# Verbatim quotations from the 1871 inquiry as given in Abbott Kahler, "What (or Who) Caused the Great Chicago Fire?", Smithsonian Magazine, 4 October 2012
# URL: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-or-who-caused-the-great-chicago-fire-61481977/
# NOTE: the site is Cloudflare-gated for curl (HTTP 403 'Just a moment'); the text below was obtained through a page-fetch tool, which reproduced the quoted passages. Treat as secondary (magazine quoting Bales/the transcript).
# Obtained 2026-09-14T06:24:28Z.

## Catherine O'Leary (article: 'Mrs. O'Leary claimed to be asleep on the night of Sunday, October 8, when flames first sparked in the barn next to the family cottage on DeKoven Street.')
"She mentioned a man was in my barn milking my cows. I could not tell, for I didn't see it."

## Daniel Sullivan (article: 'The board also questioned a suspect named Daniel Sullivan, who lived directly across from the O'Leary's on DeKoven Street, and who had first alerted Patrick O'Leary to the fire.')
"I knew a horse could not be got out of a fire unless he be blinded, but I didn't know but cows could."

## Board of Police and Fire Commissioners' report (article: 'After nine days of questioning 50 people--testimony that made up more than 1,100 handwritten pages--the board members issued an inconclusive report about the fire's cause.')
"Whether it originated from a spark blown from a chimney on that windy night, or was set on fire by human agency, we are unable to determine."