Teen girl's poem tells story of fire that ravaged city

A record from the American Red Cross succinctly details the effects of New Bern's Great Fire of 1922: more than 3,000 people left homeless, most of them black.

But perhaps the most compelling record of the fire that leveled 40 city blocks was left by New Bern's children.

One was a teenaged girl named Emma Poole, who wrote a poem about the fire:

"The New Bern fire ... the first of December

The people of New Bern will long remember.

When everything was quiet and still,

And a fire broke out at (the) mill," she wrote.

Emma was 15 when she put that stanza in her diary. She was referring to a fire at Rowland Lumber Company, the state's largest lumber mill and a major employer for New Bern.

That morning blaze near East Front and Queen streets downtown marked the beginning of a dark day in New Bern's history.

"Just before 11, an alarm was sent from box 47. A fire was discovered on Kilmarnock Street, a narrow one about 30 feet," she wrote.

That call was for the second fire -one in the Five Points neighborhood uptown.

"The firemen came and done their best, but a gale was blowing from the southwest," she wrote. "And as the wind blew and the flames were sweeping, women and children were soon heard weeping."

Poole's 12-stanza poem was featured during a commemorative tour Monday - the 86th anniversary of the fire that killed an elderly laundress, damaged 1,000 buildings and caused $2.5 million in damage.

A bus tour showing the path of the fire was sponsored by the Uptown Business and Professional Association and the New Bern Firemen's Museum. Along with retracing its path through Five Points, the tour highlighted contributions of some of New Bern's prominent black residents in the days following the fire.

"It was just a monumental loss for the city - and for the African-American community especially," said Mary Peterkin, the president of the association. "It really was a major part of New Bern's history."

Emma Poole Sawyer's account of the fire was discovered many years later, in a diary that her daughter found in a closet.

"This firsthand account of a young girl is really a treasure," said Angela Wilson, an association member who narrated the tour.

One of the tour stops was Cedar Grove Cemetery, where many people who lost their homes slept until a "tent city" could be set up in Five Points.

Other stops included the Charlotte Rhone Center, formerly the West Street Library. The building was later renamed for New Bern's first black nurse, who organized relief efforts after the fire.

St. Cyprian's Episcopal Church on Johnson Street was a tour highlight. The church served as a makeshift hospital in the days following the fire.

It is there that history buffs can find a record of the first baby born after the fire - a little boy named St. Cyprian Emergency Dillahunt.

"We are always trying to fill in more pieces about anything that happened during the fire and the days after it," Wilson said. "Every time we are able to fill in a gap and retell the story, we ensure that people remember that this is part of New Bern's history, too."