By Christopher Williams,Staff Writer

LEEDS – A wind-driven fire Friday morning destroyed the historic former estate of Civil War Gen. Oliver Ottis Howard.

The farmhouse’s owner and a handyman were at the Fortin Drive home when the blaze erupted. Both escaped injury.

Embers touched off a widespread brush fire behind the house that sat atop a hill. The fire consumed 10 acres of fields and bushes and trees over the rolling hills, said Leeds Fire Chief Glenn Holt.

Firefighters doused flames that licked at the charred ruins of the main house. Only the front gable end wall and part of a side wall remained standing, along with three chimneys.

A large barn, woodshed and milking parlor burned to the ground.

The barn had collapsed and the house was fully engulfed when firefighters appeared on the scene, Holt said.

Tanker trucks poured water into makeshift pools at the scene where pumpers could suck the water into fire hoses. Ice from their spray glazed the yellow clapboard facade.

It took nearly five hours to completely extinguish the flames at the home and surrounding land and clear the scene, Holt said.

Homeowner David Fortin said he had just plugged in a space heater at about 10:30 a.m. to warm the oil in his wood splitter in an adjoining woodshed. He turned away for a moment. When he looked back, a wall of black smoke blocked his passage back to the shed, he said.

He yelled to Tim Jennings, a handyman who had crawled under the house to thaw frozen water pipes under the kitchen.

“I screamed, Fire, fire, fire,'” to warn Jennings, Fortin said. “I was just ecstatic to see he was OK.”

Jennings managed to escape through one of the hatches to the crawl space, Fortin said.

Within three or four minutes, the barn was consumed with flames, he said.

“It was astonishing,” he said, “literally minutes.”

He couldn’t save his new truck that was parked in there. He salvaged an old singed pickup by towing it out with his mother’s tractor, he said.

He stood near the rubble, his face blackened by soot as he watched firefighters battle a fierce wind and cold.

“It’s a tragic loss. It’s a real shame,” he said. “It’s a piece of history that can never be replaced.”

His father had restored the historic post-and-beam house and barn in the late 1980s before Fortin bought the property from his mother in 2000. He had lived there since 1988. He lost everything in the fire, he said, including all of the family photographs.

He listed the buildings and 13 acres for sale five months ago for $299,000, he said. The home was insured.

Civil War Gen. Oliver Otis Howard was born and raised in the 18th-century home before he commanded Union troops. He later founded Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Fortin said the school had expressed interest in the historic home. No one from the school was available to comment Friday afternoon.

A dozen area fire departments responded to the scene, Leeds Chief Holt said, with crews backing each other up. Firefighters tired quicker than normal from the extreme weather conditions and were spread out along the fire’s many fronts.

“They were exhausted,” Holt said.

Someone from the State Fire Marshal’s Office was at the scene, hoping to pinpoint the fire’s cause. They likely will return next week before reaching a conclusion, Holt said.

Fortin said he felt he was living a nightmare. “I just keep wishing that I’m waiting for the alarm clock to go off.”