This digital story was created in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its Stories from Main Street student documentary initiative, called "Stories: Yes." The project encourages students and their mentors to research and record stories about small-towns and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, as well as thoughts about American democracy. These documentaries are then shared on Smithsonian websites and social media.
Speaker 1 (00:08): To include the hardships of Crisfield and its major infrastructure changes, we interviewed Mr. Phillip Goldsborough to get a better understanding of what led to our current state of infrastructure.
Speaker 3 (00:20): Okay. And do you recall the fire of Woodson in '72?
Mr. Phillip Goldsborough (00:25): Yes. Ma'am, because I went into it.
Speaker 3 (00:26): You did?
Mr. Phillip Goldsborough (00:27): Yes.
Speaker 3 (00:28): Was it as tragic as what we read in our research?
Mr. Phillip Goldsborough (00:31): Yes, it was. Yes, it was. Listen, fires are always tragic. No one ever benefits from a fire. It's very hard to recover from the fire. The only thing a fire will ever do for you is give you a chance to do something different. Example is downtown. When the downtown section in 1883 burned, from Main Street all the way down to the Depot pretty well was wiped out. The reason for that was because the buildings were built out of wood very quickly. The town was booming. Just like you see in the Midwest, some of the buildings had artificial fronts and a small resection because it was in a hurry. Everything was in a hurry because people wanted to make money. The railroad was here and the town was really booming.
Mr. Phillip Goldsborough (01:15): But what people had forgot, there was no fire protection, there was no water system, there was no fire company. 1874 before we even had a fire company. In 1928, we had another major fire. This was in the uptown area. Uptown, where the post office is all today, there was a wholesale store where the post office is today. So this fire also was like that. So one building burnt to the other, and the fire company, even though we had an engine at the time ... This is our first fire engine, as a matter of fact, and we still have it in the fire station. You could go to the first station and visit and see this. So fire equipment's very limited, water systems are very limited.
Mr. Phillip Goldsborough (01:57): But jumping ahead a little bit, by 1928, we did have a water system and we did have several firetrucks. Still couldn't attack the fire like that. Started in the arcade theater. One of the projectors caught the building on fire. People went out nicely, no one got hurt in the building. And only one person died in the 1928 fire. More than 60 buildings were destroyed. And many families, including African American families that were on the forestry area, houses were burned down as well. So here we are again, the town wiped out, literally, and we got to get going fast. Newspaper article says the fire was on Thursday, I think it was the 29th or 28th of March. The paper came out on Saturday.
Speaker 1 (02:45): Why do you think it took so long for you to decide to actually make a plan?
Mr. Phillip Goldsborough (02:50): Because it's very hard for us to learn. We have to learn the hard way.
Speaker 3 (02:54): Would you say a majority of the brick buildings that were built then, do some of them still stand today?
Asset ID: 8592
For a complete transcript, please visit the Museum on Main Street website: www.museumonmainstreet.org
