GREAT DEBATE ABOUT GREAT FIRE
Sunday marks the 135th anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire, and it was on a Sunday in 1871 that flames scorched miles of Chicago. Mrs. O'Leary's Cow took the blame; no suprise -- as cows have never quite gotten a fair shake in our society -- bad enough they can't run, swim or fly, but rather face a dull life at Old MacDonald's farm, only to end up at old McDonald's slaughterhouse. If someone walked in to a smokey barn and saw you there….wouldn't you point the other way and say "The cow did it." You might think blaming a cow, would be the safest scapegoat. But, to Anthony DeBartolo, a reporter for Hyde Park Media, these details matter.
DeBartolo found a piece of evidence while doing research for another project about ten years ago. Experts have scoffed at the theory, saying they had read everything there was to read about the Great Chicago Fire. However, they probably missed this -- a short paragraph, in what DeBartolo calls a well-respected book about the history of gambling.
In the 1964 book "The Complete Illustrated Guide to Gambling," Alan Wykes writes about a will from 1942 for Louis M. Cohn, who passed away at the age of 89. Cohn's estate was handed over to Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. The press release was obtained by DeBartolo for an article in The Chicago Tribune several years ago. It included one paragraph about Cohn's "interesting connection" with the origin of the Great Chicago Fire.
"He asserted that he and Mrs. O'Leary's son, in the company of several other boys, were shooting dice in the hayloft…by the light of a lantern, when one of the boys accidently overturned the lantern, thus setting the barn afire. Mr. Cohn never denied that when the other boys fled, he stopped long enough to scoop up the money."
Sykes added a comment about Cohn's will.
"Cohn added a postscript to his story in the form of a deadpan comment that could have been made only by a man with the unswerving single-mindedness of the dedicated gambler: 'When I knocked over the lantern, I was winning.'"
An expert in Chicago Jewish history and geneaology later contacted the Chicago Tribune, and supplied the name of Cohn's father, Marcus, who according to the 1870 directory, lived less than a mile from the O'Leary house, near what is now Dearborn Street and Jackson.
"Cohn is the only guy in history ever to say in effect 'I did it,'" Debartolo said.
"Many other people have come forward to say other individuals were involved but no one other than Cohn ever came forward to say that they were in the barn at the time the fire broke out. I think that's significant. So, the question becomes, why would Cohn lie?"
DeBartolo suspects the story of Cohns involvement was suppressed because Cohn was Jewish. The Cohn confession never makes it to the final recorded will, which was never signed by Cohn. DeBartolo suggests that in the 1940's, Cohn's Jewish friends (who were also his executors) may have thought it best to keep Cohn's "confession" private at a time of great Jewish persecution.
Historians say it's just another wild tale.
"It's unprovable and irrefutable," said Prof. Carl Smith, of Northwestern University It is based on one guy's claim that might have happened but we have no verification. My gut reaction is it's one guy bragging."
De Bartolo tracked down one of the executor's sons -- Stanley Feinberg, who was living in LaJolla California. Feinberg confirmed that Cohn had told the story about the infamous craps game.
"He wasn't being boastful, or proud or remorseful," Feinberg told DeBartolo in a 1998 interview for the Tribune. "He was just setting the record straight. 'Here are the facts,' he'd say."
"The only time I thought Feinberg wasn't telling me the truth was when I asked him about [Cohn's] will - he stopped looking me in the eye." DeBartolo said. "It's understandable why they wouldn't want a fellow Jew to stand up and basically say, "I started the Chicago fire."
The Tribune later heard from 74 year old Roy Grayson, who said his grandfather, Abraham Goldstein, often told stories of boys playing cards and drinking in O'Leary's Barn….and "on the night of the fire, one of them kicked over a lantern."
"The evidence was destroyed, we can't reconstruct it. We will never know," said Libby Mahoney, of the Chicago History Museum. "Barns are stuffed with hay and they didn't have electricity or flash lights; there were kerosene lanterns. It seemed inevitable in some way. The conditions were right, something was bound to happen."
Mysteries are what keep people fascinated with history. Every town has its legends, and regardless of how this one began, it ends with Chicagoans building a city of glass and steel, built from the ashes of an old barn. In the end, that is the story that matters most.