[Here, in November 2011, I'm posting these notes to my blog. Back in December of 1999 I transcribed them from typewritten pages to a word processor computer-document format. Apparently my mother, Ruth Goodhue Trillich, transcribed these notes as part of a typing exercise in 1937-38 when she was about 16 years old and the fire was 66 years in the past. I hope to relocate the typewritten pages and photograph them at some point, and I have no idea where the original (likely hand-written) notes are from Zorah Danforth Patrick (or was that Zorah Patrick Danforth?). The letter was addressed to Ruth and Dan Killips, who were mother-and-son; Ruth ("Dado") Danforth Killips was sister to my grandmother Cordelia ("Monnie") Danforth Goodhue and to Gertrude ("Muzzie") Danforth ? -- Will Trillich]

Dear Ruth and Dan,

On Sunday evening, October 8th, 1871, my room-mate and I were preparing our lessons for the next day. His name was Eugene Garvin. We two occupied only one bed. Garvin was a fine fellow and a good room-mate. He had no bad habits as far as I knew. We were very congenial, and no two students got along together any more happily than we two. There were five students boarding there in the house, three of them medical, two of them law students. Our landlady was Mrs. Johnson. She had been a widow, and had married Johnson, it seemed, just to have somebody around the house to help at odd jobs. At any rate, he did not seem to be of any importance about the house.

Mrs. Johnson had a beautiful daughter, the wife of Wirt Dexter, one of the prominent attorneys of the city at that time. He lived at 18th, and Prairie Ave, then the heart of the Gold Coast of the time. The daughter, had a fine equipage, coachman, silver mounted harness, beautiful team of horses, would drive over to the north side occasionally, in the street, and lend dignity to our humble quarters, by waiting with this equipage until Mrs. Dexter was ready to depart.

On this Sunday night the wind was blowing a gale from the South West. Garvin and I were ready to go to bed. On looking out of our south window, we saw a bright light, as from a burning building, way off to the southwest, three or four miles away. In a wooden city as Chicago then was, fires were very common, and we thought nothing of what we had seen, expecting the fire to be cared for by the firemen. So we went to bed and to sleep. In the meantime, the wind had not abated, but was growing more violent hourly. About three or four o’clock in the morning, Mrs. Johnson called up the stairs, telling us to get up, that the city was burning. Going out of doors, we found it was not yet daylight. The air was as full of sparks as it ever is of snow flakes in a snow storm. The other boys wanted to see the fire, but I stayed at home to protect the place. I suppose they were gone an hour. Then they all came home, and I thought it was my turn to see the fire.

Erie Street is only a block or two north of the river. I crossed Rush Street Bridge, which was crowded with refugees, trying to escape the fire which was behind them. I saw the old court house burn down, and The Tribune “fire proof” building, at Dearborn and Madison Streets, burn as if it had been kindling wood. The headquarters of the fire department was in the old court house and fires were announced by tapping with certain tape on a big bell that could be heard all over the city. That bell melted and ran down through the burning building, and was found later in the debris.

Then I went back home. But once there, I was not satisfied with what I had seen, so I went back again. Trying to cross Rush Street Bridge again, I found it crowded full of people fleeing from the fire, and a big dray horse cam trotting through the crowd with a great shaft on one side only, trotting through the crowd of people with the shaft swaying hear and there to the great danger of the fleeing people. I decided that it was too dangerous to attempt to cross there. Then I thought to try the tunnel, which had been made the year before across the river, to avoid the delay to vehicles when the bridge was opened for boats to pass through. This tunnel was at LaSalle Street, arriving there, I found it nearly empty, as dark as Egypt, for the gas works had already been burned, and were out of commission. I met only a few persons and they would say “Keep to the right,” when they would hear my feet on the cement. Arriving, finally at the south end of the tunnel, I found buildings there on fire, so there was nothing to do but go back to the north side. I made my way to the north entrance, to find that while I had been in the tunnel, the fire had jumped across the river, and the buildings on both sides of LaSalle Street for more than a block, were burning fiercely. So, in order to escape from the danger of being trapped in the tunnel, with the danger of suffocation from smoke that was going through the tunnel, I had to take my chances of beating the fire, which was racing along the street ahead of me, at a rate faster than a person can comfortably walk. In my race to get ahead of the fire, it was here that my eyebrows were burned off. The wooden blocks with which the streets were paved, burned up, and liberated sand and gravel that had separated the blocks. A high wind blew it into my face with the force of bullets. You know I ran as fast as my legs would carry me, until I got ahead of the fire. Then I went back to my boarding house, where I found the boys preparing to move on, because by that time we knew that our house with all the others in the neighborhood, were doomed. Mrs. Johnson had disappeared, how or when we did not know. Each boy had his trunk. In addition, Mrs. Johnson had a trunk of silver, left over, I suppose, from more prosperous times. We boys decided to care for that trunk, and from them until we landed in Lincoln Park, we carried it along with us, until we finally delivered it unharmed, at her son-in-law’s house. She and the whole household, were so excited they forgot to thank us for all the trouble we had had with that trunk.

We had decided to move on, but we did not know where to go. We knew that south of where the Newberry Library now is, there was a vacant square. I believe it is called LaFayette Park. It was about a mile from our house. There were six trunks, and only five men to do the work of moving them. They were pretty full of large and heavy books, too large and too heavy for one man to handle, so two men would carry a trunk a hundred yards or so, then one man would carry another trunk. In this way, we got all the six trunks to LaFayette Park, only to find upon arriving there, that many other people had the same idea, and had deposited their household goods, and we found it full of furniture, and the precious things they were trying to save. There was hardly room for our trunks, the place being occupied by furniture, bedding, carpets, etc.. from the surrounding houses. It seemed a secure retreat until we discovered that the houses on the street took fire one after the other, that all those things in the park there, were combustible, and were like kindling to start more fires. That stuff all got on fire, and the heat and smoke together, of the burning houses that surrounded the park, forced us to move on. But where would we go? There was no place except Lincoln Park, and that was at least two miles, and those trunks, to keep ahead of the advancing fire. As I told you, there were six trunks and five boys and we carried them in the way mentioned until we got within about a hundred yards of the park, when an express man came along, and kindly let us put out trunks in his wagon, and dump them on the ground in the park. We were all utterly exhausted, and I know I was going to leave my trunk and let it burn up, because I felt I could go no further.

The weather was warm as June, and we took possession of a little boat house that we found in the park, where we lay on the floor, and got what sleep we could in the night. That day, Monday, finally passed, I do not remember how we spent that night in the Lincoln Park boat house, and were fortunate to have a roof over our heads for in the evening there was a gentle rain, which, however, stopped sometime in the night. The next morning, Tuesday, we were pretty hungry, having eaten nothing during Monday. Where would we find a restaurant! Everything between us and what had been the city was destroyed. There we were, five boys, started out to walk five miles, for breakfast. It was five miles from Lincoln Park to Harrison Street, and we marched all that way, over the debris of the destroyed buildings, before we could find a place open for business. There we got breakfast, but what it was, I do not remember. But I am sure that Mrs. Keating did not bring it to my room. The way down there was not unobstructed, and we had to make many detours, and climb over many piles of rubbish, before we could get there.

On the way there were many stakes, with signs attached, that told us such and such firms would be found somewhere in temporary quarters, ready to do business very soon. After we had breakfast, we had to walk back the five miles to Lincoln Park, to care for our trunks.

My people lived, at that time, at Abingdon, Ills. The railroad stations, had all been burned, and I found a O.B.&Q. train an a sidetrack on sixteenth street, and I got home without further incident.

My college building had been burned. Other colleges opened their doors to the homeless Rush students. After staying at home a week or two I received notice that lectures would be resumed at the county hospital, then at 18th and Arnold Streets. At the county Hospital, there was an amphitheater, for clinics, where we heard lectures, until graduation. This was my last year at Rush, and Garvins’. He went out to Sycamore, Ills, to practice, and I heard that he contracted drinking habits, and died in the road, having been thrown out of his buggy.

There was a city-block-sized rock that zipped past us yesterday after 5pm! It was really close — closer to us than the moon is, and that’s pretty close. If it had collided with us we’d be seeing Hollywood disaster movie effects all over the place…

My favorite part of the whole ‘ordeal’ is a subtitle from an article by the Christian Science Monitor:

“Asteroid 2005 YU55, a giant rock floating through space, looks like a giant rock floating through space, reports one astronomer, who observed the giant rock as it floated through space past the Earth on Tuesday.”

Delightful!