On the morning of Sunday, Oct. 8, 1871, the citizens of Peshtigo, a Wisconsin lumber town up a dirt road from Green Bay, went to church and prayed for God to spare them from the flames.
Brush fires had been popping up throughout the Midwest, the result of a summer drought that stretched into the first days of fall. The townsfolk could smell smoke wafting through the pews. Outside, ash sprinkled down like snowflakes.
"Still, the thought of danger did not enter the minds of the people," according to an account in the Peshtigo Times newspaper. That night, "one by one the lights that had glimmered through the windowpanes were extinguished; babes lay tranquilly on their mothers bosoms; the virtuous and the vicious were seeking the God-given boon of sleep.