Zouave Command Staff

While Ellsworth had no firefighting background, the balance of his command staff did. Colonel Noah L. Farnham and Major John A. Creiger were respected volunteer assistant chief engineers of the New York Fire Department.

Creiger worked the 1854 fire and subsequent building collapse that was one of the largest line-of-duty losses suffered by the volunteers.

Lieutenant Colonel John A. Creiger 1861

Assistant Chief Engineer John Cregier was directing operations at the roof of the five-story Meade building that was adjacent to the burning W. T. Jennings & Company at 231 Broadway. While making a second attempt to get to the seat of the fire, the rear wall of the Jennings building collapsed and trapped the fire attack team.

Creiger commanded the rescue effort. While scalding some of the trapped firefighters, he directed hose operations to keep the fire away from the rescue effort in the collapsed and burning building. Eleven firefighters died and 20 were seriously injured at the April 25th blaze.

In the 1854 annual report, Chief Engineer Alfred Carson implored the Common Council of New York to empower members of the fire commission to require corrective actions in structurally deficient buildings and overloading of goods within and around buildings.

Invasion of northern Virginia

Fifteen days after the Willard Hotel fire, the day after Virginia seceded; Ellsworth led his Zouvares uncontested down the streets of Alexandria, Virginia. He ordered some of his men to take the railroad station while he and a few other soldiers went to secure the telegraph office.

Mr. House, a Tribune correspondent embedded with the Zouvares, provided this narrative that was printed in Harper’s Weekly:

On entering the open door, the Colonel met a man in his shirt and trowsers, of whom he demanded what sort of a flag it was that hung above the roof. The stranger, who seemed greatly alarmed, declared he knew nothing of it, and that he was only a boarder there. Without questioning him further the Colonel sprang up stairs, and we all followed to the topmost story, whence, by means of a ladder, he clambered to the roof, cut down the flag with Winser’s knife, and brought it from its staff.

Marshall pub

There were two men in bed in the garret, whom we had not observed at all when we entered, their position being somewhat concealed, but who now rose in great apparent amazement, although I observed that they were more than half dressed. We at once turned to descend, Private Brownell leading the way, and Colonel Ellsworth immediately following him with the flag.

As Brownell reached the first landing-place, or entry, after a descent of some dozen steps, a man jumped from a dark passage, and hardly noticing the private, leveled a double-barreled gun square at the Colonel’s breast. Brownell made a quick pass to turn the weapon aside, but the fellow’s hand was firm, and he discharged one barrel straight to its aim, the slugs or buckshot with which it was loaded entering the Colonel’s heart, and killing him at the instant. I think my hand was resting on poor Ellsworth’s shoulder at the moment.

At any rate, he seemed to fall almost from my own grasp. He was on the second or third step from the landing, and he dropped forward with that heavy, horrible, headlong weight which always comes of sudden death inflicted in this manner. His assailant had turned like a flash to give the contents of the other barrel to Brownell, but either he could not command his aim or the Zouave was too quick with him, for the slugs went over his head, and passed through the panels and wainscot of a door which sheltered some sleeping lodgers.

Simultaneously with this second shot, and sounding like the echo of the first, Brownell’s rifle was heard, and the assassin staggered backward. He was hit exactly in the middle of the face, and the wound, as I afterward saw it, was the most frightful I ever witnesses. Of course Brownell did not know how fatal his shot had been, and so, before the man dropped, he thrust his sabre bayonet through and through the body , the force of the blow sending the dead man violently down the upper section of the second flight of stairs, at the foot of which he lay with his face to the floor. Winser ran from above, crying. ‘ Who is hit?’ but as he glanced downward by our feet, he needed no answer.

entire article HERE

Harper’s Weekly June 15, 1861 front page article with art HERE.

next week: Bull Run Retreat

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Mike worked on a project about Reconstruction after the Civil War
This is one in a series of articles about the Metropolitan Fire Department established in Manhattan in 1865.

Mike “FossilMedic” Ward