O`Leary`s House - Chicago Fire 1871

Transcription

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O'Leary's House - Chicago Fire 1871
Patrick and Catherine O’Leary lived with their five children in the rear of this building at
137 DeKoven Street (now numbered 558 W. DeKoven Street). They rented out the front
two rooms. They owned five cows which grazed in the yard. This was common for nearSouth-Side Chicago dwellers - like the O'Learys - before the Great Fire of 1871. Owners
relied on their living-within-the-city animals for fresh milk and eggs. They would either
consume the products themselves or sell them to their neighbors. These photos, circa
1870, depict such a homestead within Chicago's city limits. The Chicago Fire Academy
now occupies the spot at 558 W. DeKoven Street at the corner of South Jefferson
Street.
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[HISTORY]
The summer of 1871 was extremely dry with only about one inch of rain in 4 months. On
October 8th, Chicago endured one of the worst urban fires in American history.
Maximizing tinder-dry conditions, a gale-force wind turned a small fire into a huge
disaster. Almost three square miles of the city were destroyed. Nearly 300 people died.
The entire business district was wiped out.
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Chicago had come a long way since Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable first settled near
Lake Michigan (in the late 18th century) and John Kinzie built his home there (in 1815).
From a small settlement (not far from Fort Dearborn) to a major transportation center
(40 years later), Chicago prospered.
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As the Civil War neared its end, Chicago was "the metropolis of the northwest." By
1868, little was stopping the city's growth. The three branches of the Chicago River
formed a kind of boundary for the town. The south branch divided the rural part of south
Chicago (where the O’Leary family lived) from the urban part.
In 1871, Chicago had over 330,000 inhabitants. Its fire department and equipment were
"modern" for the time, but the city employed only 185 fire-fighting personnel. On the
night of October 7th, fire broke out at Lull & Holmes Planing Mill; what is now 209 South
Canal Street. Some of the city’s equipment was damaged while the already overworked,
understaffed fire-fighting crews were battling that blaze.
It’s generally acknowledged the fire started in the O’Leary barn but no one is really sure
how it started. There is Mrs. O’Leary, of course, and her cow. But she was exonerated
in the official report.
Daniel ("Peg Leg") Sullivan first saw the flames coming, he said, from the O’Leary barn.
Yet, when one considers Sullivan’s line of sight to the barn, it’s doubtful he could even
see the O’Leary property. Maybe he really wasn’t where he said he was. Along those
lines, a recent study blames Sullivan himself. Did he go to the O’Leary barn to feed his
mother’s cow that night? If so, did he smoke there and inadvertently start the fire?
Historians have always considered the drought and an out-of-control brush fire as the
likely cause. That was at least part of the official findings after the investigation was
concluded.
Recently the idea of a disintegrating comet, with falling meteorite debris, has resurfaced
as a possible cause. (a 58.5 pound meteorite allegedly found on the shore of Lake
Huron.) At the time of the fire, people said they saw burning material falling from the
heavens. No one took them seriously, of course. They were just hysterical people,
weren’t they? Yet the line of actual fires, drawn from the meteorite’s Lake Huron
location to Peshtigo and Chicago, makes one wonder about the evidence. Was it all just
a coincidence?
Whatever the cause, a combination of failures worked against Chicago that night. An
elaborate fire alarm system - dependent on human input - failed. The alarm closest to
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the O’Leary farm (Box 295) was never rung. Firefighters in the vicinity of DeKoven
Street learned about the fire when they saw it. All available men and equipment were
fighting a losing battle on the south side. No one dreamed the fire would jump the river.
When it did, no one was there to combat the growing wall of flames.
People were awakened by the fire. Many left their homes with shawls and blankets
around them. People fleeing certain death spent the night among the cemetery dead at Potter's Field, near Lincoln Park - close to the Lake Michigan shore. The Chicago
Tribune was burned out of its building. Citizens, in a panic, tried to flee over the
Randolph Street Bridge.
There was a heartbreaking loss of life as entire families were unable to escape. A
hundred thousand people who had enjoyed an unseasonably warm and beautiful
Sunday were homeless by Sunday night.
Fleeing people thought they’d be safe in Lake Michigan. They weren’t. Some never
came out of the water. James H. Goodsell, an eyewitness, describes the scene in his
1871 book, "History of the Great Chicago Fire":
“The intense heat from the burning buildings, even the flames from them,
reached the water, and even stretched out over it, and the flying men, women,
and children, rushed into the lake till nothing but their heads appeared above the
surface of the waters; but the fiery fiend was not satisfied. The hair was burned
off the heads of many, while some never came out of the water alive. Many who
stayed on the shore, where the space between the fire and water was a little
wider, had the clothes burned from off their backs.”
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O`Leary`s House - Chicago Fire 1871

Transcription

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