miramichi Fire" (1 text)
Manny/Wilson-SongsOfMiramichi 34, "The Miramichi Fire" (1 text, 3 tunes)
DT 324, MIRAMICH
Roud #2721
RECORDINGS:
Edmund Doucette, "The Miramichi Fire" (on MREIves01)
Marge Steiner, "The Banks of the Miramichi" (on Steiner01)
NOTES [620 words]: By the early nineteenth century, with the fur trade moving into the Canadian west, the eastern provinces were turning increasingly to logging as a source of income, sending most of their wood products to England.
This had significant effects on the ecology. As the old forests were cut down, second growth invaded, which was naturally more flammable -- and if the fire grew big enough in one of the clear patches, it could spread to the old growth as well. The result was a constant fire danger.
Smith, p. 9, says that the early summer of 1825 was warm, but there was no rain at all for ten weeks in August, September, and early October, with temperatures often reaching 90 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. Fires became widespread. Smith, p. 11, has a map of these fires; one around Newcastle Parish and the north side of the Miramichi was easily the largest. The "Great Fire" is said to have burned 400 square miles (Brown, p. 239). Smith, p. 10, dates this greatest fire to October 7. Adding a zero to that might perhaps have helped inspire this song. From the map, it appears three other fires would have covered more than a hundred square miles, and there were at least four others that covered more than ten.
Smith, p. 14, reports half a dozen towns effectively destroyed and about 200 deaths. Plus it ruined a lot of timber, doing real economic damage. The prosperity of the region was badly affected, according to Wynn, p. 47, who offers this description:
"On 7 October 1825, parts of Fredericton and vast tracts of forest to the north and east were burnt. Overnight, the prosperous settlement of Newcastle -- a town of almost 1,000 inhabitants -- was reduced to a smoking ruin. Fewer than a score of the two hundred houses and stores remained, and the small neighbouring settlements of Douglastown and Moorfields the destruction was just as severe. Four hundred square miles of forest were destroyed in the Newcastle district, and land along the Southwest and upper Northwest Miramichi rivers was also burnt over. Robert Cooney, the historian of northern New Brunswick who witnessed this so-called 'Miramich Fire,' felt that 'a greater calamity... never befell any forest country....' The devastation seemed to lay bare the frail foundations of provincial prosperity."
There is a recent book about the event, Alan MacEachern, The Miramichi Fire, A History, McGill-Queen's University Press. 2020. I haven't seen it. There is also Merle Milson & Lynn Johnson, The Great Miramichi Fire, Miramichi Literacy Council, 1985, but that is apparently a 15-page pamphlet, so it probably doesn't offer much more than is said here. A book A Narrative of the late fires at Miramichi, New-Brunswick: with an appendix, containing the statements of many of the sufferers, and a variety of interesting occurrences: together with a poem, entitled "The conflagration" was published shortly after the event. Google Books attributes it to Beamish Murdoch and lists P. J. Holland as the publisher but does not (as of 2022) have a copy. - RBW
Ives-DriveDullCareAway-PrinceEdwardIsland: "Shortly after [the fire], John Jardine of Black River wrote a ballad about it which he almost certainly had printed and sold. Either he or, what is more likely, later singers put tunes to it.... At the moment ... no tune has a better right than the present one to be called, if not the 'original,' at least the most widespread." - BS
Laws cites the Bulletin of the Folk-Song Society of the Northeast (#11) in attributing this song to Thomas M. Jordan. It will be evident that "Jordan" and "Jardine" are oral variants on each other. Jardine is the more likely; Manny and Wilson have a photograph of John Jardine (obviously in later life). - RBW
Bibliography

Brown: Craig Brown, editor, The Illustrated History of Canada, Key Porter, 1987-2000
Smith: Ken Smith, A History of Disaster: The Worst Storms, Accidents, and Conflagrations in Atlantic Canada, Nimbus Publishing, 2008, 2014
Wynn: Graeme Wynn, Timber Colony: A Historical Geography of Early Nineteenth Century New Brunswick, University of Toronto Press, 1981

Last updated in version 6.4
File: LG24

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