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In August 1874, the Chicago Tribune reported a fire on the farm of Mr. Bogart, about half a mile west of Dayton. He was having his grain threshed with a portable steam engine. The operators usually burned coal, but there was none on hand and corncobs were used instead. About an hour later, sparks from the smoke‑stack ignited the straw stack, and the fire spread quickly, destroying the stack, a small barn, and a hog pen with twenty‑three hogs. The loss was estimated at about $500.

Threshing with steam power was still relatively new in the 1870s, and farmers often improvised with whatever fuel they had. Corncobs were a perfectly ordinary choice for many machines, but on this day the combination proved unlucky.

Pieter Boogerd and his wife, Stoffelina Van den Houghten, had arrived from the Netherlands only two years earlier, in 1872. Their first son was born just five months before the fire, in March 1874. Two more sons followed in 1876 and 1878. The family rebuilt after the fire, but their time together was short: Mr. Bogerd died in April 1879, leaving his wife with three young boys. Additional details about the family are available here.

The clipping captures only a single moment, but it sits inside a much larger story — one of immigration, hard work, misfortune, and resilience on the west side of Dayton.

1. Chicago Tribune, August 20, 1874, p. 8.