fragment of marble statuary

Along with Aurelia King, most mourned the things they had forever left behind. A month after the fire, Anna Higginson sadly observed that she did not grieve over her financial setbacks, but for "my Mother's bible, the clothing & toys of my dead children, all the keepsakes & mementos of a lifetime." William Carter likewise wrote his brother, "The Homestead built by my own hands out of my own hard earnings, is gone--a total wreck. The spot had become endeared to me by many fond associations. It was the first home I could call my own, where my children were born, where I had hoped to live to educate them, where I had welcomed kind brothers and sisters and friends in the past and where I had hoped to do it often in the future.... No other spot will seem like it to me." And a disconsolate Julia Newberry confided to her diary, "Yes the whole North Side is in ashes, literally in ashes, & every memory connected with my home is gone...." It is not surprising, then, that those few things that did make it through the fire-- sometimes at the risk of the owner's own life--took on a special meaning in themselves and as symbols of all that could not be saved. Amidst the disorienting aftermath of Chicago's holocaust, these mementos offered some reassurance that a vital personal past did exist and at the same time provided an anchor in an uncertain future. As the new city arose and the years passed, they became links to the lost world of the pre-fire city.

glass marbles fused by the Great Fire

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