The P-I error that changed Seattle history Seattle lawyer, amateur genealogist helped set record straight

The Great Seattle Fire, which started the afternoon of June 6, 1889. This photo was taken on what's now First Avenue. The fire destroyed Seattle's business district - 29 square blocks including the railroad terminals and nearly all of the city's wharves. less The Great Seattle Fire, which started the afternoon of June 6, 1889. This photo was taken on what's now First Avenue. The fire destroyed Seattle's business district - 29 square blocks including the railroad ... more Photo: P-I File Photo: P-I File Image 1 of / 60 Caption Close The P-I error that changed Seattle history 1 / 60 Back to Gallery

Occasionally, newspapers report factual errors. A well-intentioned interview subject gives bad information, a name is spelled wrong, a breaking news story is inadvertently peppered with grammatical errors.

But no incorrect newspaper story has had a bigger impact on Seattle history than one published June 7, 1889.

The previous day, a glue pot tipped over at what is now the corner of First Avenue and Madison Street. Though nobody died, the resulting fire destroyed Seattle's business district, consuming more than two-dozen blocks of wooden buildings, most of the city's wharves, nearly a dozen brick buildings and Seattle's railroad terminals.

The Post-Intelligencer presses were destroyed, but the newsmen set up a temporary shop on property owned by publisher Leigh "Alphabet" Hunt on Fourth Avenue. Reporters rushed to find people who knew where the blaze began.

"The fire was caused by the overturning of a glue pot in Jim McGough's paint shop, under Smith's boot and shoe store, at the corner of Front and Madison streets, in what was known as the Denny block," the P-I wrote.

For nearly a century, that was repeated by some historians and authors who wrote books about the fire.

They missed the correction published nearly two weeks later in the P-I.

"My shop was in the flat just over where the fire occurred," McGough told the P-I for that article, published June 21, 1889. "At that time I was at work in a building at the corner of Fourth and Terrace streets, and hearing the alarm and being a fireman of Company No. 1, I quit work and hastened to join my company, not knowing the locality of the fire."

The Great Seattle Fire actually started in the Clairmont and Company cabinet shop, below McGough's shop in the basement of the Pontius building.

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But the inaccuracy continued.

When the P-I published its centennial edition in 1963 it republished historic front pages, including the one from the day after the Great Seattle Fire. But it didn't mention that the McGough reference was incorrect. A book published in the 1970s of historic P-I front pages also forgot to mention the mistake.

It didn't help that in multiple history articles, both the P-I and Seattle Times continued to say the fire had started at McGough's paint shop. The Times even mentioned it in the 1965 obituary for McGough's second daughter, Ella.

The mistake was repeated in Murray Morgan's classic Seattle history book "Skid Road," published in 1951. Sales of the book through 1999 totaled nearly a quarter million, according to Historylink.org.

"The History of Seattle Washington," published two years after the fire, also inaccurately said the fire started in McGough's paint shop, and the "History of Washington" made the mistake again in its 1893 publication.

How did the P-I story become so prevalent? The Seattle Times wasn't around when the Great Seattle Fire happened, and no other daily publications were published the day after it started.

The best article noting the inaccuracies and corrections to the story was done by Hugh McGough, a prominent Seattle attorney who roughly 10 years ago authored an article, "The Great Seattle Fire – Don't Blame Jimmy McGough." His full article can be read here.

Hugh McGough, who says he's not a close relative of James McGough but is probably related through family in Ireland, notes that Nard Jones' 1972 book "Seattle" makes the mistake, as do more than a half-dozen others. Even the "History of the Seattle Fire Department" incorrectly states that McGough's paint shop was the source of the fire, Hugh McGough said.

The effort to clear James McGough's name was first led by James R. Warren when he was director of the Museum of History and Industry. He had the correct facts in his 1989 book on the fire, as did Clarence Bagley in his earlier "History of Seattle," and as J. Willis Sayre had done in "This City of Ours."

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In the years since Hugh McGough published his work, he's noticed more people have corrected the fire accounts, he said Wednesday. McGough said he understands how people came up with the initial mistake and repeated it.

The 24-year-old worker who tipped the glue pot in the Clairmont and Company cabinet shop that afternoon of June 7, 1889 – first identified in the P-I as "an old Swede named Berg" – was John E. Back. Two weeks after the fire, a P-I reporter found and interviewed him about the massive blaze.

"I cut some balls of glue and put them in the glue pot on the stove," Back said. "I put in some shaving where there was little fire, and then went to work about twenty-five feet away, near the front door.

"After a while somebody said 'Look at the glue.' Another fellow, a Finlander from New York, then took a piece of board and laid it on to smother the glue, but the board caught fire. Then I run and took the pot of water to smother the fire and poured it over the pot of glue, which was blazing up high. When I throw the water on, the glue flew all over the shop into the shavings and everything take fire."

Back is believed to have left Seattle shortly after the story was published. No record of him exists here after 1889.

Each year after the fire, McGough would object when the newspapers continued to blame him for the fire. One of the Times articles from June 1895 is included in Hugh McGough's account.

"I'm getting mighty tired of all this notoriety," James McGough said. "Every year the papers come out and say that the fire started in my shop and the story is all told over again. As a matter of fact, the fire did not start in my shop at all, and every year I have gone around and made the correction for the benefit of the newspapers."

Born in 1850, McGough came to Seattle from San Francisco in 1883 and married his wife, Sarah, here in 1890, according to the P-I's archive.

He continued his painting business after the fire and amassed property at Three Tree Point in Vancouver, Queen Anne Hill, Smith Cove and his home at what's now 23rd Avenue South and South Norman Street near Judkins Park.

On Jan. 20, 1910, riding a horse and buggy, he tried to cross the intersection at what is now Eighteenth Avenue South and South Jackson Street. But McGough's horse shied and motorist R.L. Fitts hit the buggy. McGough was thrown under the car, dragged for roughly 200 feet and killed.

McGough, who was survived by six children and his wife, is buried at Calvary Cemetery near University Village. His wife was buried beside him in 1943, survived by five grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

About four months after the Great Seattle Fire, the city created a professional fire department. McGough's second son, Thomas, became a captain in the Seattle Fire Department. His grandson, James H., became a battalion chief.

Hugh McGough, also an amateur genealogist, said some of James McGough's descendents now live in Tacoma.

And the glue pot that started the Great Seattle Fire? It's on display at the Museum of History and Industry.