Great Fire of 1871

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. (The link takes you to a picture of a 26.5 kilogram 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 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, neither man nor machine was there to combat the growing wall of flames.