The Great Chicago Fire - A Personal Account

Flaggie’s Letter to His Mother After the Great Chicago Fire Oct. 8, 1871

(edited and reposted)

While rummaging in boxes for pictures, I ran across a copy of a letter written in 1871 by my great great uncle, Jacob Bigelow Flagg, to his mother, Sylvia Babcock Flagg, after his business was consumed in the Great Chicago Fire. You can refer to the article found in Wikipedia’s, The Great Chicago Fire. for more details of the fire..

We all have read that the cause of the fire was because Mrs. Catherine O’Leary’s cow kicked over a lantern, but the reporter who first came up with that story later admitted he had made it up. Other causes put forth were:  boys smoking pipes in a haystack started it, Daniel ‘Pegleg’ Sullivan ignited it while stealing milk, and Louis M. Cohn started it during a craps game.

Many years later Robert Wood, an engineer attending a conference in 2004 of the Aerospace Corp. and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, suggested the most credible story, amazing as it is. He said the fire began when Biela’s Comet broke up over the Midwest. Eyewitnesses reported seeing balls of fire with blue flames, and a lack of smoke. Wood said this is consistent with a theory that fallout from the comet started the fires in four separate places by methane commonly found in comets.

The ensuing fire killed hundreds of people, many bodies unrecovered, and it destroyed several square miles of property. I have edited this letter by Jacob Bigelow Flagg to his mother in Massachusetts near Boston to shorten it and remove some of his long flowery sentences.

My dear Mother:            It has been many months since I have written you. I had made my arrangements to come and see you for a few days on or about Oct. 20, but alas how often we come short of our intentions. I could not come and see you as intended, but it is all right and I shall if I live, come ere long to see you.  We have had as you are aware a serious calamity befall our beautiful city. The city of Chicago was the pride of every man, woman and child of this great North-west. Forty-one years ago Chicago numbered all told of her population just seventy-one souls. Last year the census of this great city numbered three hundred and thirty four thousand six hundred souls (334600). Think of this for a moment, a city increasing in population at the rate of a little over eight thousand a year. Chicago has been the pride of my heart from the first day I set foot here. I knew she was destined to be the great city of the United States if the world stands. Chicago is destined to grow. The people of Chicago are different from people of many cities. They are open hearted, free to their business, liberal in their charities. They move much in all business matters. Three years ago this fall the question was agitated to tunnel under the river, and in two years they have two tunnels under the river. For you will see that Chicago is made up of three sides, the North, South, and West sides. Those different parts are divided by the river, the Illinois River This whole city covers an area of about forty square miles or about 30,000 acres, or as much as it would be from South Natick to Holliston, taking a space five miles in width. This will give you some idea of the great and once beautiful City of Chicago.  And now dear Mother, I am going to tell you about the great and terrible fire that burnt a portion of our city on the night of the seventh and the entire day and evening of the eighth of October, 1871. Millions of dollars of property were destroyed. All the fine buildings were destroyed. It was dreadful to see this sea of fire leaping from building to building, lapping across streets one hundred feet in width, catching in an instant and going – O, my God, who can tell of this great destruction but those that were in it and felt that awful heat. For the whole twenty-four hours it was one continuous burn. The brick and stone buildings stood no better than the poor wooden buildings. It took everything in its course. The water works that was built of sand stone shared the same fate as the other buildings.              On the night of Oct. 7^th, I left my stable and returned to my home about two and a half miles from the stable at 9:30 or half past nine. I heard the alarm of fire given in the eighth ward but I paid no attention to it for it was over a mile, yes, over a mile and a half away from the stable. We are so accustomed to hearing the alarm of fire, and Chicago has one of the most efficient fire organizations in the world. They always succeed – or have done so until this great and terrible conflagration. I never knew of a fire getting master of the department. Only a few minutes when the engines or steamers as they are called get to work. Soon after I went home, the wind commenced to rise. After getting home I went to bed for I was quite tired. At three o’clock a.m. I was called by a friend of mine who had taken one of our trotting horses from the stable, and calls loud, “Flagg, for God’s sake, get up and come down to the barn! The city is all afire! Come and save your stock.” I was up and off in a moment. I never rode behind a horse as I did that night behind my Dolly Stoning. I drove her. It seemed as if she knew all  She went her two and a half miles in seven minutes. What should they do with the stock? The barn was full of people begging rigs to save their families with. I was my father in a moment. I saw all as much as he used to do. I was perfectly cool, but I damned everybody who did not work and work much too. I gave the teams to everyone that asked for them. We had forty minutes to work in to get out what we could before the stable caught a little before four o’clock in the morning of the eighth. We had all but six horses and the cow. We owned fifty-two horses and forty-three boarded. We lost six buggies; the building was ours and cost six thousand dollars. We lost all our robes, fifty-five in number. Some of them cost as high as fifty dollars apiece. Many of our harnesses were burned. Our whole loss by fire was $11,529.00. We have enough left to pay our debts and no more. It will wipe us out. We lost all our furniture which leaves us in rather bad shape at this season of the year.  

Since I left you, dear Mother, in1857, Louise and I have worked pretty steady to save a little each year. At last we got what we thought would warrant my going into business. Mother, this is the third time I have been wiped out, the first time on the grocery store, the second time on the stages and omnibuses and horse railroad, and the last time by fire, fire, fire. I am not despondent. This is the hardest word I ever spelt over. Begin again is the only word I know anything about. I cannot tell you when I may be with you but when I come I will tell all about the great conflagration that swept the smartest city in the world, where people get a little hurt they get up and move on again. I was in the stable the whole day. My stable was all in flames when I left it. The very air was full of fire. No room was ever thicker with water than was the sky with sparks, cinders and black boards six feet in length which went sailing through the air hundreds of feet high all in flames.

The letter goes on telling of how he is much better off he is than many others who lost everything, and that he has enough left to pay his bills and start again. He enumerates his blessings: his wife Louisa, their little boy, and a new baby daughter.  He promises to come to see his mother as soon as he can.  He closes saying:

Additional information from Wikipedia encyclopedia tells us that after the fire 125 bodies were recovered, and final estimates ranged from 200-300, a small number of deaths for such a large fire. In other years disasters such as the Iroquois Theater fire and the sinking of the ship Eastland excursion boat, cost up to 835 lives, but the Great Chicago Fire is what remains as Chicago’s most famous disaster.