Michael Brand (1826 – 1897) was a German brewer from a well-off family that had him privately educated. He trained to be a brewer and was in France at the time of the Revolutions of 1848, during which he served in support of the Republican side and led a company. After his side won, he […]
27 October 1822 – 5 May 1871 George was born in County Armagh in Ireland to Scottish Protestant parents. He came to the US as a teenager. He first settled on the East Coast, showing up on the 1850 census living in Baltimore and working in sales (possibly as a storeowner or manager). By that […]
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 […]
Colonel John Mason Loomis 5 January 1825 – 2 August 1900 Mary Jane Hunt Loomis 15 August 1829 – 7 October 1910 Mary Hunt Loomis 16 June 1855 – 5 January 1861 John was born in Windsor, Connecticut in 1825 to a prosperous family. His father was an officer in the state militia and a […]
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 […]
7 November 1828 – 19 August 1895 Leonard Volk was born in Wellston, New York. He got his start as a marble cutter in his father‘s business before deciding to become a fine-art sculptor. He studied in Rome to perfect his art. After returning to the US, he helped to establish the Chicago Academy of […]
John J. and Mary Louise (Jewett) Mitchell John (1853 – 1927) was born in Alton, IL, and came to Chicago with his family as a young adult. He started his career as a bank messenger at Illinois Trust and Savings when he was 20 years old, but just six years later in a scene out […]
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 […]
Patriarch Jacob Birk immigrated to the US from then-Prussia around 1853. He met and married Magdalena Welflin (from Alsace-Lorraine; then Germany, now France) in 1859, and together they had 12 children, 8 surviving childhood. Jacob did well in business and on the 1880 census is listed as the proprietor of a boarding house (per other […]
1833 – January 28, 1868 Kate Warne’s early years are a mystery beyond the facts that she was born in Erin, New York, and was widowed by the time she was 23. It was unclear to me if Warne was her married or maiden name, but she used variations on this name throughout her career […]