Well, you see before there was electricity all over the country, Americans relied on various forms of fire to light and heat buildings (you know this, but may be neglecting it). A candle or oil lamp left burning next to something flammable, or near a window left open with cloth drapes, a flue that didn't get cleaned and ignites from the inside, etc. There are any number of reasons why wooden buildings easily caught fire in times less modern than ours. We didn't always have such "wonderful" rules and regulations and safety equipment as we do today. A simple careless act of leaving a candle burning and a window open, allowing a breeze to blow a curtain over an open flame is all it takes to ignite some dry wood and burn down a building. But it wasn't just courthouses. Fires were quite common a hundred and two hundred years ago. Chicago burned down more than once. Chicago had "great fires" before Mrs. O'Leary's "great barn fire". We'll never know the cause of many of those fires, but there is anecdotal evidence that a drunken neighbor knocked over a lantern in Mrs. O'Leary's barn and caused it. In the Midwest, lightning was also a culprit. Of course you can't rule out pranksters and disgruntled citizens either. Fires were pretty common in Germany too. However most of the public buildings in Germany weren't made of wood, so you don't have as many total courthouse fires and the fires that destroyed records in German were mostly war related, I think. Hopefully that is enough info to end this thread or bring it more on topic. Brian On Thu, April 16, 2009 11:02 am, [email protected] wrote: > I have seen statements like this many times before, but no one has ever > explained why so many court houses have been burned down. No one has > even > asked until I am doing so now. Are there some serial arsonists who > concentrate on court houses? It doesn't seem likely that there would be > so many such > fires normally.