The Fellows Club Volunteer Fire Department and Ambulance Service in Conneautville, Pennsylvania owns a rare fire engine that fought many fires in the Borough of Conneautville for several years. The 1882 Remington Horse Operated Circular Pump Fire Engine was built by the famous Remington gun makers in 1882 at the Ilion, New York, Remington Agricultural Works. There are now only two known fire engines left in the United States, the second being kept on display in Phoenix, Arizona, at the Hall of Flames Museum.

After several disastrous fires in the Borough and the Borough funded fire department's disbanding due to the lack of newer equipment, the Borough Council of Conneautville in a special meeting in August, 1882, made a motion to purchase the fire engine that was on loan to them for 600 dollars, The fire department never owned any horses but whoever was closest to the fire station when the fire gong was sounded, dropped their wagon and hitched up to the fire engine.

This fire engine has a Howe patented three piston sweep pump which can be operated by one or two teams of horses or 24 men walking in circles around it. The pump is operated when the teams of horses hitched to two long poles which are then attached to the turn table on the pump, walk around the fire engine making the pistons operate. The three pistons together make for a smoother flow of water through the hose with less vibration. Mr. Howe built this type of fire engine with a fifth wheel which was great for factories and cities that had narrow passageways and streets allowing the fire engine [to] turn on its own radius. The concept, according to records, never caught on due to the expense of having horses and was quickly replaced by steam powered technology.

The fire engine weighs about 3,000 pounds and is constructed of iron except for inside the pistons which are made out of leather. This was one of the newer inventions in fighting fires. During this era, most apparatus was horse pulled and man operated. Mr. Howe himself came to Conneautville to demonstrate the usefulness and to train the firemen on the use of the fire engine. On one trial of the fire engine, water was pushed from a 3 1/2 inch suction hose in a pond through 350 feet of 2 1/2 inch hose forcing a stream of water reaching 80 feet over the flag staff on one of the buildings on Main Street.

Borough Council requested that it never be taken more than a mile from the fire station, however, in December,1898, the L. C. Graves Company in Springboro, three miles north of Conneautville, caught fire with $20,000 losses. The fire engine responded to the fire on an awaiting work train at the Conneautville Depot. The train made the three mile trip to Springboro in three minutes and ten seconds according to newspaper articles.

The 1882 Remington Fire Engine was used up until a motorized fire engine was purchased in the mid 1920's by the Fellows Club, a men's social club, who were asked by Conneautville Borough Council to fund and operate the fire department. It [the engine] was kept in several different places in storage until November of 1981, when the fire engine was taken to the Firefighter's Historical Museum in Erie, Pennsylvania for restoration and to be placed on loan as an exhibit of firefighting equipment of years gone by which can still be seen today. Mr. Richard Rob, the museum curator and president, has done a tremendous effort in restoring the fire [engine] to its original condition.

The fire engine has rarely been seen by residents of the community during parades over the past years. It was pulled during the 1964 Sesquicentennial Celebration and parade of the Borough of Conneautville, once in 1981 in a parade in Erie, and then recently on July 13, 2002, through firefighter's efforts, it was brought home from the museum and was pulled in the Conneaut Valley Homecoming Parade by a pair of Belgian horses owned by David Nicholls of Conneautville.