Excerpt from “Incidents of the Burning of Holland City,” published in the Hartford-Dayspring News in 1871: “Many sturdy pioneers, now aged and gray with toils of the last quarter century in rearing a home and gathering around them competence for old age, were reduced from their hoarded thousands to a paltry hundred dollars.”

On October 12, 1871, a joint issue from all three Holland newspapers reported: “Holland was, and is not.”

The fire left 150-200 families without homes. Property damage is estimated at between $800,000 to $1,000,000. Few people had insurance at the time. Even those who did likely never saw any payment for their losses, as many insurance companies went bankrupt due to the thousands of claims resulting from the Great Chicago Fire.

Recollection of Holland resident G. Van Schelven: “No one unless he has been an eyewitness of such a scene, can conceive its terror or its awfulness.”

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