Hamburg Fire Department

The Hamburg Volunteer Fire Department celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1980, but its roots go back even earlier. On May 9, 1874, the hamlet which had been known as Whites Corners, was incorporated as the Village of Hamburg. Fire fighting duties at that time were the responsibility of the property owners, and it was pretty much a “bucket brigade” operation. Alex C. Stolting, who founded the “Erie County Independent”, a weekly newspaper that eventually became the “Hamburg Sun”, gathered the local able-bodied men into a Volunteer Fire Brigade to fight fires under more organized conditions. The Village provided them with a hand pumper, which was apparently housed at Mr. Stolting’s place of business. He established himself as Fire Warden, and supposedly slept beside the hand pumper. Stolting, who had lost his right arm as a dock worker in Buffalo, sold the newspaper in 1881, and went on to study law. He was admitted to the bar, and practiced both in Buffalo and in Hamburg, serving Hamburg as Village Justice from 1918 to 1926. Stolting is considered as “Hamburg’s pioneer fireman and founder of the Fire Department”