25 November 1886 – 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 […]
30 July 1915 – 25 December 1938 Alice was the second oldest child of Hungarian immigrants Max and Fannie (Altman) Neuhauser. Her siblings were oldest sister Gladys and younger siblings Helen, Henry, and Doris (called Dolly). Both parents had immigrated with their families in 1906 and married six years later. Max worked as a trimmer […]
Lillie (1887 – 1910) was the oldest of four children born to William H. and Minna (Goldmeier) Falkenstein. William was a butcher, and Lillie worked as a hairdresser, which likely explains her very elaborate coiffure in her cameo portrait. She was predeceased by her little sister, Ruth, who was only seven when she died. William […]
Mollie E. (Ehrlich) Opper 1896 – 8 August 1924 Mollie was born in Russia and came to the US with her family in 1907. On the 1910 census, she was listed as the oldest of 4 surviving children (of 8 born) of Joseph and Goldie (Chodor) Ehrlich. In September 1912 when she was still quite […]
15 March 1880 – 25 October 1931 Anna Blau was born in Galicia which seems to now be in Spain OR is no longer called that as various census records put it in Poland and Austria (the early 1900s were exceptionally volatile for national borders so this actually comes up a lot). She seemed to […]
4 February 1895 – 12 August 1942 Every now and then, I come across census or death records that indicate a person was in Manteno, Illinois, and I’ve learned that almost always means something pretty bad if they had previously been living in Chicago as that was the home of the notorious Manteno State Mental […]
Rose Netsky Berger 15 September 1898 – 15 January 1925 Rose was born in Russia, probably close to Poland (or what was then the German Empire). Her family immigrated to the US in 1904 where her father worked as a tailor. She was the oldest daughter of 8 children who survived to adulthood (of 12 […]
7 March 1930 – 2 September 1937 Ruth was the oldest daughter of Henry (1898 – 1981) and Sadie (1904 – 1992) Wolfe Greenberg. She was born on the west side of Chicago, and sadly, she died there just seven and a half years later. She had an older brother named Leonard who died in […]
19 September 1904 – 6 September 1922 Molly was the older of David and Sarah Shifrisa Walovitz’s two daughters. Sarah lost two other children prior to 1910. Molly died just two weeks’ shy of her 18th birthday. The family arrived in 1906 or 1907 or possibly both. On the 1910 census, Sarah and Molly are […]
15 May 1895 – 26 September 1918 As his headstone says, Alex was killed in action in the Argonne Forest. Devastatingly, the headstone says, “in World War,” his parents who’d had this inscription made unaware that they would both live to see a second one. Don and Bessie married in 1881 in Odessa – the […]