Hedwig “Hattie” Steffen 21 November 1890 – 15 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 […]
1 January 1871 – 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 […]
1 July 1864 – 21 February 1924 Annie was a teacher which is really the most surprising thing that I found in my research – that per early-century census records (and a couple other references in school-related documents at the time, mostly in lists), she had a husband, a child, and an occupation that she […]
Charles Walter Trogg 17 February 1869 – 24 July 1915 Catherine “Kate” Serowka Trogg 17 July 1884 – 24 Jul 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 […]
This stunning monument marks the Cummings family plot in the Fairlawn section at Graceland. Patriarch Columbus R. Cummings (1834 – 1897) — another of the Gilded Age tycoons whose monuments dot the cemetery’s landscape — came to Chicago from New York as a young man and went to work for Potter Palmer (whose spectacular monument […]
27 February 1849 – 5 January 1900 Ernst is another one of those Victorian rags-to-riches stories that are inescapable in American folklore. He was born in Germany to poor parents who immigrated to hte US when he was a toddler. They first lived in Wisconsin and then moved to Chicago. His father made baskets and […]
31 December 1910 – 4 June 1926 Lucille was the middle daughter of three sisters (as well as having one living older brother and another older sibling who had died in infancy), and her headstone marks her as a deeply loved child whose family took special pains to commemorate. The Katz family plot is pretty […]
Victim of the Iroquois Theater Fire February 1869 – 30 December 1903 The Iroquois Theater Fire was and remains the deadliest theater fire and the deadliest single-building fire in US history (though if you count the World Trade Center as a fire, it is of course the deadliest). 602 people lost their lives in the […]
2 July 1896 – 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 […]
March 1876 – 2 August 1910 Originally posted February 7, 2021; Updated November 22, 2021 My first post on my @PostsInTheGraveyard instagram was of Beulah “Bulah” Corley’s headstone. I wondered what the story behind it was as it seemed lonely and tragic, the inscription protective and a bit defiant, so I decided to revisit it […]