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 Lamp Found in O'Leary's Barn from Andreas' History of Chicago |
In any case, the more intriguing issue is not the unresolvable one of
whether the legend has any basis in fact, but why it has had so much continuing interest,
why to the present day the story of Mrs. O'Leary's cow is above all others the one "fact"
that almost everyone near and far recalls about the Great Fire, and, for that matter, about
the history of Chicago.
The O'Leary story, true or not, has had such appeal because it offers a clear and specific cause for this otherwise overwhelming event, an imaginative handle by which people can take hold of it. Regardless of the inconclusiveness of the official investigation, at the time it also enabled people to blame someone in particular for what was a matter of collective responsibility and misfortune. In this respect it is noteworthy that the O'Leary legend found brief competition with a rumor that the fire was set by an unnamed member of a world-wide terrorist organization with direct ties to the 1871 Paris Commune. A local paper even published his "confession," and a poem that appeared in the New York Evening Post wondered out loud:
Did out of [Paris's] ashes arise |
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