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One dark night when we were all in bed,
Old Mrs. O’Leary took the lantern to the shed.
And when the cow kicked it over she winked her eye and said,
“There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight.”
For 125 years, children have been singing different versions of this rhyme. Many kids think it’s just a funny song. But it tells the story of a terrible tragedy—the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
In 1871, Chicago was a rich and thriving city. Soon it might even pass New York as the most important city in the United States.
Chicago leaders knew that fire was one of the main risks to a large city. So they had planned ahead. They had a top firefighting force with modern equipment. No matter how big a fire was, they were sure they could stop it.
Sadly, they were wrong.
On a hot, windy October night, a fire broke out in the barn of a woman named Catherine O’Leary. The fire spread and spread for thirty hours. It jumped over two rivers. Nothing seemed to slow it down. By the time it was finally put out, most of the city was destroyed. Thousands of people, rich and poor, had lost everything.
One of the few houses that was left standing belonged to Catherine O’Leary. She and her family also survived the fire. But her cows did not. Did one of them really cause all this destruction?