1871 Chicago Fire and Agnes’ House
Part I: Roses & Blackbirds
By Leu Seyer – November 5, 2025
The Old Chicago:
Old Chicago still remembers in the way ash remembers flame: quietly, in its bones. They say the wind carries names if you listen at dusk—Sofia, Agnes—and that blackbirds learned those names long before the fire learned the city.
Chicago Before the Fire
Chicago's development in the nineteenth century was fueled by a large influx of foreign immigrants and internal migrants, all of whom transformed the city into a vibrant industrial and cultural hub (Chicago Historical Society, 2005; PBS, n.d.). However, this progress was sharply interrupted by the Great Fire of 1871, which destroyed entire neighborhoods and prompted a reevaluation of urban planning. Rather than serving as a complete setback, the disaster strengthened Chicago's story of resilience and propelled its path toward modernization (Miller, 2000; Chicago History Museum, n.d.).
Chicago, October 8, 1871
On the night of the fire, the wind blew with a dry fury, as if it had been holding resentment for weeks and suddenly decided to unleash it on the city. It was not a calm, refreshing wind, but hot and arid, harsh against the skin. Dry as bones chewed on by puppies and left in the sun for weeks. The air itself seemed filled with dust and silence. It hadn't rained in over a month, and every street, every wooden plank on the buildings, every barn, and every shack creaked as if eager for a spark to set it ablaze.
The city, still young, was mainly built of wood. The houses stood close together, packed like old gossips sharing secrets through the cracks in their walls. The roofs nearly touched shoulder to shoulder, and the yellowed grass on vacant lots could hardly hide the smell of manure, smoke, and human sweat that filled the air. Chicago was growing fast—too fast—with immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Sweden, and Poland, all crammed into neighborhoods that were distinguished more by language than by physical borders. You only needed to walk two blocks to hear a different language and see customs brought from faraway lands.
The city was a powder keg, and everyone knew it. But what no one dared say aloud was that the fire had begun long before the flames reached the first barn. In reality, the fire had started in people's hearts many years ago.
Sofia and Agnes Rooted Feud
Sofia Bakken knew this. She had come to Chicago seven years earlier from Sweden on the same ship as Agnes Mortensen. The journey was long and cold, filled with nostalgia and hunger. During those weeks at sea, the two rediscovered that, as children, they had been neighbors in their homeland. During those childhood years that are not easily remembered but are not entirely forgotten. Their parents knew each other and had once shared fields and labor. But that memory did not bring them together. Instead, it fueled a dormant rivalry —a subtle tension inherited from their parents that both carried as a scar from childhood.
Before coming to America, their families had moved through Eastern Europe, working as day laborers on other people's farms, always hoping for a better future that never arrived. That was when they decided to migrate to the New World. Hope turned into boat tickets, and tickets into dreams packed along with the few belongings they could carry.
Sofia carried something more valuable than clothes or utensils: the seeds of her grandmother's rose bushes. They were her treasure, her inheritance, her pride. Her grandmother always said that those roses had a spirit of their own, that they bloomed in any soil because they had been blessed with tears and song. For Sofia, those rose bushes were not just plants; they were the bridge to her past, to her mother, to the land she had left behind.
Agnes, on the other hand, arrived with little. Just a trunk containing dried herbs, a few glass bottles filled with dark liquids, and a collection of old books written in archaic Swedish. People whispered, although no one dared to ask her if they were in fat grimoires or part of a magician's manual for invoking demons and spirits of the dead. Agnes had always been a loner, more inclined to talk to the wind or the birds than to other human beings.
When they finally settled in West Chicago, not far from each other, the clash took root. Agnes's house was gray, the gray that reminded one of storm clouds. Dark vines climbed its walls. At night, they glowed as if drinking in the moonlight, but at dawn, they seemed to wither under the hot sun. Her garden was an enigma; herbs grew there that no one else could cultivate in that region—twisted mandrakes, broad-leaved sage, mushrooms that looked like human ears. Birds, especially blackbirds, visited her as if they were her confidants. They perched on the windowsills, cawed in deep choruses, and seemed to murmur the prayers of nervous monks.
Sofia's house was bright, decorated with pots of roses. Her rose bushes were well-known in the neighborhood: red, white, and pink flowers that scented the streets and drew buyers from other areas. It was common to see women at the market showing off "a rose from the Swede" in their hair. For many years, Sofia was recognized as the gardener of West Chicago, and that filled her with pride.
But everything changed suddenly when the rose bushes started to die. First, their leaves shriveled as if they were suffocating; then the thorns turned black, and finally the flowers crumbled into dust. Sofia tried everything: mixtures of ash, prayers to the Virgin Mary, and even holy water sprinkled on the roots by the priest. Nothing worked.
The First Omens
One afternoon, at the edge of the dying garden, Sofia saw Agnes standing there, whispering to the wind. Agnes's gray hair covered part of her face, and her lips seemed to move to the rhythm of a language Sofia didn't understand.
"What are you doing here?" Sofia shouted, her voice broken with rage.
Agnes didn't flinch.
"I hear the rot," she replied calmly. "Every living thing has a song when it dies."
Sofia felt a chill. She threw a stone at the ground near Agnes’s feet.
"Get out of my garden, witch!"
Agnes left without hurrying, and from that day on, misfortunes began to increase. The neighborhood's black cats disappeared one after another without a trace. Milk turned sour within hours, even in the cleanest houses. One night, Sofia woke up to find her fireplace emitting blue smoke that smelled like hot iron. Her husband dismissed it as nothing, just the tired imagination of a woman. A few weeks later, he fell ill with a strange fever and died within hours. He was a traditional, strong farmer who relied on home remedies. However, what no one ever knew was that he had incidentally ingested a virus from contaminated water, which developed into stomach cancer that advanced quickly because it was not treated in time. In reality, the doctors couldn’t determine the cause with the medical limitations at the time, which only heightened suspicions of a spell.
Sofia was left a widow, alone with her young daughter, surrounded by the ruins of what had once been her pride and joy. And although everyone in the neighborhood whispered, no one accused Agnes out loud. No one wanted to provoke her.
Meanwhile, the air grew heavier each day. The dusty streets blistered under an unseasonal hot October sun. The stables creaked with dry hay, and the wooden roofs seemed to groan under the weight. Several small fires had been seen in the past weeks, but all had been extinguished without major incidents. Still, something in the atmosphere signaled that the worst was yet to come.
People began to speak of an omen. Some said they had seen a single blackbird circling above the river at dawn, flying against the wind, as if warning the city to turn back. Others swore that the moon on the previous night had taken a rusty color. Whether true or not, the air carried that rumor like smoke—an omen unheeded, whispering that fire was already among them, even though it was being ignored.
Everyone was restless. Children cried more than usual, and dogs barked without reason. The European preachers in the square shouted that Chicago would be punished for its arrogance and that God would send fire to purify sin. Some laughed at them. Others prayed silently.
And amid it all, Agnes walked barefoot through the streets, with blackbirds following her from the rooftops. No one dared to stop her. Sofia watched her from her window, her eyes burning with not only hatred, but also fear.
Part 1 of 3 Ends
The Great Fire had not yet begun, but an invisible bonfire was already burning between the two women.
REFERENCES
Chicago Historical Society. (2005). The growth of Chicago: Immigration and migration in the 19th century. Chicago History Museum. https://www.chicagohistory.org
Chicago History Museum. (n.d.). The Great Chicago Fire & the web of memory. Retrieved from https://www.chicagohistory.org/fire
Ellis, B. (2003). Lucifer ascending: The occult in folklore and popular culture. University Press of Kentucky.
Miller, R. (2000). Chicago's Great Fire: The destruction and resurrection of an iconic American city. University of Chicago Press.
PBS. (n.d.). Decades of immigrants: Chicago’s ethnic transformation. American Experience | PBS. Retrieved July 8, 2025, from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/chicago-decades-immigrants/
University of Washington. (n.d.). Illinois: From settlement to urbanization. Moving Beyond the Page: U.S. Migration History. Retrieved July 8, 2025, from https://depts.washington.edu/moving1/Illinois.shtml
