Flower in the River: A Family Tale Finally Told
"Flower in the River" podcast, inspired by my book of the same name, explores the 1915 Eastland Disaster in Chicago and its enduring impact, particularly on my family's history. We'll explore the intertwining narratives of others impacted by this tragedy as well, and we'll dive into writing and genealogy and uncover the surprising supernatural elements that surface in family history research. Come along with me on this journey of discovery.
Episodes
172 episodes
A Hell of a Job: Carl Sandburg's Eastland
As the 111th anniversary of the Eastland disaster approaches, the podcast turns toward the writers, poets, artists, and witnesses who captured the tragedy in their own words. Their voices, once alive with urgency, have too often been pushed asi...
The Clue in the Old Almanac: Solving an Eastland Mystery
This week, we return to Edith Franklin Wyatt’s July 26, 1915 article, Hawthorne, A City of Sorrow: Community Hushed by Death. Wyatt interviewed families and clergy whose lives had been touched by the Eastland Disaster, yet many of thos...
The Scars That Wouldn't Heal: Two Priests, Two Parishes
One forgotten newspaper article can change how a major tragedy is remembered. I’m picking up the trail from Edith Franklin Wyatt’s July 1915 reporting to recover the accounts of two priests she interviewed after the Eastland disaster. We ...
A City of Sorrow, a Voice of Fire — Edith Franklin Wyatt & the Eastland
A disaster can strike twice—first when it happens, and again in how it is remembered. Today, we bring back another “lost” voice of the Eastland Disaster history that has been silent for too long. Chicago writer and social critic Edi...
SPECIAL DELIVERY - A Messenger Boy’s Path to the Eastland
This week, we’re continuing the biography of Eastland disaster survivor, Charles Borovansky. He has a lot more to say!When I wrapped up my research on Charles for a previous episode, I felt that his story wasn’t finished. Tracki...
One Survivor. Two Surnames. A 1940 Eastland Time Capsule
One surname search can reshape the entire landscape of history, and this week, it did just that. While tracing the path of Eastland disaster survivor Charles Borvansky (sometimes spelled Borovansky), I uncovered a 1940 Cicero Life newspaper art...
The "Elephant," the Eastland, and the Catholic Columbian Discovery
Just one missing name can change how people understand the Eastland disaster—a reminder that the story’s true impact lies in the details we can recover and connect. And we’ll get to that…After two descendants reached out to me searching ...
Louella Parsons: Ink, Influence, and the Eastland
Celebrity culture was born not in Hollywood, but in the inky columns of newspapers, each inch building a new kind of fame. Society pages gave way to syndicated gossip that could rewrite a person’s fate before noon. I trace the rise of gossip co...
Beyond the Capsizing: Following Four Eastland Survivors
The Eastland disaster struck Chicago in 1915, but the real tragedy unfolded in silence as the stories of its people faded, uncited and forgotten. I am gathering the scattered threads from 1935 newspaper interviews and tracing the digital footpr...
Eight Eastland Survivors—On the Record, Off the Radar
A faded, barely readable newspaper scan kept the Eastland Disaster survivor stories tucked away for decades, hiding them in plain sight. When a clearer copy finally surfaced, it was like prying open a sealed time capsule. We dive into two inter...
The Ship That Rolled, the Stories That Didn't: More Voices from the Eastland
We explore three gripping firsthand accounts from eyewitnesses to the Eastland disaster, shared with the Dubuque Telegraph-Herald on July 26, 1915 — just two days after the tragedy. These accounts appeared once in print and then vanished from p...
The Return of the Omitted: History Strikes Back!
History sometimes fades not from lack of evidence, but because the path connecting the pieces is broken. The Eastland disaster records are overflowing with accessible online material, yet large parts of this story have drifted out of modern ret...
Still Black and Blue: Eastland Survivors Speak - A Lost Magazine Recovered
A single local magazine from over 100 years ago contains details of the Eastland disaster you can’t unhear—and yet, it is rarely referenced. The July 30, 1915 issue of Forest Leaves (Forest Park, Illinois) is a treasure trove.&n...
The Teen Deckhand and the Pastor: Two Restored Eastland Accounts
Uneven historiography (the history of history) rarely announces itself. It arrives as a confident paragraph with no citation, a quote stripped of its author, or a tidy summary that cannot be traced to the original record. What looks like settle...
Bolts & Bylines: Frankenstein’s Ghost in the Eastland Story
A missing citation can erase a life twice: once from the pages of history, and again from the digital world. Highlights: RootsTech 2026 recap: Actor and keynote presenter, Marlee Matlin, urged us to honor ...
Rescuers in the Shadows: A Milestone, a Mystery Photo, and the Brothers Petroskey
This week, we pull back the curtain on the Eastland disaster’s historiography and bring two overlooked rescuers to the forefront: Great Lakes captains Walter and Emil Petroskey. The Petroskey brothers manned a lifeboat and saved lives when the ...
A Beautiful Magazine and a Missing Hero - Selective History at Work
A glossy company history can sparkle—and still leave a hole big enough to hide a tragedy. We open a 1981 Western Electric centennial magazine that celebrates a century of innovation yet steps neatly over 1915, the year the Eastland capsized by ...
From the Iroquois to the Eastland: One Firefighter, Two Catastrophes
A single obituary opened a door to two of Chicago’s most haunting tragedies: the Iroquois Theatre Fire (1903) and the Eastland Disaster (1915). We trace the life of Charles C. Morgan, a Chicago Fire Department truckman who assisted with both tr...
Checklist History vs. a Life Remembered
Our story opens with a puzzle: an independent researcher uncovers a sparse, single-source biography of an Eastland hero that reads more like a checklist than a life. They reach out to me and pose a challenge, “Surely, there is more to this pers...
A Mourning Veil and a Missing Address — After the Eastland
In this episode, I bring to a close my journey through Edna, His Wife by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Margaret Ayer Barnes, a novel that paints a hauntingly intimate portrait of a family navigating life in the shadow of the 1915 Eastl...
From Page to Stage: A Pulitzer Prize–Winning Author, an Actor, and the Eastland Disaster
A single newspaper review from 1938 turned this story on its head.Digging through Chronicling America, I stumbled upon a mention of Cornelia Otis Skinner's one-woman show—a performance inspired by Margaret Ayer Barnes's novel Edna, His Wife...
“Catastrophe on the Chicago River” - the Cermak Connection
In this episode, I finish reading “Catastrophe on the Chicago River,” a Czech-language article by Josef Mach Sr. from 1916. The piece delivers a searing, firsthand account of the Eastland Disaster’s impact on Chicago’s Czech community: families...
Catastrophe on the Chicago River — Part 2: The Archive Finds Keep Coming
We journey deeper into "Catastrophe on the Chicago River," a century-old chronicle of the Eastland Disaster as seen through the eyes of Chicago's Czech community. Josef Mach Sr. crafts a living, breathing account of the capsized excursion ship,...
When Research Starts Talking Back
When Research Starts Talking BackWhat happens when your research doesn’t just sit there quietly… but starts nudging you, whispering, insisting you dig deeper?In this episode, I try something a little different. After sharin...
The Search Goes On — Coincidence. Clarity. Resolve.
A single number can shape how we remember—until new evidence asks us to look again. This episode takes you inside another year of research on the people of the Eastland disaster, where a repeated death toll gives way to an evolving, documented ...
