History Corner

The December 24, 1920 Adams County Leader added a couple bits of information about the Mesa fire and the death of Charles Seymour. After saying Mulvihill and Seymour had entered the burning building, the Leader said: “When they failed to return, their fellows, protected with wet sacks over their heads, formed a chain and entered the rapidly-burning structure. When about twenty feet from the door they stumbled upon the prostrate form of Mr. Mulvihill and dragged him to safety. He had followed a pipe line that had led to the door, but had succumbed before he could reach safety. Although nearly unconscious, he mentioned the name, ‘Seymour,’ thus making known that the latter was in the building. Further efforts to save the unfortunate man were of no avail.”

The huge new building was only partially insured. It contained most of that year’s apple harvest – some 50,000 boxes of apples – plus a significant amount of machinery, such as conveyor belts. The cause of the fire was never learned. The loss to the company was estimated at more than $200,000. That would be equal to over $3 million in today’s dollars.

Myderse Van Hoesen wrote: “After the death of Mr. Seymour, my father took in as a partner Horace Woodmansee, who had had a successful business career with the Wickwire-Spencer Steel Company in central New York State, and a long time friend of my father. The Woodmansee family moved into the Seymour house.”

Horace Woodmansee was a native New Yorker and was the same age as Charles Seymour. His wife, Hariett, was three years his senior, and their son, Jere, was 17 when they arrived at Mesa.

Myderse: “Mr. Woodmansee was instrumental in building an evaporator near the packing house to take care of some of the unmarketable fruit. It was quite successful although we had to ship in several cars of coke, by tramway of course, to burn in the furnaces to ‘evaporate’ the apples. Mr. Woodmansee also engineered the construction of ‘earthen storage houses’, (underground storage), when the production of the orchard exceeded the capacity of the existing storage space. It also permitted us to hold more of the fruit longer and wait for a possible rise in the market price.

“Each fall of the year, when the picking season started, many families from several miles around Mesa would move to the town-site, set up camp and help pick and pack the fruit. The fruit harvest and packing could not have been accomplished without the hard work and loyalty of these fine families. For wrap packing the apples, which is quite an art, ‘apple knockers’ would appear from as far away as Florida, Texas and Southern California, where the season was earlier and the harvesting and packing just completed. The favorite place to stay for this ‘elite’ group of individuals was the home of ‘Mother Rush’ as she was known to all, the mother of Clyde rush. She took care of them each year and catered to their idiosyncrasies, which they loved.

“During all of the Van Hoesen ‘era’ at Mesa there were a few ‘outside’ owners, most of them the original investors who had ‘stayed with the project’ and owned one, two or three ten acre tracts in the Orchards. These Orchard tracts were cared for and operated under contracts with the owners along with the balance of the Orchards under our management. In addition there were several ‘Local’ owners who lived on their tracts and cared for them individually. Some of these were Clyde Rush, Gus Keckler, Peter Dahlgren, John DenBoer, H.L. Brooks, Stephen Nock, the Messingers, Ed Hart and perhaps one or two more.

Continued next week.