"Far Beyond Any Honest Means" - Was a Child Arsonist Responsible for the Great Fire of 181
Newburyport’s Great Fire of 1811 has recently been on our minds. The May 31, 1811 conflagration consumed over sixteen acres of the modern downtown area and caused over two million dollars in damage. When taking inflation into account, this roughly translates to somewhere between forty million and seventy million dollars in 2019 USD currency. By the time the fire was extinguished, Newburyport was economically and physically devastated. Often visitors to Newburyport will ask
