# Mrs. Catherine O'Leary -- 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 16620-16654 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.

JL>5. O’Leary,

The owner of the cow, now so famous, which it
■was claimed, kicked over the lamp and started the
fire, testified, that she and her family — her husband
and five children — were in bed, but not asleep on
that Sunday night. They knew nothing of the fire
until Mr. Sullivan, drayman, who lives on the south
side of DeKoven street, awoke them and said their
barn was on fire. She took a look at the barn and
saw that it could not be saved. She became almost
crazy on account of losing all her property — a barn,
wagons, harness, six cows and a horse — and was
very much excited. There were three barns — two
besides her own — on fire at the same time. A
family named McLaughlin lived in the same house
with her, and she understood they were having a
“social time” on that Sunday night; that they had
an oyster supper, and a Mrs. White had told her
that one of the family went into the barn to milk
one of the cows. She had no knowledge of it and
could not say whether it was true or not. The first
she saw of the fire engines was one playing on Tur¬
ner’s Block, on the corner of Jefferson and DeKoven
streets. She thought it was a good while between
the time the fire broke out and when she saw the
steamer, but it might have been working some time
before she saw it. She was so excited in looking
after her family and property that she didn’t take
notice of much else.

424 THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION — CHICAGO!