Sullivan stated at the inquiry that since his mother kept a cow in the O’Leary barn, he used to go there to bring it feed. Perhaps he went there that evening to bring feed to the cow, relax and enjoy the night air, maybe even to listen to the sounds of the McLaughlin party. While there, he dropped a match, a pipe, or possibly even a lantern in some hay or wood shavings. He immediately attempted to extinguish the blaze. The fire spread quickly, though, and Sullivan, realizing that his efforts were to no avail, abandoned these measures and turned instead to rescuing the trapped animals. The flames quickly forced him to flee to safety. After leaving the barn, he ran to the O'Learys' house in order to warn them of the fire. The neighborhood began to stir, even though only a few moments had passed since the fire started. This shorter and more realistic elapsed time is a distinct difference between Sullivan's testimony and this theory.From: http://www.thechicagofire.com/pegleg.htmlTwo days later the fire was extinguished, but Sullivan needed only a fraction of that time to realize that he was responsible for leveling much of Chicago. For obvious reasons he was reluctant to admit his culpability. Therefore, he needed an alibi as to where he was from the time he left the O'Leary home to the time the fire broke out in their barn.
Legend has it that the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 began when Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over a lantern, igniting her straw. The flames then allegedly consumed her barn, jumping from one wooden structure to another until virtually the whole city lay under flame. Before the flames were through, more than seventeen thousand buildings were destroyed, a hundred thousand people were left homeless, and at least two hundred fifty had died.
Less well-known is that the whole of the American Midwest fell victim to disastrous fires the night of October 8, 1871, from Indiana to the Dakotas, and from Iowa to Minnesota. All told, they represent the most mysterious and deadly conflagration in national memory. Eclipsed in history by the Chicago cauldron, little Peshtigo, a small community of two thousand near Green Bay, Wisconsin, fared far worse in terms of lives lost. Half the town - 1,000 people - died that terrible night, suffocated where they stood, or consumed by flames whose origins remain unknown. Not a single structure was left standing.
Where did the flames come from, and why so suddenly, without any warning? "In one awful instant a great flame shot up in the western heavens," wrote one Peshtigo survivor. "Countless fiery tongues struck down into the village, piercing every object that stood in town like a red-hot bolt. A deafening roar, mingled with blasts of electric flame, filled the air and paralyzed every soul in the place. There was no beginning to the work of ruin; the flaming whirlwind swirled in an instant through town." Other survivors referred to the phenomenon as a tornado of fire, reporting burning buildings lifted whole in the air before they exploded into glowing cinders.
What eyewitnesses described was more like a holocaust from heaven than an accidental fire started by a nervous cow. And in fact, according to a theory propounded by Minnesota Congressmen Ignatius Donnelly, the devastating fires of 1871 did fall from above, in the form of a wayward cometary tail. During it's 1846 passage, Biela's comet had inexplicably split in two; it was supposed to return in 1866, but failed to appear. Biela's fragmented head finally showed up in 1872 as a meteor shower. Donnelly suggested the separated tail appeared in 1871 and was the prime cause of the widespread firestorm that swept the Midwest, damaging or destroying a total of twenty-four towns and leaving 2,000 or more dead in its wake. Drought conditions that fall no doubt contributed to the extent of the conflagration. History today concentrates on the Chicago Fire alone and largely overlooks the Peshtigo Horror, as it was then called. It ignores altogether Biela's comet and it's unaccounted-for tail.