When the fire spread into the present Loop district and consumed the public buildings and records, three companies - Shortall and Hoard, Jones and Sellers and Chase Brothers and Co. - had snatched their records from the inferno. Soon they were housed together in the untouched western outskirts of the city.

Less than three weeks after the conflagration, the Chicago Times made the following editorial statements:

"There has been absolute destruction of all legal evidence of titles to property in Cook County. The annoyance, calamity and actual distress that will arise from this misfortune are not yet properly appreciated. Something equal to the necessities of the case must be done quickly.

"We have in Chicago three firms - Shortall and Hoard, Jones and Sellers and Chase Brothers and Co. - who have saved nearly all of their papers, including the indices to every piece of property in Cook County, and actual abstracts to a large proportion of this property. We have one firm - J.H. Rees and Co. - who has saved copies of all the maps and all the plats ever made of Cook County property.

"Nobody has hesitated, heretofore, to accept their copies of the records as official - why should not some equitable plan be provided now, by which these copies, carefully compared and compiled, should become official?"

Burnt Records Act
Eventually, this consolidation took place under the somewhat expanded title of Chase Brothers, Jones, Sellers, Shortall and Hoard. In April 1872, the Burnt Records Act was passed by the Illinois Legislature, and the existing abstract records of the three companies were made admissible as evidence in all courts of record. These were part of the framework on which Chicagoans began to rebuild a greater Chicago.

The combined books were moved to a store building on the north side of Lake Street between Peoria and Green streets. After a time, the old firm turned the business and a lease of its books over to the newly organized firm of Handy, Simmons, Smith and Stocker. This firm became Handy, Simmons and Co., and this was followed by Handy and Co., under which the business was continued until 1887.