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| John Bremond, Sr. 1813-1866 |
In 1839, Texas moved its capital from Houston to Austin. Despite its newfound importance, Austin lacked the ability to fight even the smallest of fires--until an enterprising New Yorker arrived. Thanks to John Bremond, Sr., who was looking to build a business and raise a family in one of the union’s newest states, plus his response to several fires in downtown Austin during the 1850s, Austin Hook and Ladder Fire Company No. 1 was eventually founded. This is John's story.
Coming to Austin
Originally from New York City, John Bremond, Sr. lived in Philadelphia where he owned a haberdashery business with his older brother, Paul Bremond. John’s time on the east coast, especially in New York City, would prove pivotal to his future in Austin. In 1848, however, John boarded a ship leaving Philadelphia for New Orleans. Many predictions had him arriving in Austin in 1845, but according to port documents from New Orleans, a J Bremond arrived from Philadelphia in 1848. One thing is for certain, his journey was not yet complete. Without the speed and convenience of rail (it was not yet available), he would have traveled to Austin by horse and buggy, which would take an estimated 3 to 4 weeks.
It’s not entirely clear why John chose to leave Philadelphia for Austin. Being a pioneering businessman, it’s not a far stretch to believe he saw the immense opportunity the young Texas capital city offered. In a pattern that has been repeated for past and present Austinites, John came to Austin to build a business and a life. He also brought his experiences as a young man fighting fires in New York City to Austin.
By 1855, John and his wife, Elizabeth, had 10 children, the youngest 3 born in Austin. In those 7 years, he had opened up a successful, and still growing, business on the southwest corner of Pecan (present-day 6th Street) and Brazos Streets. His business sold dried goods and various sundries from New York.
The year 1855 proved to be an important year for John Bremond, as well. He ran for and won a seat on the Austin City Council. He served as the 2nd ward Alderman (a present-day Council Member) in 1856 and 1857. At that time, the Council and Mayor were elected to one-year terms.
Major fires spotlight lack of firefighting service
During the winter of 1855, Austinites experienced one of the worst fires in the city’s history. In the December 8, 1855 issue of the State Gazette, the extent of the damage was reported:
A fire broke out about 7 o’clock last Thursday evening on Congress Ave. The office of Fisk and Bowers, the boot and shoe store of Mr. Benenger, and the blacksmith shop of Mr. Jones, were all consumed.
These three businesses were located at the northeast corner of Live Oak (present-day 2nd Street) and Congress Streets. The State Gazette report went on to make an editorial comment about the lack of firefighting service in the city:
An engine and some water facilities are much needed for the safety of property, and we think that with a little aid from the State, whose property is alike at stake, our citizens might command the necessary means for protection.
In Official History: Austin Volunteer Fire Department, E.H. Loughery cited a December 1855 issue of the Texas Intelligencer reporting on the same fire; it echoed the call for firefighting services:
An engine and water facilities are much needed for the safety of property in the city.
The devastating fire had highlighted the lack of firefighting services in Austin.
The first week of February 1858, reminded Austinites once again for the need of a trained firefighting service when another devastating fire broke out downtown. Local Austin papers again reported on the fire and commented on the lack of firefighting services. According to Loughery, the Texas Intelligencer reported that John T. Miller’s City Livery almost burned to the ground:
A fire broke out this morning in John T. Miller’s livery stable. It seems to have been communicated from a stove pipe, as the fire was first discovered in the roof. The scarcity of ladders, hooks, and buckets, make it a miracle that anything was saved.
Located at Bois d’Arc (7th Street) and Congress Streets, Miller’s livery was in the heart of Austin’s growing downtown. This fire seems to have been the turning point. It was also the second time a fire occurred at that location, the first one being reported in 1839. As Loughery notes in his book, the 1858 fire swelled public sentiment for a professional firefighting service:
This appears to have been the last straw needed to arose (sic) public sentiment. We find John Bremond, Sr., taking the initiative towards the organization of what was later termed Austin Hook and Ladder Fire Company No. 1.
Building community support
John’s time on the City Council gave him important insights and connections on how to accomplish citywide goals. This experience coupled with his experiences in New York City fighting fires, made him uniquely qualified to spearhead efforts to create firefighting services in Austin.
From February to August of 1858, John must have spent considerable time building community support for a professionally trained firefighting company in Austin. Not only would he need to gin up support among Austinites, but he would also need a majority of the City Council to enact an ordinance for a volunteer fire company. If that wasn’t enough, John would also need to convince enough men to serve as firefighters. He had his work cut out for him.
In what was surely one of Austin’s first grassroots movements, John took the issue to the citizens. According to Loughery, from the efforts of men like William C. Walsh, Robert J. Lambert, W. J. Lambert, J. H. Robinson, and Eugene Bremond (John’s eldest son) enough volunteers were found to create a roster of firefighters for Austin’s first fire company. Additionally, Robert J. Lambert, proprietor of the Southern Intelligencer, and W. J. Lambert, a printer for the State Gazette, helped create public awareness and sentiment of the need for a fire company. W.J. Lambert would prove to be helpful in more ways than one.
W.J. Lambert and William C. Walsh were integral in the creation of the first fire company constitution. As Loughery recounts, Lambert used his position and the persuasive allure of journalism to help John Bremond draft the constitution:
He (Bremond) gave W. J. Lambert, then a printer in the job office of the State Gazette,… a printed copy of an old fire company constitution and by-laws, with the request that he draw up a constitution.
It is believed that John also gave Walsh a copy of an old New York fire company constitution as the basis for Austin’s fire company constitution. The initial constitution was handwritten by Walsh himself.
In August of 1858, the Austin Hook and Ladder Company, No. 1 was created by the city. With a list of men willing to volunteer as firefighters and a resolution from the City Council, John and the other men finally petitioned the Texas Legislature to pass a law recognizing the “act to incorporate” the first Austin fire company. The legislature, since it only assembled during odd-numbered years, made Austin’s first fire company official the following year, 1859.
Forged in the fires of New York City
While John Bremond was not the only prominent Austinite to take up the cause for an Austin fire company, he was quite possibly the only one with a history of firefighting. Loughery makes comments on why John was considered the undisputed expert on firefighting; he had been trained as a firefighter in New York:
Mr. Bremond, who was an old New York fireman, was about the only man in Austin who knew anything about the organization, equipment and drilling of a fire company.
Loughery was not the only one to find connections between John and firefighting during his younger years in New York City. In her extensive volume on Austin and Travis County history titled, History of Travis County and Austin, 1839-1899, Mary Starr Barkley comments on John Bremond being recognized as a trained New York firefighter and that William Walsh helped him in creating the Austin Hook and Ladder Company, No. 1:
Bremond, formerly a fireman in New York, who knew drill routines and equipment, and Walsh aided in organizing and chartering Austin Hook and Ladder Company No. 1.
Both Loughery’s and Barkley’s comments merely scratched the surface of John’s firefighting expertise. He was put in charge of everything in regards to the fire company, from organizing and structuring it to deciding on and ordering the firefighting uniforms, which of course, came from New York City.
However, Loughery and Barkley offered little to no specifics of John’s actual experience as a firefighter in New York City. Finding details, with any certainty, was no small feat. Researching at the Perry-Castañeda Library at the University of Texas and the Austin History Center, as well as a stroke of luck, would prove the Austin and New York Fire Departments shared an intricate connection.
In 1830, New York City only took up about one-third of Manhattan Island. The largest structure in the city at the time was the New York Hospital on Anthony Street (present-day Worth Street). According to data from the 1830 Census, situated across the street from the hospital, at 65 Anthony Street (on the northeast corner of Anthony and Church Streets), was the dental office and living residence of John’s father, Paul Barbe Bremond.
The 1830 Census entry also identified other people living at Paul Bremond’s residence, most notably a male aged 17 -- the same age John would have been at that time. Because only the names of the heads of households were recorded in the census, all other individuals were recorded by gender and age. The City Directories of New York from the 1830s, the precursor to phone books, confirmed the location of Paul Barbe Bremond’s dental office.
So now that the location of Bremond’s childhood home has been identified, it became paramount to find which, if any, firefighting companies Bremond could have been a member. With a stroke of luck, an illustrated map of New York’s Manhattan Island from 1834 (part of the New-York Historical Society’s collection) was able to provide some guidance. The map showed every New York firefighting engine, hose, and hook and ladder companies, as well as cisterns and hydrants, located throughout the city. According to the map, the closest engine company to the Bremonds was Engine #23 located at the Hospital Yard at the corner of Anthony and Broadway Streets, just down the street from Paul Barbe Bremond’s residence and a dental office. In addition, there was a hydrant right next to the Hospital Yard.
The Hospital Yard firehouse had been in existence since John Bremond’s early childhood. According to A.E. Costello in his volume,
Our Firemen: The History of the New York Fire Departments from 1609 to 1887, the Hospital Yard firehouse was active in 1823, if not earlier than that. As part of an 1823 report on the scope and size of the New York firefighting service, to determine the tax rate for fire insurance, New York Mayor Stephen Allen presented to City Council a list of all New York fire companies and their locations. The information from the list matched that of the map, showing the Hospital Yard location was the home of Engine #23.
John Bremond would have been 13 years old in 1826, and while that may have been too young to be a “firefighter”, he could have been a runner for Engine #23 at that time. According to the New York Fire Museum’s website, runners were “unofficial firemen” who were usually “young boys and men that hung around the firehouse waiting for an alarm.”
When a fire broke out, runners would fill the engines with water and help pull the engine or hose wagon. Because runners were attached to one company, they often would end up fighting with other fire companies to reach a fire or water source first. If a company felt their firefighting turf was being infringed upon, it wasn't uncommon for them to throw rocks at rival companies.
In those days, firehouse rosters largely consisted of the sons of businessmen and families living near and around the firehouse. Young men and even boys would volunteer for their neighborhood firehouse in what could be described as a club, or what we would now consider a gang environment. Given that John’s father was a member of the medical community, he most assuredly would have been involved at the Hospital Yard firehouse and with Engine #23.
One could imagine the effect firefights had on John Bremond, growing up on Anthony Street and watching the firefighters at the firehouse down the block socializing, or actually fighting a fire and saving a neighbor’s business or residence. Day after day, season after season, he would have had almost constant exposure to ongoing activities at Engine #23. John could have worked his way up from runner to firefighter, once he became old enough, right around the time of the 1830 Census.
John’s connection to firefighting in New York was not in question once he established himself in Austin. But the possibility of his firefighting experience seems all the more likely with this newly unearthed evidence of his childhood home and its proximity to Engine #23 and the Hospital Yard firehouse in New York City.
It became a pattern in the young history of this nation for New York firefighters to take their knowledge to other American cities. It has been documented that the cities of Honolulu, Seattle, and even San Francisco owe the beginnings of their fire departments to former New York firefighters. To Austin’s benefit, John Bremond chose to settle in the Texas capital and share his knowledge of firefighting. In doing so, he put his adopted city on a path that helped create better stability and safety for a burgeoning Austin.
Bremond family contributions to Austin
John Bremond passed away in 1866 while on a business trip in upstate New York. Family letters, stored at the Austin History Center, shed light on his final trip. He was there to visit the vendors (old friends, really) he relied on for his business. Based on the letters, his death was devastating to the Bremond family. He was initially buried in New York. Eventually, Eugene and John, Jr. traveled to New York, had their father’s remains exhumed, and brought back to Austin by train. He is currently buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Austin surrounded by his immediate family members.
The contributions John Bremond made to Austin are not so readily obvious today. The stately homes built by John’s sons and grandsons are an indicator of their wealth and status during the 19th and early- 20th centuries. Bordered by 7th and 8th Streets and Guadalupe and San Antonio, the most obvious and iconic of the homes are that of John Bremond, Jr. and Eugene Bremond. A more deliberate examination reveals that the entire block consists of what were nearly all Bremond residences. The Bremonds had created a family compound of sorts in downtown Austin. Of course, the homes don’t tell the whole story of the impact the Bremonds made on Austin during its early years. And John’s contributions may be the greatest of the entire Bremond clan.
John’s economic impact on Austin, based solely on his family business, would have been more than enough for the historical icon. But his role in founding and training Austin’s first firefighting service set the city on a path of greater economic prosperity and deserves even greater accolades.
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