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A Quick-Thinking Child Saves the Barn

A young girl's keen observation stops a potential disaster when she spots a fire catching in the hayloft of her family's barn.

Last Tuesday while the Basses were at supper, their little daughter Ina discovered smoke issuing from the barn and thinking it to be on fire told her parents it was. Mrs. Bass at once called help and Mr. Bennett’s haying crew left their suppers and hurried down, finding, on their arrival, that Mr. Bass and the children had extinguished the blaze which had in some way caught in the loose hay in front of the barn door. There was a heavy wind blowing from the west and had Ina not discovered it when she did the barn and contents would likely have been lost. Two large horses, one a stallion, were in the barn at the time.

“There was a heavy wind blowing from the west and had Ina not discovered it when she did the barn and contents would likely have been lost.”

— Printed in The Kennewick Courier-Reporter (Kennewick, Wash.) 1914-1938, 1915
Then · 1915111 years apartNow · 2026

In an era before fire departments were always minutes away, the vigilance of children was often the only thing standing between a family farm and total ruin.

The original page

The Kennewick Courier-Reporter (Kennewick, Wash.) 1914-1938, 1915-06-10. Library of Congress, Chronicling America.

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About this story

From
The Kennewick Courier-Reporter (Kennewick, Wash.) 1914-1938, JUN 10, 1915, Page 6
Text
Cleaned up from the page — spelling and layout repaired — not a word-for-word transcription. The page itself is above, for exact wording.
Rights
Public domain
Place
46.20261, -119.11697 · placed automatically
The paper in the Library of Congress catalog ↗