Fire discovered at 1:25 a.m. Wednesday by a filling station attendant across the street damaged the Martin Jones grocery and meat market and the adjacent West Side Shoe Repair Shop operated by Joe LoBurgio on West Main Street. Firemen said the blaze apparently originated from a refrigerator motor in the meat market. Given impetus by a draft through a sky light, the blaze burned upward rapidly, and spread into the store room of shoe shop next door. For awhile the fire appeared to menace other buildings in the same block, and stock was removed from the nearby Monroe Tailor Shop as a precaution. Firemen who fought the blaze until after 4 a.m., however, confined the fire to the Jones store and the shoe shop. Damage there did not prevent both houses being open for business Wednesday. The damage at the shoe shop was mostly in the stock room where the blaze broke through the partition from the grocery store and necessitated use of water to extinguish it. Fire in the stock room broke out two times after the original blaze was put out. In the grocery store the meat department suffered the worst damage although some flour and other grocery items were damaged. The blaze burned through the ceiling and up into the attic.

(Extracted from local newspapers and compiled by Harry Boyd, posted at http://www.marionfire.us )