# Catharine Sullivan (neighbour, mother of Daniel Sullivan) -- CONDENSED (reported-speech) summary of testimony before the Board of Police and Fire Commissioners, Chicago, Nov. 1871
# Source: Sheahan & Upton, The Great Conflagration: Chicago (1871), Appendix 'The Origin of the Fire', pp. 419-439 (testimony 'thus far (Nov. 27) taken').
# Internet Archive item greatconflagrati0000shea, OCR lines 16655-16673 of greatconflagrati0000shea_djvu.txt (https://archive.org/download/greatconflagrati0000shea/greatconflagrati0000shea_djvu.txt). Uncorrected OCR. Fetched 2026-09-14T06:03Z; written 2026-09-14T06:26:37Z.
# STATUS: extract/summary in reported speech (not verbatim transcript), with a few direct quotations.

Catharine Sullivan,

Who lives on DeKoven street, east of Jefferson,
was washing dishes when she saw a bright reflection
on the window panes of her dwelling. She ran into
the street, and saw that O’Leary’s barn and two others
east of it were on fire. She had heard that the
O’Leary’s were asleep at the time, and that somebody
awoke them. Her house caught fire several times, and
citizens threw pailsful of water on it. Her son and
Dennis Logan woke the O’Leary’s. She did not
know of her own knowledge, whether there was a
party in O’Leary’s dwelling, but she had heard that
there was. Pat. McLaughlin, the fiddler, lived in
the front part of O’Leary’s house. “ ’Pon her
word,” she could not tell how long a time elapsed
after she saw the fire until the engines made their
appearance.