Motor Corps helped save people, property

By Jimmy Lovrien jlovrien@duluthnews.com

Volunteers of the Motor Corps, part of the Minnesota Home Guard, were called into duty just before 6 p.m. as “a heavy pall of smoke clouded the city,” according to a Nov. 3, 1918 report written by Maj. Roger M. Weaver.

Heading first to the Woodland neighborhood, one of the worst-hit by fire in Duluth, corps members drove people to the Duluth Armory for shelter and helped battle fires. Before long, they requested any working vehicle in the city be put to use.

Unpaid and responsible for any vehicle repairs — but reimbursed for gas and oil — the corps continued to help the relief effort for weeks after the blaze.

“The saving of life and property, the rapid transportation of troops and supplies, would have been impossible, or greatly hampered without this valuable organization,” Weavers wrote.

The News Tribune predicted these men would be remembered as heroes in an Oct. 18, 1918 article.

“When the historians of the north get around to writing the story of this widespread and horrifying catastrophe some day, they will include the work of these men who dropped everything to plunge into a maelstrom of movement, and every movement vital to somebody’s welfare, somewhere,” the News Tribune wrote.

They were right. Nearly 100 years later, Dan Hartman, director of Glensheen Mansion and a local history buff, is among the dozens of historians who stress the importance of the Motor Corps when discussing the 1918 fire.

According to Hartman, there were a number of veterans who sought to serve their country again in the military but were deemed physically unfit to do so.

Instead, Hartman said they formed Home Corps units, one of which was called the Motor Corps, a group equipped with modest vehicles, mostly Ford Model Ts.

“In case of emergencies, they’d go and help people in their small vehicles. And everywhere else in Minnesota, you could generally say they were a huge waste of taxpayer money,” Hartman said.

Prior to the fire, the Motor Corps wasn’t celebrated. Unions feared the Home Guard and Motor Corps would be used to break up strikes while others saw the organization as a waste of resources.

Just eight days before the fire, the Mesaba Council of Defense president argued in a letter to the editor printed in the News Tribune that the Range Motor

Corps was a waste of gasoline and “has been driving around the country presumably gathering up slackers.”

“But in the 1918 fire, they were insanely resourceful,” Hartman said. “These retirees saved hundreds of lives, driving into really dangerous situations, piling families onto their cars and saving them from the fires.”

In the weeks following the fire, their responsibilities moved from fighting fires and rescuing victims to clearing roads, recovering and burying bodies, transporting construction crews tasked with rebuilding neighborhoods and bringing supplies to area farms. As the flu outbreak of 1918 persisted, the Motor Corps helped transport patients, too.

And with that, the perception of the Motor Corps changed.

For their efforts, the state of Minnesota awarded the Motor Corps, Home Guards and National Guards with Bronze Medals.

Minnesota Gov. Joseph A. A. Burnquist also credited the Motor Corps for its heroism, according to an interview in the Duluth Herald on Oct. 18, 1918.

“We could not have made it out at all without the Motor Reserve Corps,” Burnquist said. “Through these splendid volunteers we have been able to reach the survivors everywhere without loss of precious time.”

The corps was celebrated throughout the News Tribune’s pages for weeks, too.

In an Oct. 28, 1918 letter to the editor, John Lane said he was impressed with the Motor Corps.

“I do not believe too much praise can be given to the motor corps and the Duluth Home guards for what they have done and are doing,” Lane wrote. “I hope we will all bear in mind the spirit of these times is to: ‘Help those who need help, and keep on helping.’” u

By Shelley Nelson snelson@superiortelegram.com

Superior had already seen an influx of people to serve the war industries in October 1918. On the afternoon of Oct. 12, 1918 — a Saturday — the sky in Superior resembled an inverted copper bowl. A smoky haze, and at times, a pungent woodfire odor was present in the Twin Ports.

Over in Minnesota, just across the border, galeforce winds fanned smoldering flames into a hurricane of blazing embers blowing in all directions. The tinder-dry forests in the areas of Brookston, Moose Lake and Cloquet became a furnace. By late afternoon, calls for help reach Duluth and Superior.

Superior was probably less prepared than other cities its size to house, clothe, feed and shelter several thousand refugees in a 24-hour period because of the war industries influx, according to a March 1920 Wisconsin Chapter American Red Cross report.

However, when the trains started to arrive around 11:30 p.m., Superior leaders were organized and city residents stepped in to help those fleeing the fire that burned an area of about 1,500 square miles, forcing thousands to flee their homes and farms.

The Evening Telegram reported “the people of Superior are rising as one to the emergency, supplying food, clothing and lodging as needed, with money as required by urgent cases.”

Mayor A.F. Baxter had been elected in the spring of that year, said Tony Tracy, director of the Douglas County Historical Society. Baxter had previously served as a senator in the Wisconsin Legislature.

“The great thing is it got be be 8 and 9 o’clock, and they saw these flames, and he remembered the Hinckley Fire of 1894,” Tracy said. “And he remembered what a cluster it was but at the same time what a role the railroads played in getting the survivors out.”

Tracy said Superior’s mayor anticipated the influx of refugees, and Superior’s leading men met at the Union Depot to devise a plan.

“He got with his people and the American Red Cross, and they totally organized over here,” Tracy said. “It’s just such an amazing story. They got together with shop owners and people brought cars. They had a couple different train stations that were rolling at that time so they had people at them both. As people got off the train, they wrote down their name and they assigned them to somebody, and they drove them to … whatever buildings were up at that time.”

According to the Telegram, businesses, service clubs, schools, department stores and other public buildings were opened to thousands of refugees.

Many refugees were sent to private residences to sleep for the night when they arrived. Early Sunday morning, the Commercial Club was established as a clearing house where refugees names and temporary addresses were registered. Records showed 3,028 families completed a registration.

“Sunday night every refugee in Superior slept in a real bed, and many families who had offered accommodations were put on a ‘waiting list’ since every refugee was provided for,” according to the Wisconsin American Red Cross.

“The fire relief committee of the Superior chapter of the American Red Cross is entitled to a great share of commendation for the splendid and effective work which it performed in the emergency and continued to perform for many months following the fire,” the Minnesota Forest Fires Relief Commission wrote in its 1921 final report. According to the commission, the Superior Fire Relief Committee raised more than $128,000 to help with the relief effort. About 30 percent of the donations were returned to the donors after expenses for food, housing, furniture, clothing, health care and medicines, burials, transportation, sundries and cash grants were taken out of the funds.

“When they left, they left with 100 bucks, and stuff that they were given while they were here to get their lives going again,” Tracy said. “And 100 bucks in 1918 was pretty generous.”

In fact, $100 in 1918 is worth almost $1,800 today, according to a calculator provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Words can never express the spirit of helpfulness extended to the fire refugees by the city of Superior,” a Red Cross social worker wrote in her report about the fire. u