Month: June 2021
Hattie Korn
Hedwig A. “Hattie” Korn 13 May 1891 – 24 July 1915 The Eastland, one of five chartered excursion boats meant to ferry employees, their families and friends from Chicago over to the Michigan City shore for the annual Western Electric Company picnic, keeled over into the Chicago River while still at dock, trapping hundreds inside […]
Marie Serritello
Marie Serritello (Mary Serritella) 4 Dec 1908 – 9 May 1917 This one is confusing because the name is spelled differently on the death record and that led to someone appending pictures of this headstone to the @findagrave record of a similarly-named young woman who died in her 20s. 8-year-old Marie’s record is under the spelling […]
Walter W. Wichtendahl
1 November 1890 – 24 July 1915 The Eastland, one of five chartered excursion boats meant to ferry employees, their families and friends from Chicago over to the Michigan City shore for the annual Western Electric Company picnic, keeled over into the Chicago River while still at dock, trapping hundreds inside its hull and leading […]
Gwendolyn Brooks
Brizzolara Mausoleum
Three generations are interred in this mausoleum, following the maternal line. There is space for two more but the top two niches are currently uninscribed, and with the most recent interment dating only to 2014, if another generation is destined to join their ancestors, it may be many, many years before they do. The oldest […]
Edna Michaelis
5 March 1897 – 24 July 1915 The Eastland, one of five chartered excursion boats meant to ferry employees, their families and friends from Chicago over to the Michigan City shore for the annual Western Electric Company picnic, keeled over into the Chicago River while still at dock, trapping hundreds inside its hull and leading […]
Jessie Billings Stewart
12 April 1879 – 27 October 1925 This is such an unusual little headstone, with just the name and then this little metal handle with her etiquette-book married name inscribed on it. I have no idea of the significance of the handle, if any, but it struck me as quite curious and interesting. Jessie was […]
George Wombwell
24 December 1777 – 16 November 1850 Menagerist This headstone is very sweet and might make you think kindly of the person it immortalizes, but George Wombwell was no champion of animal welfare. Wombwell was a shoemaker from Essex who stumbled into exotic-animal-collecting when he bought two boa constrictors on the London docks and started […]