Austin Fire Museum

Retired Lt. Ken Merrell passed away this past weekend with family in St. Louis after battling lung cancer. Ken was invited to be our first retired AFD member on our Fire Museum board in 2004. He served for that first year and was involved in many of the decisions that led up to the creation of the Austin Fire Museum in 2005. He had to resign from his position due to his cancer diagnosis and subsequent move to St. Louis. We asked Ken to be a part of the first museum board because he had a love for the job and the traditions of the Austin Fire Department.

Lt. Merrell served for 32 years from 1970 to 2002, most of which were spent as Engine 22 B-Shift Lieutenant. Ken had a devoted crew that worked with him for many years. During Ken’s career at Station 22 he was first in at many fires in “Apartment City”. Due to the nature of the apartment complexes in Engine 22’s territory, the dispatch address from a 911 caller doesn’t always match up with the correct address of the fire building. In his final fire before retirement, Ken’s knowledge of his territory proved vital as an apartment fire was raging. Due to the nature of the call, Ken decided to deviate from the dispatch address and lead his crew to the correct building on fire. This experience allowed his crew to confine the fire to the apartment of origin and prevent the destruction of the remaining building units.

Career Stats

Station 18 (1971-1974), Station 6 (1974-1978), Dispatch (1978-9), Station 22 (1979-2002)

The memorial service for Retired Lt. Ken Merrell will be Saturday August 16, 2008 at 1400 hours.

The location will be St. Mary’s Catholic Church 205 West Pecan, Lockhart TX

AFD Honor Guard and Bag Pipes have been requested.

The Austin Fire Museum is fortunate enough to have about 15 of its firefighter business cards in our archive collection. These cards were traded between firefighters at the annual Texas State Firemen’s Convention that took place for many years beginning in the 1880’s. Recently we acquired a new card which belonged to Julius Schutze, a prominent Austinite and Hook and Ladder #1 member of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The card dates to 1911 and is in very good shape for its age. The graphic is a beautiful representation of the pride and esteem associated with being a member of the Austin Fire Department around the turn of the 20th Century.

In this case, the card is obviously for recruitment.  The Austin Fire Department would remain a volunteer organization for only five more years.  In 1916, the voters decided to create a paid, municipal fire department ending the volunteer era that began in 1857.

It’s amazing the amount of detail that was possible as far back as 1911 for this type of card.

Capt. Norman Rutledge (served 41 years–1930-1971) was assigned to Truck Co. 1 as a firefighter in the 1930’s when it was located at the Old Central Fire Station 1 at 114 W. 8th Street. Firefighter Rutledge steered the tiller portion of Truck 1. Rutledge promoted to Captain in the late 1940’s and served as the Captain of Truck 2 throughout the 1950’s. Captain Rutledge returned to Truck 1 in the 1960’s and retired in 1971. Ret. Capt. T. D. Haldiman was firefighter Rutledge’s son-in-law and has graciously donated many items from “Rut’s” collection to the AFD Museum archives. The following photos are just a few from Capt. Rut’s tours on Truck 1 in the 1930’s.

Truck Co. 1 ca.1935 at Old Central Fire Station #1. Tillerman N. E. Rutledge is first on the left.

Great photo of “Rut” steering the tiller position on Truck 1. Rut probably faced many vicious Texas storms on top of that tiller.

Another great view of the tillerman of the 30’s.

One of the main features of this museum blog will be to make a post each time we acquire a new piece of our history. Since this is a new aspect of our website, everything we have acquired over the past several years is technically new to you. Therefore, I’ll post the best things we have attained over the past several years throughout the summer so everyone can see how many pictures, artifacts, and documents we have collected since opening our museum in 2005.

One of our most important artifacts we have ever collected was donated to us just this past April.

This is a leather fire helmet from a firefighter with the West Austin Fire Co. #7. Their station was located at 1000 Blanco St. in Old West Austin, which still stands today as the only current Austin fire station in operation that dates back to the horse-drawn days. Today, the building is named Fire Station #4 and it is listed as a city of Austin historical structure. West Austin Fire Company #7 was organized between 1904-5 and transitioned from volunteer to paid in 1916. This helmet is from that volunteer period.

We received this helmet from the president of the Houston Firefighter’s Union back in April during our annual San Jacinto Day Celebration. A Houston Firefighter was given this helmet by a family friend and was gracious enough to donate it to the Austin Fire Museum for display. We can’t thank the HFD Local #341 enough for their gift. We also need to thank Austin firefighter Kregg Phillips (Engine 28 C-Shift) for facilitating the exchange.

Welcome to the new version of the website for the Austin Fire Museum. We’ll be under construction for a while, but new stuff (along with much of the old content) should be posted on a weekly basis. The vision of the new website is to be an opportunity for you to experience the history of the Austin Fire Department through many old photographs, documents, videos, and pictures of our artifacts in the museum.

The main portion of the website will be much like an historical archive featuring the history of fires in Austin, firefighters, apparatus, stations, and disasters that have occured in the city over the past 150 plus years. The “news and events” section will contain updated information about new acquisitions, events such as San Jacinto Day, and even stories about current historical fires, such as the June 16th Texas Governor’s Mansion Fire.

Therefore, this summer you’ll see a lot of changes to our website as we rebuild our online archive. Our archive of pictures, documents, and memorabilia has increased ten-fold since we started organizing the Austin Fire Museum in 2003. Thank you very much to all of our donors and supporters who have contributed over the past five years.

Jerry Cohen, Archivist/Treasurer

Austin Fire Department Historical Society and Museum

Although this portion of the site still looks a little spare, we will be placing more and more updates both in information and look to this area very soon.

Please keep checking back to stay up to date, and we thank you for your continued support of our museum.

Thanks !