A few excellent resources to kick start (no pun intended) research on the Chicago Fire of 1871. Spoiler alert! Mrs. O’Leary’s cow is not to blame…

• Chicago Fire of 1871: http://www.history.com/topics/great-chicago-fire
• The Great Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory/Chicago History Museum: http://www.greatchicagofire.org/ 
• Did a Cow Really Cause the Chicago Fire? http://mentalfloss.com/article/12864/did-cow-really-cause-great-chicago-fire
• Chicago Fire Newspaper Collection 1871-1909/University of Chicago Library (finding aid) https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/scrc/findingaids/view.php?eadid=ICU.SPCL.FIRENEWS
• Sawislak, Karen.  Smoldering City:  Chicagoans and the Great Fire, 1871-1874.  Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1995.
• Lowe, David, ed.  The Great Chicago Fire:  In Eyewitness Accounts and Seventy Contemporary Photographs and Illustrations.  New York:  Dover Publications, 1979.
• Sheahan, James W. and Upton, George P. The great conflagration : Chicago: its past, present and future : embracing a detailed narrative of the great conflagration in the north, south, and west divisions…Union Publishing Co., 1872.