As a fire deputy, Seamans could see the impact that fire was having, not just on unlucky families like the Watsons but on Grafton itself. Between 1943 and 1948 alone, fires were reported at the homes of Julia Custeau, Olif Harris, the Tuttle family, Frank Dean, Philip Paight, the Gray family, Weston Rollins, the Sulloway family, Laura Sweet, the Tyrrell family, the Sulloway family (again), George Barney, Lester Barney (it was a particularly bad year for the Barneys), and in the chimney of the house of train railman C. B. Lovering—and that’s not counting forest fires, such as the one that raged
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