''"Patrick O'Leary" (born 1952) is also the name of a noted science fiction and fantasy author of Door Number Three, The Gift and The Impossible Bird.

'Patrick O'Leary''' (b. circa 1819, d. 1894) was an Irish immigrant living in Chicago, Illinois in the 1870s. On the evening of October 7, 1871, a fire began around his barn at 137 DeKoven Street which went on to burn a big percentage of the city, an event called the Great Chicago Fire. He was married to Catherine O'Leary.

Although for several years, it was believed that a fire began using a O'Learys' cow knocked over the lantern, historians nowadays place a blame in Daniel "Pegleg" Sullivan who may have been gambling in the barn with the O'Leary's son, James, who went on to become one of the major gambling hall owners in Chicago in the early twentieth century.