Fairview Firemen: Carts, Trucks and Music

Around a hand-drawn cart

Fairview Fire Company’s men gathered around a large-wheeled cart for a photograph that the Shamokin News-Dispatch reproduced in its 1964 Centennial edition. Some sat in front; others stood behind the apparatus. The newspaper identified them as Fairview firemen of Coal Township and described the cart as hand-drawn.

The caption placed the scene in the early 1910s, although its wording does not settle the year: it says 1910 and also calls the view fifty-two years old. More important than choosing between those dates is what the photograph preserves—a group gathered with the equipment associated with its company, before the motor-truck scene pictured elsewhere in the same edition.

The caption also supplied names, including George Shuey, Raymond Farnsworth and Joseph Staniszewski. Those identifications were printed decades after the photograph was made. They are the newspaper’s account of the men in the picture, not a contemporary roll call.

A truck, ready for a parade

A second Centennial photograph shows men on and beside a Fairview motor truck. The accompanying caption dates the scene to the early 1920s and says they were preparing for a parade. It draws attention to the solid-rubber tires and a kerosene lantern.

The two photographs offer different views of equipment and company life: men grouped around a hand-drawn cart in one, and a motorized vehicle arranged for public display in the other. They do not by themselves date the company’s purchases or identify the truck’s maker. They do show why fire-company photographs belong to the history of community gatherings as well as emergency service.

Fairview’s music in Hazleton

For one parade, a contemporary report survives. On June 19, 1925, the News-Dispatch reported that the Fairview Fire Company band had headed the company’s delegation through Hazleton the previous afternoon in the Six-County firemen’s parade. The band received a fifty-dollar second prize for having the second-largest firemen’s band in the line of march.

The newspaper praised the musicians’ uniforms, appearance and music and described applause along the route. Its continuation reported more than forty participating fire companies and twenty-five hundred dollars in prizes distributed among the marching companies. Fairview was part of a large regional gathering, not simply a local procession.

Another musical delegation appeared in the same account: the Shamokin Band, led by Professor Robert O. Thomas, accompanied Maine Fire Company. The paper distinguished that group from Fairview’s own band. The fifty-dollar award was Fairview’s reported prize for band size; it was not a ranking of the music played by those two organizations.

A company in public view

The 1925 account cannot identify the men in either earlier photograph or tell us whether the same musicians served over the intervening years. It does add a dated event to the remembered views. Fairview appeared with a delegation, uniforms and a band, representing its company beyond Coal Township.

Seen together, the photographs and parade report preserve several ways volunteers presented themselves: with a cart, with a motor truck and with music in the street. They leave a record of equipment and companionship that extends beyond the moments when an alarm called the company to work.