100 Years Ago: Arson Destroys Jerseyville Business

JERSEYVILLE - Orchardist Charles Godar’s Jerseyville cooper shop suffered catastrophic fire damage on the night of November 16, 1925. For the past few months, there had been multiple break-in attempts, and Godar had replaced broken padlocks several times. No one connected with the cooper shop was there when the fire began, and authorities believed it was arson: “it was supposed that either by accident or design the person responsible for the repeated removals of padlocks caused the fire.”

Luckily, the cooper shop was sheathed with iron over the wooden structure, and this prevented the fire from spreading beyond the building. The flames extended upward from the building more than 100 feet, and the heat caused the fire hose to burst at points 100 feet from the burning building. All the trees nearby were seriously damaged, and lines of wires on the nearby utility poles were burned down. Volunteer firefighters saved the nearby wooden buildings, including neighboring houses and a cooperage warehouse owned and operated by Godar. The fire started around 10 p.m. and lasted about four hours, during which time the C. & A. train, bound for Chicago, was held up. “Almost the entire population of Jerseyville attended the fire.”

Godar’s cooperage business supplied many of the apple barrels for the orchards of Calhoun County. At the time of the fire, the cooper shop contained 500 manufactured barrels and supplies for making 10,000 more. The loss of the building and items inside was close to $25,000, but with only $18,000 of insurance coverage.

Godar was able to recover from his losses in the fire and, by 1927, owned eleven thousand acres of orchard and cooperage businesses in Jerseyville, Grafton, and Hardin. But by the early 1930s, in the midst of the Great Depression, he had gone bankrupt. An article in the Alton Evening Telegraph on May 8, 1931, described his bankruptcy case. “The collapse of his financial structure is the unfortunate climax of a romance in the apple business of the ‘Kingdom,’ where Godar long has been recognized as a leader in the fruit-growing industry. Changes in the conditions affecting the growing, packing, and shipping of apples, business depression, and general unsettlement are the reasons to which friends attribute the financial distress of Charlie Godar, known throughout Calhoun County for his aggressiveness in business as well as for his generosity and willingness to join any public-spirited move.”

Sources

“Charles Godar Buys Eighty Acre Orchard.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), November 17, 1925.

“Cooper Shop is Burned by Fire That Is Mystery.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), November 17, 1925.

Lloyd, John William, and H. M. Newell. 1928. Marketing Calhoun County Apples. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station.https://archive.org/details/marketingcalhoun00lloy

“Romance of ‘Kingdom’ in Tragic End.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), May 8, 1931.

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