Surviving kin of Chicago’s famous O’Leary family ready for new chapter following harrowing past. ‘I think it’s time for closure.’

CHICAGO — A DNA test kit that came as an anniversary gift dropped two bombshells in Cindy O’Gara’s quiet suburban life.

First, the test showed that the man who raised her wasn’t her birth father. Second, the man who was her biological father was the great-grandson of Catherine O’Leary’s eldest child, Mary O’Leary Scully.

Since the discovery, O’Gara, an accountant and longtime Berwyn, Illinois, resident, has delved into her family history, glued to ancestry websites and reaching out to any surviving relatives to learn more of the story.

She connected with her birth father’s two sisters, who filled her in on family stories they’d grown up with, sharing the family tales of woe.

“So I find this out and it’s devastating at 50, and everyone is dead, unfortunately. All of the main characters are gone,” she recently told the Tribune.

Even 150 years later, the apocryphal tale of a family cow kicking over a lantern in the barn on DeKoven Street has haunted several generations of O’Learys and made their name synonymous with the city’s destruction. Catherine O’Leary and the family cow, Daisy, were exonerated, but the mark against the family remains, they said.

Growing up O’Leary meant living with jokes regarding the debunked story that even now is told as truth, said Peggy Knight, who is one of O’Gara’s distant cousins and knew since childhood of her O’Leary connection.

The fire remained a taboo subject within the family for generations. The