"Red Saturday:" The Great Fire of 1907

(Beaufort District Collection)

January 19, 1907 was a very important date in the history of the City of Beaufort as a fire purportedly caused by three little boys naughtily smoking cigarettes behind F.W. Scheper's Barn on the corner of Bay and Carteret Streets ended up burning down a good portion of the town. 



The fire was noticed about 1:30pm on that Saturday and fanned by stiff winds from the southwest. Windblown embers ignited other structures spreading the fire rapidly and with catastrophic consequences. 

Ironically the Beaufort Gazette January 19, 1907 issue contained a front page notice about a small "Fire on the Bay" the previous day. That fire occurred at George Waterhouse's cotton gin and "was put out by the women operatives at once and little damage done."

Read more about "Red Saturday" in a series of posts to our BDCBCL Wordpress blog last January. https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/2018/01/. If you'd like for the news to unfold now as it did 112 years ago: 

Savannah Morning News, January 20, 1907 https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/2018/01/20/savannah-morning-news-coverage-january-20-1907-beaufort-fire/

Savannah Morning News, January 21, 1907 https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/savannah-morning-news-january-21-1907-coverage-of-the-beaufort-fire/ 

Savannah Morning News, January 22, 1907 https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/2018/01/22/reports-about-the-beaufort-fire-on-january-22-1907/

Beaufort Gazette coverage of the catastrophic blaze begins on January 24, 1907 as it was only a weekly newspaper at the time. The issue had extensive coverage so the content is broken into a series of BDCBCL blog posts:  


* Beaufort Fire, Main Article
https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/beaufort-gazette-coverage-january-24-1907-beaufort-fire/


* "Fire Notes A" 
https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/2018/01/27/beaufort-gazette-coverage-january-24-1907-beaufort-fire-fire-notes-a/

* "Mass Meeting" (Beaufortonians were incensed about what the Savannah Morning News had written)
https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/2018/01/31/beaufort-gazette-coverage-january-24-1907-beaufort-fire-mass-meeting/

* "Fire Notes B" mention the specific circumstances of some of the townspeople 

https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/2018/02/02/beaufort-gazette-coverage-january-24-1907-beaufort-fire-fire-notes-b/ 

* "Death of William Bennett" was the most unfortunate consequences of the blaze https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/2018/02/07/beaufort-gazette-coverage-january-24-1907-beaufort-fire-death-of-william-bennett/

Reminder: The Library system will be closed Monday, January 21, 2019 in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. day. Regular hours resume Tuesday, January 22, 2019.