# Colbert & Chamberlin, Chicago and the Great Conflagration (Cincinnati: C. F. Vent, 1871), p. 205 [printed 205; IA leaf 221 maps to p. 203 per page_numbers.json -- see running head "206" on the next page]: the first narrative of the origin ("the lamp was upset")
# Source: Internet Archive item chicagogreatconf00colb, OCR text file chicagogreatconf00colb_djvu.txt
# URL: https://archive.org/download/chicagogreatconf00colb/chicagogreatconf00colb_djvu.txt  (item page https://archive.org/details/chicagogreatconf00colb)
# Printed pages: p. 205-206 (IA leaf 221-222)
# OCR text lines 8849-8862 of the djvu.txt; uncorrected OCR (whitespace normalised only). Fetched 2026-09-14T06:22:15Z.
# Note: no witness named; this is the early "lamp upset" narrative, written before the inquiry.

urday night should be but as the flicker of a farthing candle.

Yet so it was. A little while after nine o'clock on Sunday
evening, the lamp was upset which was to kindle the funeral
pyre of Chicago's pristine splendor. The little stable, with its
contents of hay, was soon ablaze. By the time the alarm could
be sounded, at the box several blocks away, two or three other
little buildings — tinder-boxes — to the leeward had been ignited,
and within five minutes the poor purlieu in the vicinity of De
Koven and Jefferson Streets was blazing like a huge bonfire.

The spread of the fire, or, rather, the flight which it took
along with the south-west gale, was very rapid. We suppose the
Fire Department was on the ground, partly because it usually