The Hinckley and Sandstone Fire
You people all, both great and small,
I hope you will draw near
And when you hear of the Hinckley fire,
You will surely drop a tear,
The old pioneers of Hinckley,
Were always in good cheer,
Until a cyclone of fire came that way,
And ended their career.
On the first day of September,
In eighteen ninety four,
Those bold, undaunted heroes,
Were driven from their doors.
Their wives and children for to save,
To the swamp they quickly bore,
And when I think of their sad fate,
It oftimes makes me sore.
We have another fascinating fragment of a Minnesota-composed song this week. I found the above text in the Minnesota Historical Society’s microfilm copy of the January 3rd, 1895 Pine County Courier newspaper printed in Sandstone, Minnesota. It appeared just four months after the Hinckley Fire which ripped through both Hinckley and nearby Sandstone killing over 400 people.
The paper printed what it said were “a few stanza’s of a song composed by our talented townsman Dan Forin” further stating that “those desiring to secure this song can get it in book form of Dan Forin, Sandstone for 25 cents.”
Much has been written about the Hinckley Fire but I have never come across this song. Daniel Foren appears on the 1895 Minnesota Territorial Census in Sandstone, age 34 with his birthplace listed as Canada. The Courier gives us more information about Dan Forin including that he was the “lone fiddler” at mid-winter dances held at the home of his neighbor Steve O’Neill, an immigrant from Ireland. Forin was also a friend of Patrick Linehan at the time. Born in New York to Irish immigrant parents, Linehan was a fellow Sandstone fire survivor who “sang Irish ballads” at the same parties where Forin played his fiddle. Linehan would later settle in Minneapolis where, in the 1910s, he emerges as the first documented Minnesotan performer on uilleann pipes. Linehan’s set of William Rowsome pipes are now in the hands of Tom Dahill of St. Paul.
Forin and Linehan would have surely known Mike Dean who lived in Hinckley in the 1890s. They may have even been sources for some of the songs in Dean’s songster The Flying Cloud.
For a tune, I adapted the melody from the Newfoundland song “Gull Cove” as printed in the book Come and I will Sing You by Genevieve Lehr and Anita Best.
For more on Linehan, see this talk I gave during the 2026 Irish Arts Week at Celtic Junction Arts Center