The Great Chicago Fire: A Chicago Stories Special Documentary By wttwchicago

Coming up. They’re losing everything, everything that they knew, and had was going up in flames of disaster that brought to Chicago, to its knees, everybody’s on their own and everybody’s helpless. When they saw how red this guy was. They said that it was Judgment Day.

The city was a landscape of utter Devastation and immigrant. Who shouldered the blame. She was a woman. She was an immigrant and I think it was so easy to pick somebody like that, Capital Larry becomes a myth and the city Embraces that myth a city determined to Rise. From the Ashes, Chicago will rise again. There’s a sense that this fire can’t stop us. We are destined to become even bigger.

Better of a city than we were before the Great Chicago Fire next on Chicago’s stories.

When the people of Chicago, woke up the morning of October 10th, 1871, their city was unrecognizable. A third of them were homeless. Nearly, 300 had died. One Survivor wrote. Everything is gone. The whole city is in grief.

People are terrified, people have lost everything, people are desperate. There was utter Devastation. What can be done? Will Chicago emerge, what would happen?

But no one felt the devastation of the Great Chicago Fire like Catherine, O’Leary.

The fire had started in her Barn.

A successful Dairy owner, only reclaimed, she was asleep when the blaze erupted.

I was in bed myself and my husband and five children. When this fire commenced, I guess it was. My husband got outside the door and he ran back to the bedroom and said, Kate the barn is a fire yet. Even before the ground had cooled a local newspaper accused O’Leary of an unimaginable crime that she started the fire that destroyed her City.

I would imagine she would just feel despair. I mean, not only have you lost everything but now people think that you’ve that you’ve done this. The fire did start in Catherine. O’Leary’s barn, but the truth about what happened. That night would be wildly distorted for a century and a half inches feel so badly, her life was ruined. I feel kind of a responsibility to to get the story straight to get the story out and

Make people aware of the fact that she really had nothing to do with it.

The Great Chicago Fire revealed fatal flaws in a city that just a few months earlier appeared Unstoppable. It had risen from a muddy fur trading post of 100 residents to a metropolis of 300,000 in just 40 years. It attracted, entrepreneurs, innovators people who are looking for ways to make a quick Buck or a not so quick buck.

With its prime location between Lake Michigan in the Mississippi Chicago soon. Supplanted st. Louis as the capital of the West.

More railroads converged here than anywhere else in the world. An endless parade of freight trains pass through the city every day. Transporting the Treasures of the Midwest across the continent grade Lumber, you know, cattle and Hogs, where these natural resources of, the American West are brought into the city, transformed into Commodities, that can be repackaged and pushed out to the rest of the world. That is its economic engine.

Chicagoans yearned to show their Boomtown, measured up to New York, Philadelphia. And Boston, they built ornate. Civic buildings, Banks and stores out of solid brick and limestone.

It’s a city certainly with some beautiful Regal civic-minded structures in the commercial center, especially its Courthouse, which was characterized by big Bell Tower. It was Crosby’s opera house. There were some very beautiful hotels in the city, including the Palmer House. The Palmer House was said to be fireproof. The courthouse was supposedly Fireproof.

To most homes in Chicago, were made of wood in architectural Revolution called the balloon frame allowed houses to sprout seemingly overnight Acres of pine, shanties expanded Chicago’s footprint across the Prairie City is built without any concern for nature.

Well, any concern for the realities of the Prairie prairies burn, it’s just it’s built because it’s built for money, do it quickly, make a buck move on. It’s housing. Stock revealed another flaw Chicago was a city of Haves and Have Nots.

You had the houses of the people who were the Millionaires and it goes all the way down to rooming houses that are the people who worked in the factories and made the city actually hum while immigrants, like Catherine. O’Leary lived in relative squalor at the city’s margins, a prairie aristocracy ruled Chicago East Coast Protestants, who’d come to make their fortunes. One of them was a Pennsylvania, teacher named William.

Boss. He’s looking for big opportunities. Where is a city in the country that I have the best chance and you reads about Chicago. He pulls out a map sees the location. All those railroads like tentacles running out of the city. So he comes out here, Ross was appalled when he stepped off the train. He called Chicago, the filthiest Slab City. He’d ever seen a place where green and black.

Lime wood gunshot between the cracks of its wooden sidewalks, but bras would soon become the city’s biggest booster. He was a prime minister of propaganda for Chicago. He has this ardency. It’s like a Civic religion. He really believes in the place and he wants to see it. Go bras teamed up with newspaper. Men. Joseph, Medill to publish the Chicago Tribune.

It was an uneasy Alliance. Both were staunch abolitionists, who had backed Abraham Lincoln, but Matilda tested. The city’s Irish Catholic immigrants, you see adjective after adjective, describing the Irish, as poor as drunken miserable sots. Those are the kinds of words that Tribune readers would encounter over their morning coffee. The women are all promiscuous and popping out babies. They’re all soaking up. Well,

Are there not working? They’re not one of us. And that comes from this Protestant anti-catholic perspective, bras lived on the lake front at one of Chicago’s most coveted addresses terrorist row, and yet just a mile West was like an entirely different world, a working-class neighborhood. That was home to many Irish immigrants.

A 20 year old reporter named Joseph Edgar Chamberlain. Dismissed it as Terra incognita to respectable Chicagoans. The land was thickly studded with one story. Frame dwellings. Kyle Stables pigsties, corncribs sheds innumerable every wretched building within four feet of its neighbor.

But we’re Chamberlain saw pigsties, a young couple from Kerry, Ireland. Saw hope, Catherine and Patrick O’Leary lived at 137 dacovian Street, Patrick, a laborer, who had enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War had spent $500 on a double Cottage and barn.

This was the house that my great-great grandmother lived in. You can kind of get an idea of, really how large it was for that time. The O’Leary’s lived in one section of the house and then they rented out to other sections of the house though. Catherine was illiterate. She ran a profitable Dairy business waking up at the crack of dawn to ten her cows and deliver fresh milk. She enrolled two sons in Catholic school for the Hefty sum of 50 cents a month.

She was accomplishing a lot in her life. I would imagine. She’d have a lot of reasons to be very proud of herself. She was a hard-working immigrant. She had to be or she her family wouldn’t have made it. That’s what people forget, make it her. Don’t. This is America and she made it Catherine and Patrick worshipped nearby at Holy Family, Parish with a dynamic Jesuit leader, Arnold Damon. He established Saint Ignatius College, next door, and founded the church to serve immigrant.

Just like the O’Leary’s.

They had their children, baptized at the church and they created a place of great Beauty with their nickels and dimes and yet because of their dedication to the church. Irish immigrants were I’d with suspicion by Chicago’s Protestant Elite, the Irish were America’s first urban ethnic underclass because the whole idea that maybe even ideal of American identity is that anyone can come here and be an American, all you have to do is reject your home country.

Behind and then you’re one of us and Catholics were perceived as being unable to do that because of their loyalty to the pope, but at the very bottom rung of Chicago social ladder where it’s African-Americans a tight-knit community of 3,500 primarily live just east of the O’Leary’s on the south side, too many whites, whether immigrant and new to the city or very wealthy and native-born. Blacks were

The Outlanders, one of the first to build a home here was Joseph hudlin. A former slave from Virginia hudlin, made his way to Chicago in 1854. He built a small cottage for his wife and now, you Lizabeth and their children, it had five rooms and no doubt was comfortable to somebody at the working class level, the hudlin home stands out as a Model, A Monument of sorts.

Two black Ingenuity in resiliency hudlin had worked his way up to become the head, custodian at the Chicago Board of Trade.

He wore a uniform and I’m pretty sure for any person, white, or black, or wasn’t part of the elite, wearing a uniform and the 1860s 1870s men, a great deal. He had a commitment to service his chance with come with the Great Fire of 1871 Joseph Hoffman, Catherine O’Leary, and William Ross came from three very different walks of life.

And yet in a matter of hours, all three would find themselves in Desperate situations. Their lives, upended by the Great Chicago Fire.

Chicago was unseasonable e, hot and dry in the fall of 1871. The city had gone months without rain. And of course, the city is built. So much out of wood. The streets are would the bridges are would, it’s so hot that the tar on some of the roof starts to Blister in the Sun.

The fire department consisted of just 185 firemen in a city of 300,000. They relied on horse-drawn steam, powered engines with little water pressure. The fire department had 20 fires just in the first week of October. So they already knew that the conditions in Chicago were bad each time a fire erupted.

Watchman in the courthouse Tower, rang the five and a half ton bill.

The night before. Mrs. O’Leary’s Barn caught fire, a Planing Mill on the city’s. West Side, went up in Flames, leveling four square blocks, firefighters quelled. The Blaze after 17 grueling hours. Their clothing was burned, their eyes red and swollen. When he consider that those firefighters were worn out their equipment was damaged.

They were they were vulnerable the next morning, William bosses. Tribune, made a prophetic warning, a spark might set a fire which could sweep from end to end of the city. Everything the all the wood, all that combustible material was brittle, it was ready to catch on fire. It just needed a spark.

Catherine O’Leary went to bed that Sunday evening, October 8th at 8:00. Her Barn was stocked with fresh. Hay. And she was nursing a sore foot through her thin bedroom wall or Leary could hear her tenants the McLaughlin’s welcoming our relative from Ireland and mr. McLaughlin. I guess was a great fiddle player. So they were having this party coming and going dancing. Mrs. O’Leary stated that she was having trouble sleeping.

Because she could hear all the noise going on in the McLaughlin’s house.

I could hear from my own bedroom, could hear them going on. There was a little music there. Her husband was a fiddler. O’Leary had barely drifted off to sleep when her Barn began to burn. What exactly triggered? The blaze remains shrouded in mystery Legend and lies. Then this is it. This is O’Leary was out in her barn, and she was milking a cow and the cow out knocked over.

Lantern. That’s ridiculous. Really. When you think about it because nobody would be milking a cow at 9:00 at night O’Leary said she had no idea how the fire started. Well, I ran out and the whole Barn was on fire and upon my word. I could not tell any more about the fire. She just started crying and screaming. I can only imagine how how desperate she had to have felt a Watchman in the courthouse. Tower named Mathias Schaefer spotted smoke.

And the giant alarm Bell was sounded.

He got word out to the fire come but he missed located the fire. So he sent the engines to the wrong place. His blunder was just enough to give the fire a foothold. Several engine companies arrived 45 minutes later. But by then it was too late. The blaze had consumed several blocks.

Some Chicagoans gathered to enjoy the spectacle unaware of the danger. People treated fires like entertainment. There’s a fire. Let’s go watch. So people were on their rooftops people were on their front. Porches. People were out in the street. Joseph, Edgar, Chamberlain was one of the first reporters on the scene. It was the scoop of a lifetime, but Chamberlain, couldn’t help, but dismiss the Irish immigrants. He encountered more casks of whiskey appeared, he wrote and

Words of excited. Men, drink deeply of their contents. He calls them, drunks inebriates, women are harlots. And after all, it was only the saloons and the brothels and the barns of the Irish immigrants that were burning, and was that really a loss? It quickly became clear. This was no ordinary fire.

Powerful winds, drove the blaze 500 feet in the air whipping up, whirling pockets of are known as fire devils.

They sucked entire roofs of buildings and flung them. Undreds of yards over fireman’s. Heads spreading the flames. You could actually fill your lungs on fire. Because what’s happening now is it was really terrifying. Is the fire was in the air. It’s in the sky right above you. So this looks like the apocalypse. There are flocks of pigeons. For example, in Chicago, just sucked into the fire. Catherine, O’Leary described a convulsion of wind.

Sound the wind blows every way. You could not tell one way more than the other way. You would hear the Roar of the fire. Like a cannon, the Roar of the fire. You never heard such a thing. The residents they’re losing everything everything that they knew, and had was going up in Flames. People like, the O’Leary’s were positively petrified. I got frightened. I got the way I did not know when I saw everything burn up.

In the barn. And she said, I my mind, totally blanked out. I was screaming and yelling my house. What’s happening?

The O’Leary’s also stood to lose their beloved Holy Family Church less than a mile West. So here you have this imposing church and the fires heading right for it. Father. Arnall. Damon was 800 miles away. He was preaching a mission in Brooklyn, New York. When the telegram delivered, the news, he got down on his knees and prayed all night before. Promising. Our Lady of Perpetual Help that if

Church. And the school Saint Ignatius College were saved that. He would keep seven lights burning meanwhile, firefighters began to retreat, they lack the manpower to stop the blaze as it burned toward the Chicago River there. They watched helplessly as the wind blew flaming debris, across the grease, slick, and water. And this is something that nobody thought was going to happen. They thought some was the river was a kind of natural.

Container and it wasn’t. What is mining the rivers to the lumber and the grain, these materials are kind of fuel for the fire. Just east of the river. Was the Southside gasworks, which supplied light too much of the city at midnight. It’s holding tank exploded plunging, Chicago, winter, darkness, and adding more fuel to the fire from there. The Blaze headed towards the great Civic buildings of the business district.

Very Heart of the City.

The people in the hotels who had been up on the roofs, begin to realize their no not so safe at all. And there begins to be panic in the streets. A messenger summoned. Mayor Roswell be Mason from his sleep Roswell, Mason was at home in his bed and a man pulls up on Horseback and yells from outside the window mayor. The city is burning mayor. Mason rides his horse through the streets.

Going to the courthouse and he sends out a telegraph to nearby cities like Milwaukee. And Detroit that says, before morning, more than 100,000 people will be will be without food and shelter. Can you help us while Mason pleaded for assistance, the wings blue burning Timber on to the courthouse? This is the most important building in the city. It’s a building that was considered to be Fireproof.

The cupola burst into flames, filling the basement jail with thick smoke prisoners, banged their iron cell doors, and screamed for help. All the prisoners were on the verge of being either burnt alive were killed by smoke inhalation. And when mayor Mason found out about this, he like very quickly sprawl out of proclamation being like release all of them right now, jailers tried to maintain custody of prisoners out on the street, but murderers and thieves blended into the panicked crowd.

Ons and disappeared into the night. The courthouse Bell continue to toll as the building was consumed by Flames. This gigantic valve comes thundering down and hits the floor, this tremendous ring. If you’re writing a novel, that’s something that’s symbolism. 80, if that goes anything can go 100 foot walls of flame swept entire.

Ox, devouring hotels Banks, churches and theaters. The heat was so intense that the Limestone besides Loft off the side of the building’s huge chunks of limestone are falling to the ground as people are running by these buildings mayor Mason could do little but order the demolition of some buildings in a futile effort to stop the advancing fire. I think it would have been devastating to him.

Him to see the city destroyed before his eyes, the city that he helped build the city that he had made his home and had dedicated his life to serving.

Tribune publisher. William Ross and his wife had entertained visitors at their terrorist roll Mansion earlier that night a panicked. Guess woke them up around 2 a.m. My family were very much alarmed the glare which illuminated the sky and Lake. I saw that a dreadful disaster was impending over Chicago.

Ross rushed to the Tribune offices in the central business district, he would never forget the devastation. He saw along the way.

The courthouse post office, Farwell Hall, Tremont house, Sherman house, and all the splendid buildings on LaSalle and well, streets were burning with the Sublimity of effect, which owed me all the adjectives in the language would fail to convey. The intensity of its wonders crowds of men, women and children were huddling away running first in One Direction. Then another shouting and crying in their Terror.

I’m trying to save anything. They could lay their hands on no matter how trivial and value. Well, every now and then explosions, which seemed almost to shake the solid earth would reverberate from the air and add to the Terrors of the poor people.

People are actually carrying disabled, family members through the fire. The poor are carrying their mattresses on their heads, women from wealthy homes, which look to have all their jewelry. On many try to escape across the river, on wooden bridges. And these became an intensely crowded congested sites as everybody was trying to get out and

Everyone is pushing and moving so quickly, that families get separated. Everybody’s on their own, everybody’s on their own and everybody’s helpless William, Ross, arrived at the Tribune, to find his partner, Joseph, Medill hard at work. The staff were composing. The next morning’s Edition Ross and others. They thought that the Tribune office building was safe. At least that was the Assumption. They kept working ready to have the biggest story that they ever had.

To cover, they found that fire had started on a wood sidewalk outside their building and somehow penetrated into the lower level of their building. They put it out, who were saved. Let’s get to work on our newspaper again, but stepping outside brawl, saw the flames and new the Tribune would be lost. I told them that nothing more could be done to save the building.

In this hopeless frame of mind. I wrote home to look after my residents and family, intently watching the ominous, Eastward movement of the Flames. Just a few blocks west Joseph, hudlin tried to calm his terrified children. When they saw how red the sky was, they said and thought that it was Judgment Day.

Suddenly knew that. The fire was headed toward his workplace, the Board of Trade. While others fled, huddling ran several blocks toward the blaze arriving before the building was engulfed in flames. He opened the vaults and grabbed critical records. This man had the presence of mind to really save the life, blood of the Board of Trade in its operations. I mean, how do you manage accounts when you don’t have records?

Glenn escaped before the building collapsed.

The Fire split in several directions and pushed onward. It jumped the river again at 2:30 in the morning. This time to the north side where it moved even faster. First-person accounts. I read do talk about, you know, it’s the end of the world. It’s the apocalypse. It’s Armageddon were all. We’re all dead. And also just talk about how oddly beautiful it was and compelling because it’s this living creature. Almost

Moving toward you.

The fire thundered toward the Waterworks completed two years earlier to pump clean water from Lake Michigan. This technological Marvel was a source of civic. Pride a crew stood guard over the water tower in pumping station still ferocious. Winds blew burning Timber on to the station’s roof. And when the rough catches fire and falls down and destroys the pumps, that’s it. You’re done. Absolutely that cut off. All the water that the fire department could use

Water surging out of fire hydrants across the city, trickled, to a stop. And there went any hope that firefighters could do anything without a supply of water. They were helpless. This is when they knew it was the end that they couldn’t stop the fire.

Chicago wins were now left to fend for themselves police officer. Richard Bellinger was one of many northsiders who try to save his home. He had carefully prepared the area around the house, getting loose twigs and brush and combustible materials wedding, blankets and wedding. Down the roof to save it from falling Embers. When water dried up officer, Belanger is said to have doused his home with barrels of hard cider.

There are a lot of stories and legends about the fire and who did what in some of them you have to take with a little grain of salt but they’re still darn. Good stories. Northside is buried valuables in the ground including at least one piano. Most grabbed a few cherished items gathered their families and ran. You’ve got, you know, a minute, two minutes. What’s the most important thing? What are you going to grab anything and strangely everything?

I mean, there were women who took their pet. Parakeets people were seeing with, you know, Chihuahuas in their arms Bibles jewelry. People are cutting oil paintings out of their frames and saving pieces of furniture Bessie. Bradwell who was 13 years old things to bring her doll.

As the Northside erupted in Flames, thousands of men, women and children, fled to the city’s fringes, some retreated, West to the Prairie where they huddled on the ground others, rushed East to an unlikely Refuge. The city had been removing caskets from an old Cemetery to make room for Lincoln Park. When the fire reached the cemetery, people climbed into empty Graves. Some people apparently died in the open grave.

They’ve jumped into the graves to stay away from the fires. And of course, they were they suffocated, still others hurried to a notorious Lakefront, Vice District called The Sands, but look, the fire. If I was in class conscious, the fire burns, everything. So you’ve got prostitutes and you’ve got criminals and you’ve got poor and you’ve got rich, the fires are real equalizer, many waded into the lake up to their waists and stayed there.

Four hours desperate to avoid the Searing Heat standing in water, and Senior City burn behind you. But also your history, your home, your belongings, your memories, that are attached to place, right? That is gone.

As the sun rose over Lake Michigan on Monday morning, the fire had been raging for 10 hours.

And yet it still showed no sign of slowing down continuing to spread North and South in the early morning. Light Catherine, O’Leary could see the vast clouds of smoke that marked the destruction of the business district and north side.

William Ross has Tribune. Now, lay in Ruins In The Blaze rumbled. Steadily toward his Lakefront mansion.

He hastily loaded. Some prized possessions onto a wagon. It was the last he ever saw of those belongings.

Even though he was a wealthy and substantial citizen. He suffered the indignity that many people did were Hustlers who had wagons and transportation offering to help, move. Your goods would take your money disappear with your stuff and you’d never see it again. I see evacuated his home bras suffered, one final indignity. There’s a stranger in his house. The Stranger is wearing his clothing.

Ross knows he can’t do anything about it. He just wishes him to do and just go and the guy leaves the house at around 11 a.m. Ross and his neighbors, sat on the shore of Lake Michigan. Helplessly watching the Flames creep towards their Mansions soon. I saw the angry flame bursting from my home quickly and grandly they wrapped up the whole block and Away floated in black cloud.

Over Lake, Michigan.

Boss. This home was one of the last on the Southside to go.

On Monday night, rain began to fall on Chicago. It felt like divine intervention too many.

Imagine the feeling of rain on your face after feeling that intense heat after seeing those Flames feeling the rain on their face, just was a sense of utter relief that finally, finally, they had survived, they had endured and finally, we’re making it through to the end of the fire.

The fire had burned a path of Destruction 4 miles, long and almost a mile wide. It had mold down most everything in its way, creating an open Vista from the north side, all the way to the South. The city was landscape of utter Devastation, really Total Carnage. So much of the city had burned away and turned into Ash and to dust and was gone.

So it was this flat leveled frightening landscape.

You’re seeing rubble and the ground, you’re seeing remnants of things that are melted and perverse and weird ways. And now you don’t have a street address. There’s no street signs in the city. It’s a strange place. People wandered around. They didn’t know where they were and the ruins, it’s ghost City, you know, there’s no landmarks. It’s it’s an awful thing.

A third of Chicago’s 300,000 citizens, were homeless.

Survivors desperate for a blanket and Emile took shelter in churches. And schools for families, who’d been separated during the fire a frantic search began for lost loved ones.

So people found each other by going to landmarks people find each other by putting ads in the newspapers or maybe never find them because they’re dead. Not everybody gets reunited 120. Bodies were recovered but an estimated 300 relatives, friends and neighbors had died. I think they undercounted because a lot of people were just vaporized by the fire or fell into the off, the bridges into the water or drown in the lake and

People just disappeared fewer than a dozen buildings survive, the path of The Inferno between the river and Lincoln Park. While the fire had destroyed pumps and engines inside the Waterworks. The hulking exteriors were undamaged. They would become enduring symbols of civic pride.

A few Northside homes were filled with smoke. But otherwise unscathed officer. Richard Belanger was one of the lucky few.

Was it saved by the extraordinary means of cider? Probably not, but I think a good deal of Enterprise and possibly, the luck of winds and Circumstance, save the house, on the south side, The Cottage that Joseph hudlin had built with his own hands was spared. He and his wife and Elizabeth opened their home to five families who had lost theirs. They looked out and saw black.

And whites in need of help and the color of one’s skin didn’t affect them. It is color family, which was proving itself to be heroes of the great fire and they were recognized as such by the white population. William bosses, Tribune called an Elizabeth and Angel of the fire. Joseph’s employers, hung his portrait at the Board of Trade and gratitude for saving those crucial documents.

On the West Side, Holy Family Church, and st. Ignatius College were unharmed Legend says the winds. Miraculously shifted away from the church and answer to Father arnall Damon’s prayers. And that’s, you know, if you think about it, too, if you pray and say the church and burn the whole city down, is that really a good thing, but we love the legend of a prayerful man.

True to Father Damon’s vow a collection was taken to keep lights burning before the image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

Father, Damon stirred, some resentment. In fact, there is a story of some people later trying to see if they could set. Holy Family Church on fire in Revenge for it. Fortunately the fire didn’t take.

And then there was the home of Catherine, O’Leary.

The barn where the fire started lay in ashes but remarkably her College survived. Thanks to the quick thinking of her husband and a friend, the men went and fixed to wash tubs at both hydrants. There’s a hydrant in front of our place and a hydrant in front of mrs. Maurice. They said to wash tubs and then began to put water on the little house and kept it wet all through until the fire was gone.

Mrs. O’Leary’s business was lost a horse and five cows burned to death in the barn and only a calf was saved. She sent her husband to look for a sixth cow, that she’d kept in the alley. My husband spent two weeks looking for it and could not find it anywhere in the world. I could not get five cents. I had six cows there. A good horse there. I had a wagon and everything I was worth.

Unfortunately their only hope was squelched and soon. Mrs. O’Leary’s reputation would be destroyed. While the fire was still raging a Chicago evening Journal article had blamed her for starting it.

A reporter for another newspaper. Michael Ahern would later claim that he and two other journalists had concocted. The whole story story is are like seeds that grow. Once you plant that seed, you can’t uproot it, especially when the story fits in with all sorts of social Prejudice, one person is to blame because it simplifies things.

The board of police and fire Commissioners conducted an inquiry into the causes of the fire. 50 people testified, but the star was witnessed number five, Catherine O’Leary though. She was only about 40 years. Old reporters didn’t let the facts get in the way of a good story. They said that she was in her 70s and she was Haggard and bending over, and she was not articulate. They said she was hysterical and I’ve read the inquest.

And it sounded like she was very clear and very concise, and exactly what happened. I was in bed, myself, and my husband, and five children when this fire commenced. Do you know how the fire caught? I could not tell anything of the fire. Only the two men came by the door. I guess. It was my husband. He ran back to the bedroom and said, Kate. The barn is a fire.

But when she left the inquest they believed it and they publish a report that she had absolutely nothing to do with the fire that she was not responsible. The inquiry did not turn up a single shred of evidence that anyone had been in the O’Leary barn, on the night of the fire. Instead the investigation blamed shoddy construction and lacks enforcement of building codes.

Hillary didn’t take much Guff from people, and she very much stood, her ground and the judges agreed. They cleared her, but rumors, would quickly become fact in the fire’s aftermath.

Chicago began rebuilding so quickly that the ground was still hot to the touch. The first load of lumber arrived the same day. The fire was extinguished, but what surprises people is that there were businesses that open on the day after the fire selling things, food, blankets, anything, William kerfoot, who claimed that, his little Wood Shack was the first building in the burned area, ironically.

Made out of wood. And with a hand painted sign that said all gone, but wife, children and energy newspaper, Man. William bras had lost his home and belongings, but not his business. He and Joseph Medill continue to publish the Tribune from a makeshift office of midst the rubble.

Just a day after the fire, the Chicago Tribune, its headline pronounces, Chicago will rise. Again. There’s a sense that you know, this this fire can’t stop us that we are we are destined to become even bigger and better of a city than we were before. Braz hopped a train to New York to convince financiers. That Chicago was still a Sound Investment. He’s a bull, you know, he’s unbelievable, but he’s great on the stump, you know.

Making crazy predictions. People thought he was nuts. Chicago is going to have a million people by 1900, and he knows he has to promote it particularly in New York City. Go to Chicago now, young men, hurry their women, send your husband’s, he will never again, have such a chance to make money.

Why would anybody come to a city that was totally destroyed by fire? Well, because it’s a city of opportunity that the city of jobs at the city of places, where you can come and start anew the supposedly fireproof Palmer House, Hotel lay in Ruins, but it would soon be resurrected. Thanks to the Ingenuity of its architect as the fire raged around him. John Van osdol, buried the hotel’s blueprints in a basement whole encased in

Clay, when he later discovered, the blueprints perfectly intact, he realized he’d stumbled on a way to fireproof. His buildings. Van. Osdol used the recovered plans and his new fireproof clay tiles to rebuild and even more lavish Palmer House.

Though, the fire leveled, the north side and downtown the city’s grain elevators, lumber yards and the union Stockyards were largely untouched. You couldn’t take away Chicago’s geography. It was still the gateway to the American West. It was, you know, it’s railroads weren’t destroyed. It still had these lines of track that we’re going to deliver its Commodities to rest the country and the rest of the world. Many of the city’s Banks were up and running from temporary.

Offices within days though some Bank vaults had melted. Others were found intact donations poured in from around the country and the world England sent thousands of books. Queen Victoria. Thought she was restoring Chicago’s Public Library. The problem was Chicago. Never had a library. What are you going to do with all of these books? There was an

Old iron water tank, but the city did was made that the first Chicago Public Library.

The spirit of Goodwill was not Universal. Unscrupulous newspaperman. Fabricated, Tales of looting, lynchings and murders that occurred during the fire. One report is spun Tales of villainous Negroes gliding through the masses, like, vultures in search of prey. He claimed hollow-eyed Irish women in bedroom slippers and torn dresses, were moving here and there stealing.

You gotta blame this on somebody they’re looking for scapegoats. Has it bezel cities burning and the scapegoat, in this case becomes the poor and the overwhelming majority of deeply poor people in Chicago, were Irish immigrants with Chicago’s aristocracy on edge. Mayor Roswell be Mason moved to restore order. He banned liquor sales and imposed martial law. The mayor’s friend, General Philip Sheridan, LED troops.

Into Chicago.

City of Chicago is the first city after the Civil War to be occupied by the Army. What does that say to immigrants? It’s just watch yourself. We know you Irish, you Catholics are troublemakers. We don’t want them running around crazy around the city. So we’ll send the troops in.

Teach them their place, the site of soldiers thrilled, the tribunes William Bross. I verily believe what was left of the city, would have been nearly if not quite entirely destroyed by the Cutthroats and vagabonds who flocked here. Like vultures from every point of the compass, mayor Mason turned over recovery efforts to an organization run by the city’s Protestant Elite.

The Chicago relief and Aid Society raised five million dollars for medical care, food, water and clothing. It also gave skilled laborers. That means to house their families.

You could qualify for a kit that you could build your own relief Cottage and it was all the materials you need a wood to build this compact. Little temporary wood structure. That would give you safe shelter. That could get you through the winter. But the elites who ran the relief efforts were quicker to help some than others. Who do we help? How do we help them?

Who would we like to go away? Huh? Who would be like to go away? All those damn Irish as damn? Catholics. If they just moved out of the city. We’d be a lot happier. 30,000 Chicagoans abandoned their City on free railroad passes.

The hardship fell largely on the Working, Poor.

They had not only lost their loved ones, homes and belongings, but often lacked insurance and key documents like property records.

We were too generous. The argument was in allowing the Irish to throw up the shanties which are fire traps. We’re going to remove these people. So the Irish get pushed out further and then they set up mrs. O’Leary. No one suffered like Catherine O’Leary though, the official investigation had cleared her books about the fire continued to pin blame squarely on her shoulders. She must have felt

Okay, you know, let’s get on with our lives here and it was after that, that all of this, you know, this blame kind of came down on her again. Again, and again, O’Leary was branded a Welfare Queen who had sought revenge for being taken off the relief rolls. She had never accepted a penny in her life. She was a woman, she was an immigrant and I think it was so easy to pick somebody like that. And I think we see that today immigrants are

As the first ones accused of things, accused of crimes accused of wrongdoing reporters hounded, O’Leary on every anniversary of the fire.

They faked interviews with her and even fabricated photos.

There are always trying to snap her. Picture photographers were always coming to the house and she was always closing the blinds. She would not pose with anybody. So these are some of the examples of the way, she was depicted. She looks like some kind of a witch really. She looks like she doesn’t even look human. It’s definitely stuff that myths are made. Of the O’Leary sold their college in 1879 and left their beloved, Holy Family Parish, moving to South Halsted Street on the city’s outskirts.

Skirts, Catherine. O’Leary became a recluse only leaving the house to attend mass and run errands.

I believe her life became sadder and sadder really because she was, you know, being accused on all sides really. It started with the newspapers and then that story. Spread Katherine’s husband, Patrick died in 1894. She passed a year later. Reportedly of pneumonia. I think she just couldn’t get over it. And my grandmother said mrs. O’Leary died of a broken heart.

But even in death, O’Leary couldn’t escape the abuse. People would not allow anybody to go to her grave. Because when people would, it was actually desecrated and people would leave garbage there and awful notes and signs.

A Vaudeville parody called a hot time. In the old town, became a hit in the years after her death.

The song cemented, mrs. O’Leary’s place in history as the villain who burned Chicago to the ground. I think the song is part of our culture. Kids sing at a camp that perpetuates, the myth for sure Capital Theory becomes a myth and the city Embraces that myth for decades. After Chicago would officially celebrate the anniversary of the fire and they would have Catherine, O’Leary re-enactors, you know, walk through town with a cow to this day.

Body knows who or what started the fire. Some suspect one of the O’Leary’s tenants. The McLaughlin’s may have snuck into the barn to steal some milk for a celebratory punch. Another story is that a group of neighborhood? Kids were playing poker and the O’Leary barn and somebody knocked over a lantern.

There’s theories of a guy with a nickname pegleg. Sullivan was smoking a pipe and lift the barn on fire.

While the cause of the Great Fire was disputed most ACOG Owens agreed on one thing. It changed their city for the better. Rubble and debris were shoved into Lake. Michigan. Creating part of what is now Grant parked.

My clearing away old wooden buildings the fire made way for new more modern city. You should look at the fire like a chicagoan to look at it. Not as a disaster, total disaster. I mean it takes out a lot of bad stuff as far as housing girl’s wooden buildings are haphazardly, put up all that stuff. Disappears overnight.

Young Architects. Soon. Arrived with a startling New Vision and within a decade Chicago was reaching for the sky and soon enough. We get the skyscraper because Chicagoland is so valuable you build up instead of out and that kind of innovation and that kind of spirit really does exist in Chicago. It’s not just a myth and yet while the city’s physical character would change dramatically in the Years, following the fire, its spirit.

Maned intact, even as it grew into a modern Metropolis. It retained. The soul of a Frontier Town, Chicago was something that was built and I say this with ultimate respect with hustle and hutzpah an energy, and people acting with great Independence. Creativity pragmatism, get something done. If there’s a problem, solve it, move on, so Chicago,

Fire is to me, just another example of this Chicago Dynamic mind, spirit in action.

As for the O’Leary Cottage, it would eventually be demolished.

Nearly a century after the fire. The city of Chicago bought the site and put it to a fitting use.

You saw the water travel through it. It’s ready to go. Lieutenant. Rory OC trains future firefighters here at Chicago’s fire academy. He always makes sure to explain the location significance. A bring them out here and I’ll ask him. Look at the whole Skyline. It’s a beautiful Skyline. One of the most beautiful skylines in the World. Imagine on that day, in 1871, that the entire thing was on fire. All they saw was Smoke And Flames.

Though, it took well, over a century, Catherine, O’Leary’s family would finally be Vindicated Chicago city council, voted on a resolution that officialy absolved, her of blame in 1997. My grandmother’s. Mrs. O’Leary’s granddaughter, and she didn’t really talk about it too much because they know they rest of the city thought that they were guilty.

This is a copy of the official resolution drawn up by the city, council to exonerate my relative. Mrs. Cato, leery of any wrongdoing associated with the fire.

I just wish that she could have been there to be presented with a resolution herself.

I think she would be thrilled.