"I have been obliged...to remove my quarters," 1871 (Handbill, John G. Ashleman)	Back in Business
	Ashleman was one of the hundreds of businessmen who scrambled to secure credit, replace inventory, find new quarters (or rebuild the old), and attract customers. Local newspapers were filled with notices of such changes of address, and soon hotels were distributing paperbound up-to-date business directories to their clients, complete with brief histories of the great fire. In 1925, Mrs. A.E. Sanderson, who was John Ashleman's daughter, heard Chicago Historical Society Librarian Caroline McIlvaine give a talk about the fire on its fifty-fourth anniversary, and she sent an uncertainly punctuated letter to McIlvaine about her personal experiences. "My Father Mr. John G. Ashleman had his Jewelry Store at 102 Lake St, between Clark and Dearborn," Mrs. Sanderson explained, adding, "we had our house in the 2 upper floors over the story. My Father worked so late nights he wanted to be near his business." A friend who was the druggist at the Tremont House woke the family up. "My Mother heard him and raised the curtain, and the fire and sparks were coming down like a heavy snow storm. It was so bright it nearly blinded one, and it looked like the whole city was ablaze, and the Court-House Bell was ringing, ringing, all the time, so you would think the fire was miles away." The family packed what they could, but the only thing they could salvage was "a great big old-fashioned key" to the house. "We went over the State St. Bridge, my Mother's cloak was on fire twice, my hat blew in the River, and the wind forced my Sister into the girders of the Bridge, and my Father had to pull her out," Mrs. Sanderson wrote. "My Father had the safes raised and as the air caught them they took fire and burned up inside the safes. They had to wait for the fire to burn out & cool off they broke a hole in the back and shoveled the jewelry in a wheel barrow, and they laid a row of boards over the bricks, and then took them to the street and dumped them in the bottom of an express wagon and then they brought them up to a few rooms we had rented and dumped them on the floor. And I was set to work to hunt the diamond rings in all that blackened jewelry, well I found them. "They found my sister's doll head, it was black but not a crack, but poor dollie got finished in the July 1874 fire, our home was burned. We were on Wabash corner Peck Ct and lost nearly every thing again, my Father had moved his business to Adams and State St where Peacock is now, so the business was saved."