In less than 40 years, Chicago had grown from a mosquito-ridden trading post into a city of 330,000 people. Both families had high hopes for the future. Like the Bradwells, the O’Learys were respected by those who knew them. She’d then deliver fresh milk to customers. Each morning, she milked the four cows she kept in the family’s barn behind the house. Like Bessie’s mother, Catherine O’Leary ran a growing business-a small dairy. They lived in a plain, unpainted house that had just two rooms for the family of seven.īut both the Bradwells and the O’Learys were, in their own ways, successful. Like tens of thousands of others in Chicago, they were immigrants from Ireland. Neither Catherine nor Patrick could read or write. Unlike Bessie’s parents, the O’Learys did not have famous friends. Her mother, Myra, had founded a successful newspaper. Bessie’s father, James, was a judge who had been friends with President Abraham Lincoln. On the surface, the Bradwell and O’Leary families seemed to live in two separate worlds. About a mile away, in a crowded neighborhood across the Chicago River, Catherine O’Leary, her husband, Patrick, and their five children were also sound asleep. Just hours earlier, Bessie had gone to sleep in her family’s elegant home near Lake Michigan.
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