1871 Chicago Fire and Agnes’ House
Part II: The Night Chicago Burned
By Leu Seyer – November 5, 2025
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.).
Previously on Part 1:
Two women from the same wintered world brought their rival summers to Chicago—Sofia with roses and memories, Agnes with birds and whispering herbs. Grief, envy, and rumor dried up the city faster than any drought. On the eve of October 8, 1871, a fire was already burning in their hearts.
The Night the City Burned
On that night destined for disaster, the fire started quietly at first. Then it crackled, barely altering its tone, as if an invisible string had been pulled elsewhere. The dry leaves on the streets swirled into new patterns. In the alleys, the dust took shapes that looked like children running, then women, then nothing. And in a barn on DeKoven Street, a flame with the patience of the inevitable licked the edge of a haystack. There was no mystery, no need for hoofed culprits: the air itself seemed to be made of tinder, and the city's breath was a trapped firefly.
The afternoon of October 8, 1871, was tinged with a color that did not belong to the day. It was a coppery light, suspended like a skin over the city, and beneath that skin, everything seemed to hold its breath. In the stables, the cows nervously moved their tongues; the horses stamped their hooves restlessly. The children argued over trivial matters, then fell silent, as if recalling something they couldn't quite remember. The men returned early from work and lit lamps with a haste that contradicted their calm appearance. The women closed the windows, but the hot, stubborn wind found cracks to enter and dried their lips, eyes, and hands.
Sofia checked one last time on the small altar she had set up for her husband, who had died just weeks earlier: a tallow candle, a rosary, and a wilted rose pressed between the pages of a missal (a religious service book). The wax had pooled, and on its surface, she seemed to see the reflection of a starless sky. Her daughter was asleep, or pretending to be, but her eyelids fluttered with restless dreams. The entire house, though humble, seemed to tremble like an animal ready to run.
Not far away, Agnes stepped onto the porch, her bare feet on the wood, warm from the sun that never seemed to stop burning. The house seemed to breathe with her; each plank pulsed softly. Agnes's hair was loose, sprinkled with dust and tiny leaves, and she held a clay bowl about the size of her palm. Inside, there was a lock of Sofia's hair, a crushed thorn, a drop of black wax, and coagulated raven blood. On one side, like witnesses, two blackbirds watched her from the railing: their round, intelligent, motionless eyes.
"Let it rise," she whispered, and the wind, for the first time in weeks, changed its song.
Then, after the crackles, there was a gasp. Then a roar. The barn roof where the fire started lit up from within, as if someone had ignited a wooden sun. In moments, the fire found its own language and spoke it fluently: it climbed walls, jumped eaves, sought out ropes, fabrics, oil, straw—anything that could pronounce its name. A man threw a bucket of water, and the water, evaporating, responded with a whistle that sounded like mockery. Another man rammed a door with his shoulder, freed the animals, and they stampeded out, their eyes turned to white marbles. A child cried. A woman screamed her husband's name and, not finding him, shouted God's name, then screamed nothing at all.
The fire advanced at a pace unlike any other. It did not run; it chose its path. It took deliberate turns, crossed courtyards as if it knew shortcuts, and rose in chimneys with a sense of triumph. With each leap, it left behind sounds of breaking glass, groaning metal, and creaking wood. In the river, some began to jump in fully clothed, clutching children and packages tied with ropes, as if the water could remind them how to breathe.
The Unburning House
Sofia went out into the street, and the copper light turned blood orange. The smoke had a metallic taste, and her throat burned as if she had bitten a knife. She grabbed her daughter's hand.
"Don't let go," she said, and the girl nodded with white lips.
Around them, neighbors ran with beds on their shoulders, chickens under their arms, plaster saints wrapped in rough blankets. A woman dragged a trunk that left a trail in the dust like a wound. A dog, delirious, barked at a wall of fire that wasn't there yet but soon would be. The sky filled with ash that fell silently like hurried snow.
In a corner, two men tried to form a chain of buckets from a hand pump. The water rose for a moment in a half-hearted stream and then fell back, laughably, onto flames that were already chewing on beams. Someone shouted, "To the south!" and everyone ran north. Someone said, "By the river!" and another replied that the bridge was on fire. No one knew anything; yet everyone seemed to understand everything about the fire burning less than three meters from their noses.
Sofia tried to remember a prayer, but the words burned in her mouth. Her daughter's hand was like a small fish trying to escape, wet with sweat. At each step, hot dust kicked up and stuck to her skin. Sofia's feet, in her worn boots, began to feel the heat rising from the street boards like a fever. The fire, with a borrowed or ancient intelligence, started to surround entire blocks, like a predator learning the map of its prey.
Agnes, motionless on the porch, held the bowl with both hands. Her breath came out in a thin, steady stream. She murmured in an ancient Swedish, one that even the shepherds of her childhood no longer used. The wind seemed to lean toward her words, listening and obeying in its own way. The blackbirds took three sideways steps and changed places, as if following choreography.
"Let it rise," she repeated. "But not here."
The phrase fell like a seal, and then the fire avoided her patios and gardens. Coincidence or not, those ugly plants that only grew in her yards and nearby were the most fire-resistant on Earth. Additionally, they were responsible for her envy of Sofia's rosebushes. But, no spell was necessary or needed; it was pure botany – that science that studies everything about plants and shrubs. However, to the eyes of the late 1800s, it was all pure magic.
It was grotesquely beautiful to behold: the street in front of Agnes's house burned with a blue and orange dance; the windows of the neighboring house exploded, sending out flashes of tiny blades; and the eaves of the corner store dripped incandescent tar. And yet, when they reached the edge of Agnes's garden, the flames shrank back, like pressed against a wall that didn't exist, and retreated with a frustrated hiss. The vines climbing her house seemed to drink dew amid the chaos.
Sofia saw this halt with her own eyes. She was pulling her daughter along, a blanket over her shoulders like a cloak of ash, when she turned the corner of the alley that ran beside Agnes's house. She expected the hot bite of the fire. Instead, she found a haven. The air there was different. It was still hot, but bearable; it smelled of fresh earth beneath the smoke. The sound of breaking glass could be heard as if from a distant room.
"Mommy," whispered the girl, "why isn't it burning here?"
Sofia didn't answer. Her gaze was fixed on Agnes's figure on the porch: upright, serene as twilight, with the bowl now resting on the railing and her hands clean, empty, as if they had never touched anything impure.
"You!" Sofia gasped, her throat like needles. "You did this."
Agnes bowed her head with a tenderness that did not belong to that moment.
“The city was dry. The town was ready. I just gave it permission," Sofia imagined, or heard as a voice in her head, that this was Agnes's response to her previous insinuation.
"You will burn for this," Sofia spat, and the word "burn" came out so hot that for a second, she thought she saw her breath ignite.
But Agnes seemed to say "not me" or simply ignore her as she turned toward the door, as if ending a sweltering afternoon. Nonetheless, Sofia was already burning inside, an omen of events to come.
A nearby roof collapsed with a roar; the glow rose, and for an instant, everything was illuminated as if inside a glass bell jar. The girl squeezed her mother's hand until her nails dug in. Sofia lifted her in her arms, driven by an animal instinct, and ran across the invisible line that separated the burning street from the untouched garden. No sparks followed her. It was like crossing a border: at the foot of a bush with shiny leaves, the heat became something that could be breathed.
Those fleeing paused briefly, stunned, in front of the untouched house. Some made the sign of the cross; others spat on the ground, resentful; and a few, trembling, knocked on the door asking for shelter. Agnes did not open it. No one pressed much. The fire, with its relentless voice, reminded them that there were more immediate paths than knocking on the door of a woman said to talk to birds and the wind.
From the center of the city came the chaotic wailing of bells, calling for brigades that could not reach them, buckets that emptied before they were filled, and hands that did not know where to start. The wind, which had been blowing from the southwest until then, suddenly shifted northward with a capricious twist. The embers flew like deadly flocks, igniting roofs from afar, setting clothes hanging out to dry ablaze, and settling in attics like inappropriate guests. Night fell quickly, turning what little daylight remained into the dancing shadows of a massive body: the fire.
A Promise in the Flames
Sofia moved along the edge of Agnes's garden, guiding her daughter toward an alley that led to a less crowded area, where maybe the fire would take a few more minutes to reach. Each step was calculated, each turn a judgment call. Behind her, Agnes's house was still intact, the vines shimmering with fake dew. A blackbird flew close overhead, and in its fluttering wings, Sofia heard something like a whisper. It wasn't a word, not then, but it contained the seed of one.
Later, in a small square by the river, she saw a group gathered around a wheelbarrow. A man with a dirty mustache was organizing the remaining people into lines: "Children first, then women," he said with an authority no one had given him. Two nuns handed out wet cloths; a boy stacked empty buckets with a look of defeat. The heat was now coming from the ground, not just the air; the soles of her boots seemed to be turning white.
Sofia left her daughter with one of the nuns for a moment to soak a handkerchief and tie it over the girl's mouth. In that brief moment, she looked westward. The horizon looked like a single flaming muscle that contracted and expanded as if breathing. She had seen fires before, small, domestic ones. But this was no fire; it was a will.
A sudden realization hit her hard: she remembered Agnes's hands, the bowl, the whispers. At first, it was just a guess, but now, after analyzing all the details, she was sure of what had happened. She tied all the dots and crossed all the t's in her mind. Thus, certainty pierced her like a needle: it wasn't anyone's cow, and it wasn't just chance. It was permission. And if Agnes could give it, someone else could take it away (she thought).
"Not here," Sofia repeated through clenched teeth, mimicking what she thought Agnes's words were with evident hatred. "Not with you!" “We’ll see” was her final thought about it.
The nearest bridge started to burn like an upside-down candle. Someone tried to stop people from crossing to keep the fire from spreading, but the crowd no longer listened to anyone. The city was a chorus of useless orders and frantic decisions. The river, darker than ever, swallowed entire families who, in their fight to survive, forgot how to swim.
Sofia picked up her daughter and moved along a row of backyards. With each step, she heard the houses behind them turning into the sounds of old organs: a burst pipe, a screaming piano, a dying clock. The fire chased after them with both clumsiness and precision. But when the path led them to go around Agnes's house again, there was the backwater, untouched, stubborn, and defiant.
Sofia stopped and, for the first time since she started running, completely turned around. Agnes had come out of the house and was standing on the porch again. Now she wasn't carrying the bowl. Her hands were clasped at her chest, as if she were praying without truly believing. Agnes looked at her. There was no defiance in those eyes; instead, there was—and this angered Sofia more than any mockery—pity.
"Don't look at me like that," she said, her voice failing her.
The fire kept its senseless course. The city burned in uncharted maps. But the edge of Agnes's garden remained a shoreline where waves of fire crashed and pulled back. Some embers settled on the leaves and went out with a crackle that sounded like laughter. The blackbirds on the eaves stayed still: living statues, eyes of stone.
Sofia pressed her daughter to her chest and swore to herself: if the city was burning, she would find a way to extinguish it. Not with water. Not with fire brigades. Not with bridges. With something older. With something she couldn't yet name, but which was already in flames inside her.
The fire continued to speak its language. The night, which heard it, grew thicker. And the city, obedient and desperate, listened too.
The Sofia's Awakening
When the fire was finally put out two days later, Chicago was no longer the same city.
A third of it had turned to ashes: more than seventeen thousand buildings had been destroyed by flames, and around one hundred thousand people were now sleeping under tarps, in makeshift camps near the river, or in open fields. The air itself seemed unhealthy; it smelled of burnt iron, exhausted bodies, and pain. The smoke refused to clear; it clung to clothes, mouths, and dreams.
The newspapers arrived swiftly like flies. Cartoonists from New York, Boston, and Philadelphia hurried to sketch the extent of the disaster in their notebooks. Some, astonished, drew lines to an image that seemed impossible: Agnes's house. Unscathed. Perfectly intact. Not a broken tile, not a crack in the walls, not a singed bush. It was as if the fire had danced around it with sinister courtesy.
Priests crossed themselves every time they passed by the block. Children whispered stories that the devil's niece lived there or that the house was not made of wood but of enchanted bone. Men crossed the street when walking past it. Women leaned over to whisper, "Witch, witch," but never out loud.
Sofia was among those who lost everything. Her house had been consumed by fire as if it never existed. Only a pile of blackened bricks marked the spot where her rose bushes, the pride of her life, had once grown. Widowed, homeless, with her young daughter shivering from a fever after sleeping outside, Sofia camped near the ruins. Every night, from the darkness, she gazed at Agnes's house, still standing, as if she wanted to burn it down with her eyes alone.
Hatred was not new to her, but now it took shape, had direction, and burned with its own heat, as fierce as the fire that had devoured the city. She had lost too much: her husband, her rose bushes, her home, her place in the community. She could not accept that Agnes remained upright, calm, nourished by the whispers of the blackbirds.
One afternoon, gathered with neighbors and survivors in an impromptu gathering, Sofia suddenly rose to her feet. Her clothes and her hair carried the smell of smoke. The crowd paused for a moment when they saw her trembling, not from the cold, but from anger.
"She caused it!" she shouted, pointing in the direction of Agnes's house. "That witch! She conjured the fire with her blood!"
Some squirmed uncomfortably; others laughed nervously. One man raised his voice: "Enough! The misfortune was caused by drought, the wind, and bad luck. Don't blame a single woman for God's wrath."
"It wasn't God!" Sofia roared. "It was her hands, her birds, her bowl!"
Laughter echoed through the makeshift assembly hall. "She's mad with grief," they whispered.
"Poor widow," others said. No one took her seriously. No one wanted to believe her. Her accusation was blown away like ashes in the wind.
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
