The fire originated, near midnight, in the stable that belonged to and was near the Rawlings tavern. It was soon in a blaze throughout, and there was no thought of an effort to save it, as it was filled with hay, oats, fodder, etc. Attention was turned to the tavern, which stood some two hundred and fifty feet from a creek which runs through the center of the town. The alarm of fire and the call for help brought out the entire population, filling the few streets of the village with men, women and children. When Jackson appeared on the scene, Ben Boyd, an Irish coppersmith, was calling loudly for buckets and yelling to the crowd to form a line to the creek; but nobody was paying any attention to him. Jackson, as was his custom, immediately took command, and began ordering everybody to get into line, actually taking hold of men and women and putting them in position, calling for buckets, and directing the keeper of the tavern to get all of the blankets in the house and spread them all over the roof. In a few minutes Jackson had formed two lines from the house to the creek, the lines facing each other and six or eight feet apart; along one line empty buckets were passed to the creek, and the full buckets back up the other line to the tavern, which was the only house in immediate danger. Jackson would appear, one moment, on the roof, calling down to those in the lines to stand firm and hurry up the water, and the tavern and town would be saved; the next seen of him, he would be passing up and down the lines, urging order and discipline. He was everywhere, and always at the place where his presence seemed most needed. The tavern was saved, and nothing burned but the stable. “Jackson saved the town with his bucket brigade,” was on every lip. Parton brings Benjamin Boyd to the attention of the nation, in connection with this fire incident, by saying that, “while Gen. Jackson was strengthening that part of his line near the creek, a drunken coppersmith named Boyd, who said that he had seen fires at Baltimore, began to give orders and annoy persons in the line. Jackson shouted at Boyd to fall in line, who continued jabbering. Jackson seized a bucket by the handle, knocked him down, and walked along the line giving orders as coolly as before.” Ben Boyd’s part in and connection with the fire incident, as detailed to me “often and again” by persons who knew all the facts, does not agree with Parton’s account in some particulars. What is believed to be the true narrative is here given.