Shortly before 9pm on Sunday, October 8, 1871, a fire started in a barn owned by Patrick and Catherine O’Leary of 13 De Koven Street. On that day, they went to bed early to be well rested for the next day, when they were going to have much work to do.
Mrs. O’Leary had to milk the cows, and Mr. O’Leary had to go to work. That evening, a neighbor, Daniel Sullivan came by to visit and saw that the O’Learys were in bed. He started to walk home, but from the corner of his eye, he saw a yellow flame dancing out of the O’Learys’ barn.
It was tiny at first, a glowing dot, some wisps of white smoke. But then flames reached up.
Meanwhile, a fireman named Mathias Schaffer was stationed at the city courthouse. From the courthouse tower he could see much of the city. When he saw smoke in the distance, Schaffer quickly told his assistant to signal the fire engines.
His assistant sent a message to the fire stations, but he mistakenly directed horse-drawn fire wagons to a location about a mile from the burning barn. When the fire department finally reached the barn, its equipment was no match for the blaze.
By that point the scarcity of fire personnel combined with the strong winds sweeping through the dry, wooden environment effectively doomed the city. The fire department could do nothing to stop the fire. Around 4 A.M. the next day, the fire destroyed the city’s waterworks, shutting off water to the fire hydrants. Firefighters had to drag water in buckets from Lake Michigan and the Chicago River.
The Great Fire burned until October 10, when rain finally fell. Fire Marshal Robert A. Williams later described the blaze as “a hurricane of fire and cinders.” Over the course of the next thirty hours, the fire consumed nearly 18,000 buildings, killing over 300 residents and leaving another 100,000 homeless.
Chicago Great Fire (1871)
