The scene surpassed anything I ever saw.

 A touching story.  

In the entering class of Hampden-Sydney College in 1776 was Abraham Bedford Venable.  He served in the Revolution as a student cadet and later became a lawyer, planter, and politician.  He died tragically in 1811 in the Richmond Theater Fire.  In reading about that catastrophe, 72 dead, I came across a sweet and unexpected coda.  

Also credited with helping save lives was Gilbert Hunt, a former slave who, having purchased his freedom, was working as a blacksmith at a shop near the theatre. Along with Dr. James McCaw, a physician who was attending the theatre that evening, Hunt was credited with saving close to a dozen people. McCaw would lower them from the burning second story, and Hunt would catch them. Hunt also saved McCaw, who jumped just as a burning section of wall was about to fall on him.  Today Hunt is memorialized by a historical marker on the site.  A book, entitled Gilbert Hunt, the City Blacksmith, later was published in his honor and to provide financial assistance for him in his old age.

I can only find a transcript of Gilbert Hunt, the City Blacksmith.  It is a relatively brief 30 odd pages and largely dictated by Mr. Hunt himself with elaboration by the author, Philip Barrett.  But what an amazing tale.  It is worth reading as a reminder that history is so much richer than we usually distill.

This would be a magnificent text to set for high school students.  Slave.  Artisan Blacksmith.  Freeman.  Visitor to and observer of Liberia.  Fireman.  Deacon of an integrated church.  Civic hero.  

What a story.  

A fuller account of his life is here.

His telling of the night of the Richmond Theater Fire:

"It was on the night after Christmas, 1811. I had just returned from worship at the Baptist church and was about sitting down to my supper, when I was startled by the cry that the theatre was on fire. My wife's mistress called to me and begged me to hasten to the theatre and, if possible, save her only daughter—a young lady who had been teaching me my book every night, and one whom I loved very much. The wind was very high, and the hissing and leaping flames soon spread over the whole building. The house was built of wood, and consequently the work of destruction very short.

When I reached the building, I immediately went to the house of a colored fiddler, named Gilliat, who lived close by, and begged him to lend me a bed on which the poor frightened creatures might fall as they leaped from the windows. This he positively refused to do. I then got a step-ladder and placed it against the walls of the burning building. The door was too small to let the crowd, pushed forward by the scorching flames to get out, and numbers of them were madly leaping from the windows only to be crushed to death by the fall. I looked up and saw Dr. — standing near one of the top windows and calling to me to catch the ladies as he handed them down.

I was then young and strong, and the ladies felt as light as feathers. By this means we got all the ladies out of this portion of the house. The flames, by this time, were rapidly approaching the Doctor, and beginning to take hold of his clothing; and, O me! I thought that good man who had saved so many souls was going to be burned up. He jumped from one of the windows, and when he touched the ground, I thought he was dead. He could not move an inch. No one was near him; for the wall above, was tottering like a drunken man, ready at any moment to fall and crush him to death. I heard him scream out, "Will nobody save me?" and, at the risk of my own life, I rushed to him and bore him away to a place of safety.

The scene surpassed anything I ever saw. The wild shrieks of hopeless agony, the piercing cry, 'Lord, save or I perish,' the uplifted hands, the earnest prayer for mercy, for pardon, for salvation, I think I see it now—all—all just as it happened."