I started the Chicago Fire.
No, I lied. I didn’t do it.
It was my dog, Deadline. He started the Chicago Fire when his German shepherd tail knocked over a lantern.
No, just kidding; it wasn’t the dog.
It was Mike Ditka. Mike Ditka’s cigar started the Chicago Fire when he tossed it onto a pile of dry hay.
No, it wasn’t Mike Ditka’s cigar. It was . . .
As any schoolkid or saloonkeeper knows, it was Mrs. O’Leary’s cow that started the devastating fire on the night of Oct. 8, 1871.
Or was it?
An article published recently in the Illinois State Historical Society journal claims it was not. “Did the Cow Do It? A New Look at the Cause of the Great Chicago Fire” is written by an amateur historian named Dick Bales who uses some new information to make a persuasive case that it was an O’Leary neighbor named Daniel “Peg Leg” Sullivan who actually started the fire.
This “news” was reported by local papers and sent a People magazine writer scurrying to put together a story for national consumption.
Most of the citizenry ho-hummed. We have grown so comfortable with–even proud of–our local legends that we don’t want them revised, even if such revision proves more historically accurate.
The fire is among our most cherished tales, because it comes wrapped with enough historical substance to have withstood time’s test.
The work done by Bales is to be admired, though it will not remove the soot from O’Leary and her cow.
I’ll be picking up future editions of the Illinois State Historical Society journal with trepidation, worried that I’ll learn there never was a man named Cap Streeter; that no one was ever decapitated while riding the Fireball at Riverview, or that l’ll see a story titled, “Did Scarface Do It? A new Look at the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.”
