Catherine O'Leary

The city averaged two fires per day in 1870, and there were 20 fires throughout Chicago the week before the Great Fire.

So the big question is, did one of those fires basically expand into what would become the Great Fire of 1871? I should mention, the city council in Chicago, in 1997, more than 100 years later, exonerated Catherine O'Leary, Mrs.

O'Leary, and her cow from blame for the fire.

Uh, unfortunately for Mrs. O'Leary, she turned into a recluse of being blamed for that fire, and would die in 1895, uh, accused of starting that fire, or at least her cow was, that led to major parts of the city burning down.

Oh, we absolutely do.

Catherine O'Leary and her infamous cow.

Right.

Because for over a century, the dominant popular narrative was that Mrs. O'Leary was milking her cow in the barn.

Well, if we look at the demographic makeup of Chicago in 1871, there was a deeply entrenched anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiment.

Ah, okay.

And Catherine O'Leary was a poor Irish Catholic immigrant.

So she was an easy target.

Everyone knows the Great Chicago Fire, right? I mean, there's the cow, the lantern, Mrs.

O'Leary, all of it.

If you don't know it, let me know in the comments, and maybe I'll do an episode on it.

But just so you know, about three hundred people died, seventeen thousand buildings burned, and a third of the city was left homeless.

Sad.

I'm not trying to minimize it, but Peshtigo killed at least four times that, maybe even eight times that.

So why does every American kid grow up knowing about the Mrs. O'Leary's cow and not the town that literally exploded in Wisconsin? Well, the first answer is infrastructure.

Chicago had telegraph lines.

That was the day that the Great Chicago Fire began.

The fire started in a barn on the property of Patrick and Catherine O'Leary.

Legend pins the blame for starting the fire on a cow.

Whatever the cause, the fire spread quickly throughout the city's wooden houses.

Many blame a cow named Daisy, but no matter the cause, what happened in a Chicago barn 155 years ago caused enormous devastation.

On this day in 1871, flames sparked in the Chicago barn of Patrick and Catherine O'Leary, igniting a two-day blaze that killed an estimated 300 people, destroyed more than 17,000 buildings, left 100,000 homeless, while causing an estimated $200 million in damages.

As the legend goes, a cowl kicked over a lantern in the O'Leary barn and started the Great Chicago Fire.

Now, was that really the cause? Eh, maybe.