To: undisclosed-recipients:;
From: Steeler059@...
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 10:40:26 EDT
Subject: [hibernian] Women of Ireland Series: Catherine O'Leary

                                                    Catherine O'Leary

   The Great Chicago Fire begins in a barn owned by Patrick and Catherine O'Leary, 8 October. 

Legend has it that on the evening , Mrs. Catherine O'Leary's cow kicked over a lantern, touching off the Great Chicago Fire. On the drought-stricken evening that the fire started, a 30-mile-per-hour wind was blowing from the southwest. Fanned to ferocity the blazed scorched its way north and east. Curiously, Mrs. O'Leary's house at 13 DeKoven Street, was almost untouched. Even the barn where the fire started had only a corner burned out. Today, the Chicago Fire Academy occupies their place.The fire raged for 30 hours. The blaze, leaping from house to house, ultimately destroyed four-and-a-half square miles of Chicago--some 17,500 buildings. By the time the fire burned itself out on October 10, the entire business district was destroyed. Six railroad depots and Marshall Field's department store had gone up in flames. At times, temperatures reached 1,500 to 1,800 degrees. People were incinerated; limestone disintegrated into powder. Some 250 people were known dead and another 200 were listed as missing and 100,000 people were left homeless. 

   Throughout history, the fire has been attributed to Mrs. OLeary, an immigrant Irish milkmaid, and her cow. On one level, the tale of Mrs. OLearys cow is merely the quintessential urban legend. But the story also represents a means by which the upper classes of Chicago could blame the fires chaos on a member of the working poor. Although that fire destroyed the official county documents, some land tract records were saved. Using this and other primary source information, Richard F. Bales created a scale drawing that reconstructed the OLeary neighborhood. Next he turned to the transcriptsmore than 1,100 handwritten pages from an investigation conducted by the Board of Police and Fire Commissioners, which interviewed 50 people over the course of 12 days. The boards final report, published in the Chicago newspapers on December 12, 1871, indicates that commissioners were unable to determine the cause of the fire.   
  
The O'Leary's lived out the rest of their lives avoiding the news media and sensation-seekers. Patrick died in 1894, Catherine in 1895. Their children James and Anna are buried here as well. James O'Leary, also known as "Big Jim", was one of Chicago's most notorious gambling house owners in the early part of the 20th century.

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