IRWIN TWP, Venango County — Forty five years ago February 1968 was a tragic month for the Grossman family.
On Feb. 11 that year 10 members of the family and a family friend perished in a massive house fire similar to the one that killed eight members of the Rosenberger family March 10, 1963, in Muddy Creek Township. A retrospective of the Rosenberger fire was published in the March 10 edition of the Butler Eagle.
Alfred Grossman Jr., 14, Mary Belle Grossman, 12, Michael Grossman, 10, Charlotte Grossman, 9, Kathryn Grossman, 8, Elizabeth Grossman, 7, William Grossman, 6, David Grossman, 4, Albert Grossman, 3, and Lonnie Grossman, 17 months, all died.
Additionally, Ronald Simpson, 24, of Polk died. He had been staying with the family since the children’s father, Alfred Grossman, died of cancer only days before on Feb. 1.
Only the children’s mother, Mary Grossman, 34 years old at the time, survived.
The Grossman family had lived near West Sunbury, and moved to the township three years before the fire.
The Grossman’s house was one mile east of Route 8 near the village of Wesley, which is a few miles north of Harrisville.
The family woke up at about 1 a.m. to the smell of smoke. Mary Grossman and Simpson rounded up the children.
The bedrooms were on the second floor of the house. Everyone went down the stairs, but the flames and heat on the first floor were too intense for the family to exit that way.
Mary Grossman moved everyone to a bedroom and urged them to jump out a window to safety. However, everyone else was frightened by the height, so she jumped first to show them how to do it and instruct them to toss the baby to her.
Unfortunately, the rest of them either were too afraid or already overcome by smoke to follow Grossman.
Unable to help the family, she ran, barefoot and clad in a nightgown, a half mile to the nearest neighbor, Loyal Blair.
The Blair family already had been awakened and had seen the flames. Blair was getting dressed when Grossman knocked on the door.
While his wife called firefighters, Blair ran to the burning home, but found that the fire was too big to try to enter.
Firefighters from Harrisville and Clintonville responded to the fire. By the time fire crews got the scene, the home was fully engulfed and it had begun to collapse.
A state police fire marshal reported that the fire was caused by the house’s coal furnace. The furnace was installed the previous fall, but work never was completed. Mary Grossman reportedly had been concerned about the house’s chimney.
Mary Grossman was taken to Grove City Medical Center to be treated for shock and an injury to her left foot when she jumped from the house.
The 11 bodies were left in the rubble until the next day, when firefighters, state police and the Venango County Coroner’s office spent five hours removing them.
Bill “Digger” Young of the Young Funeral Home, who knew the family, was at the scene to help recover the bodies.
Young said a crane was needed to sift through the sunken debris.
“Everything was down in the basement,” he said. “That was quite the job.”
Young recalled several hundred people and four television stations watching the crane.
“It was quite an experience for me,” he said.
Funeral services for the 10 children were handled by the funeral home in West Sunbury.
Young said the cost was funded through the public welfare system.
Just one week before the fire, the funeral home had the service for the father.
Information for this story came from the Feb. 12 and 13, 1968, editions of the Butler Eagle.
