Article: Cow wrongly took heat, says Mrs. O'Leary's kin

One hundred twenty-six years after Chicago's Great Fire of 1871, a direct descendant of Mrs. Catherine O'Leary took the stand to help clear her great-great grandmother's name, once and for all.

The reporters leaned forward, pens poised, ready to record the shame, the stigma, the anger she must have felt having her family's name raked for so long over the coals of false accusation.

Instead, flanked by her own daughters, Nancy Connolly smiled brightly. "Actually . . . it's been very fun," she said. "We've sort of enjoyed the notoriety." It was a wry twist to a tale that has smoldered in the imaginations of historians and residents ever since Oct. 8, 1871, when fire erupted in Mrs. ...

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