Personal Experiences During the Chicago Fire, 1871

by Frank J. Loesch

I saw two boys carrying a showcase filled with candy. One walking in front carried the case with his hands behind him. Both were crying softly. They had lost their family. I saw them the next day on the prairie west of McCormick Seminary, playing marbles, the candy all gone. I have regretted since that I did not inquire whether they had lived on that in the meantime, for there was little opportunity to trade it for more substantial food.

By the process of slow walking to Erie Street bridge where a considerable number of people waited for an hour or two, thence by a ride with an express man, a part of our group found ourselves at the east abutment of Chicago Avenue bridge about 4 a. m. It had a slight grade above the street. From it for two hours we saw the flames everywhere leaping upward but ever steadily making their way toward us. At one time we witnessed six churches, some of them with spires, sending their flames high into the air, making the most spectacular exhibition of the fire on the North Side. They included St. James Church, Unity Church which had two spires, New England Congregational Church, as well as one or two others, the names of which I cannot now recall. None was burning fast, it seemed to us, but it was an awesome as well as a depressing sight. They were the outstanding feature of the fire from our viewpoint for over an hour.

About 6 a. m. a number of us succeeded in inducing an expressman who was driving north to carry us to Fullerton and Racine Avenues, where some of the party had friends who had a comfortable home. We were welcomed in spite of the fact that about thirty other friends had already taken refuge there, and so many more recalled that it might prove a place of safety that by Monday evening over seventy homeless people had gathered there.

As we drove up Larrabee Street and Lincoln Avenue, we found the residents out in force on the streets pitying us as we drove by with others in the same condition. In reply to questions we gave what information we could as to the extent of the fire. Not one person, to all appearances, was in the least personally concerned or seemed to have any idea of peril from the fire to his home. Yet about 3 o’clock that afternoon I walked down to North Avenue and from there looking down Larrabee Street and later Sedgwick Street, a distance of a half mile, saw only deserted streets. Not a human being was visible in that distance with both sides of both streets on fire at about North Avenue, the fire having extended further north on Sedgwick Street than on Larrabee Street.

I spent most of Monday after 10 a. m. in wandering about the district between North and Fullerton Avenues, a distance of a mile. The houses were being rapidly vacated north of North Avenue. The people had a better opportunity to remove their belongings or bury them than had those who were caught unprepared during Sunday night in the district south of Division Street. Many could be seen burying furniture. One musician told me some months after that he had so buried a fine piano only to lose it, as thieves had gotten it before he could return to his devastated home lot some days after the fire.

The fire was burning steadily and rather rapidly northward without a hand anywhere attempting to stay its progress. It was plain to be seen and often commented on by the fire-dispossessed wanderers that three or four fire engines with hose connections and water could at any time after 10 or 11 on Monday morning, have prevented all progress of the flames north of Division Street or at least north of North Avenue. The engines could have been obtained. It only needed water but there was no water. The destruction of the Chicago Avenue pumping station early in the morning had ended all hope of ending the fire so long as there were houses, streets, sidewalks and fences to feed it and no rain to quench it. I saw the pavements burning with the same fury as houses and board walks.

The strongest impression made upon my mind next after the burning of those thousands of homes was the long lines of vehicles loaded with goods and human beings and accompanied by files of thousands of homeless ones walking alongside. There was not the humor that there was in the earlier dispossessed ones. They were mostly headed west for Webster Avenue bridge over the North Branch. Those of us who had lost all our personal belongings were curious to note the mental agony and nervousness under which these later refugees were suffering in the fear the fire would yet overtake them. There were delays and halts in the endless, slowly-moving procession of vehicles and people. Whenever one such occurred a stream of profanity and curses issued from the drivers and even from pedestrians of such volume, variety and blistering malediction on those causing the delay, that I hope the world will never again hear its equal. It was due, of course, to the overwrought nerves and minds of every one suffering under hours of agony from loss of homes and personal property and fear for the lives of wife, children or parents.

Before sunset I had returned to my place of refuge. Some thirty or forty men had gathered there. At a council it was decided that active measures must be taken to guard our lives. In front and to the south of us and west of McCormick Seminary were some sixty to eighty acres of prairie, thickly covered with very dry thistles and grass. If the fire swept across that all our lives would be put in jeopardy. It was decided to find a team and plow furrows across that field as at least a partial protection.

The second protection was the tearing down of fences and uprooting posts which fenced in part of the prairie and throwing them into ditches where we could handily find them. The final precaution was the filling of many open kettles and pans with water from a well, and placing them so that in the emergency feared each woman and child for herself or itself, or some man for them, could soak a wrap, place it about the woman or child, the man throwing what water he could over his legs and then with his charge run the gauntlet of the prairie fire. The captain in command told me off with another lively young fellow as one of several pairs to kick off fence boards and pull out posts. It was long after dark when we got to work but it was exhilarating work as the night chill came on, and kicking in unison we did great execution with the fences as well as to our legs and muscles. The hardest job was the pulling out of posts which caused lacerated hands, but no one murmured. We felt ourselves to be in a desperate situation. Our eyes were ever to the south, watching the steady coming on of the fire as it lapped up in flames street after street of houses.

About 1:30 o’clock on Tuesday morning when we had given up hope of any stay and when the last row of houses on Belden Avenue or the street south of it, next south of the prairie, was about being licked up, rain suddenly came down in such volume as to assure us safety and the extinguishment of the fire. Without more ado every man sought some place of refuge. I crept under an outside stairway to find just room enough to lie in amidst several other men who had forestalled me. I had not slept since early Sunday morning. I had had nothing to eat since Sunday noon, but I do not recall that I was either sleepy or hungry.