Fire Mark No. 4

To recap for those who didn’t visit before the snowstorm, these metal plaques are found on some of the older homes in Old Town. They are called fire marks and were issued by insurance companies in the early 1800s. If a home and all its papers were lost in a fire, these fire marks, because they are metal and would survive a conflagration, were evidence that the homeowner had purchased fire insurance.

This fire mark was issued between 1874-1899 by Associated Fireman’s Insurance Company of Baltimore and is very rare.