“When balls of fire started coming down from the sky, my mother and father took us to the spring and wrapped us in wet quilts,” said Wesley Duket, who lived in Sugar Bush, five miles from Harmony Corners. “My sister saved the sewing machine by wrapping it up, too.”

“We had a team of oxen. One of them stayed at the spring with us, and the other strayed away and burned,” Duket said. “We had a shed of colts, and you could hear them thrashing as they burned. My brother wanted to open the shed door, but my sister was afraid he would burn to death too.”

Duket said he would never forget the events that took place the next morning.

“My mother and father were (temporarily) blind. I went to see Mrs. Reinhart, our neighbor, and I found her dead,” he recalled. “I liked her a lot and that really hurt me. Her shawl had not completely burned, and I took the corner that was left and kept it with me for many years.”

Story courtesy the Peshtigo Times