Flower in the River: A Family Tale Finally Told

TWICE BURIED & THE MYSTERY OF EASTLAND VICTIM #571

• Natalie Zett • Season 2 • Episode 94

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Content Note: This episode deals with themes of death and misidentification. Please listen with care.

In episode 94 of Flower in the River, I’m diving into one of the most puzzling mysteries of the Eastland Disaster: the case of Emma Meyer and the confusion surrounding Victim #571. What started as a chance discovery during an archival search turned into a whirlwind of genealogical digging and conflicting records that left me completely floored.

Here’s what I uncovered:

  • The tangled story of two women, both named Emma, whose lives and deaths became eerily entwined.
  • The challenges faced by families and investigators in identifying victims after the disaster.
  • How genealogy became my compass in untangling conflicting newspaper accounts and historical records.

This is a story filled with twists, turns, and unanswered questions. It’s a reminder of the chaos, confusion, grief, and extraordinary resilience of those who lived through the Eastland Disaster. I hope you’ll join me as I piece together the puzzle and honor these lives in the process.

Resources:

  • Inital article accessed via HeritageHub through the St. Paul Public Library.
  • Dziennik Chicagoski
  • Chicago Tribune, July 29, 1915, “Exhumed Body of Eastland Victim Buried in Error,”
Natalie Zett:

Hello, I'm Natalie Zett and welcome to Flower in the River. This 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. Well, hello, this is Natalie, and welcome to episode 94 of Flower in the River podcast. We are ending the year 2024, and I thought I might be able to get maybe a couple more episodes out because there's so much information, but this probably is it for 2024. But we shall see. And speaking of which, I had it all planned for you. The person that I was going to profile. He is a rescuer and his story has only been partially told. His story has only been partially told and, in tandem with that, I decided to explore a new resource for me, courtesy of my brand new e-library card from the St Paul Minnesota Public Library, and they had a site that I accessed from the library called Heritage Hub. And actually I knew of this site, I had explored it previously and then I forgot about it and just for fun, just for fun I typed in Eastland disaster into the search bar and I wasn't sure what I would find. But given each institution has slightly different information available, it's always a good idea to check and recheck various websites or databases just to see there's new information being added all the time. And something popped up that really caught my attention, or rather there almost seemed to be an energy about this name that I saw. And so when I clicked on the link, there was a small obituary for a woman called Emma Meyer, m-e-y-e-r. In the Chicago Tribune August 21st 1915, nearly a full month after the Eastland capsized. So here's the death notice Miss Emma Meyer, eastland victim, july 24th. Beloved daughter of Anna Meyer, sister of Anna Becker. Funeral services will be held at Undertaking Rooms 912 West Madison Street, saturday at 2 pm. Automobiles to Oak Ridge Cemetery.

Natalie Zett:

After reading Emma's obituary I couldn't help but wonder what in the heck is going on here. So the Eastland disaster, as I said, happened on July 24th. Most of the people once located and identified they were buried fairly quickly. A number of the obituaries I've seen or burial notices I should say July 27th comes up a lot, but not everyone was buried on that date, but they were buried close to that date, or so it seems. Emma was buried on August 21st. Did they only recently locate her body and I wondered, because of my own background, being from Johnstown, pennsylvania, could this have been a situation similar to what happened after the Johnstown flood of 1889, where bodies were still being discovered months later and miles away from where this disaster, this flood, took place? Could something like that have happened here? Did the river's current somehow take the body out to Lake Michigan?

Natalie Zett:

I don't know, and I thought for sure a publication or a website that features the Eastland would have covered this, and I always start with George Hilton's book on the Eastland. It has been my go-to reference, even though I found it intimidating way back. Hilton's book is very dense, very thoroughly researched, very detailed. It's just what I need now. But back when I first learned about the Eastland disaster in my family, I was looking for an emotional connection and during that time I found the emotional connection through a website. It was called the Eastland Memorial Society and the person who originally created it was Mary Bonneville, I think. Later on she brought other people to work with her and she did a bang-up job with telling the stories of what happened. It was really emotional and I've shared bits and pieces of this website as I've been able to find it on the Wayback Machine on my own website, because I do not want that information lost. She did such a great job and of course I've given her proper attribution and I'm sorry that nothing quite like that has come along since. But early on, those were the two references I would refer to. And back to George.

Natalie Zett:

If you're going to get any book on the Eastland disaster, that is the one to have, because Hilton himself was more than qualified to write about the Eastland. He was a renowned economist and historian and he had a distinguished academic career. And he authored books on railroads, transportation and maritime history. And he brought a deep understanding of complex systems and their failures, which made his perspective invaluable. Plus, he documented nearly everything within an inch of its life. Even so, we now have access to information that wasn't available to George Hilton in the early 90s, when he was putting this book together.

Natalie Zett:

In 1995, when he published, the internet was just in its infancy, but I couldn't locate the story about Emma Meyer in Hilton's book, so I thought more deep digging is about to happen here. So I began searching through websites and other sources, and so far I might not have hit the one that had the detailed information, but so far as of this moment December 26, 2024, all I could find were placeholders for names with no meaningful details to back up this story. Eventually, I did come across a publication that referenced this story, but here's the kicker it cited itself as the source for the information. Unfortunately, quote because I said so. End quote doesn't pass muster, especially when you're dealing with something like this. So it was time to hit the old newspapers and I had a feeling that I was in for a wild ride, and this did not disappoint.

Natalie Zett:

And I'm going to share all of this with you, and I promise it's going to get more confusing before it becomes clear, but you'll also experience what they experienced at that time. It's quite hard to take all this in, but bear bear with, because this is a story that will probably stick with you for a while, just because of the nature of it. And while this isn't exactly a trigger warning, I want to let you know that I will be discussing some very difficult topics, and you might expect that to happen anyway, what with the focus of this being on the Eastland disaster, but this is another level of that, so just be aware. If it becomes too much, stop listening. I'll be back next week. Okay, just take care of yourselves there.

Natalie Zett:

They're fairly easy to access. Not easy to put together, not easy to organize, not easy to figure out which is the primary source, which is the secondary source, which one has the most truth, which one has been embellished or incorrectly reported. That's the challenge of doing something like this. But the information is there. But the biggest challenge is to undo some of the undocumented misconceptions about what happened to these people who experienced the Eastland disaster. And something that will encourage you is that we can do hard things in genealogy.

Natalie Zett:

Genealogy is really the tool that helps us get to the source of a lot of what's going on with these stories. Yes, I rely heavily on newspaper clips, but I also create family trees for each one of these people and try to see what's lining up and what's not adding up right. A lot of times I could corroborate the information with the family tree because the family tree had actual records of the milestones of this person's life. So that's really helpful. You can't just go on newspaper articles because, as you'll see in this episode. They can get a lot of things wrong and that just happens because of the nature of the beast, and I know, having worked as a journalist, that you do the best you can and sometimes you don't always get it right. But my job is to create a roadmap to this past and to be transparent about what I'm doing.

Natalie Zett:

The biggest thing is where's the information coming from? Primary sources, in other words, an original document, or secondary sources, transcription of a document? George Hilton again created a meticulous framework, a template, back in 1995. What Hilton brought was his will and his determination to this project and his commitment to doing the best possible work. That and sometimes it seems like the standard is impossibly high, but it's not. But the good news, and there is so much good news. With digital archives expanding at breakneck speed, we have history at our fingertips. But that doesn't mean we should accept everything online, everything from a YouTube video, even every book, if they can't back up what they're talking about.

Natalie Zett:

So we also have to know this when we're doing this type of work. If we take on genealogy and that's the lens through which I do a lot of this work we know that it's a constant case of course correction, and by the end of this story, you'll see that sometimes, a lot of times, you'll see that sometimes, a lot of times, it's not always possible to draw a neat conclusion. In fact, some of these stories will probably take years to resolve. And in the world right now there are so many self-proclaimed experts and authorities on everything, but sometimes the most courageous and responsible thing you and I can do is say I don't know. And that's okay, because acknowledging what we don't know is often the very first step toward uncovering the truth. And I wanted to let you know that this story is indeed going to be confusing, messy, but we will reconstruct as much as we can with the information I located and just consider this a sketch, and it's a nice foundation for future work on all of the people involved in this story.

Natalie Zett:

Here we go, because I had to construct Emma Meyer's story well, not just her story, but there are several other people who factor into the overall story and I had to construct their stories pretty much from scratch. So I built family trees for all of them and then, in tandem, I began looking at any newspaper clipping I could get my hands on that referred to this, and what you're going to learn is they don't necessarily agree with each other. And then the challenge comes which one do you believe? So I started with Emma Meyer, because that's the obituary I found, and so, using census records and death records and other genealogical tools, I was able to map out Emma's family tree. She was the 21-year-old daughter of Anna Meyer, who was a widow, and she was the sister of Mrs Anna Decker that's how she's reported and she also had a brother, John Lire, who was not mentioned in the article. From the records I located, there also seemed to be three other children who died in infancy In the 1910 census.

Natalie Zett:

Emma was living with her sister, her brother-in-law and her widowed mother, and she was working as a tailor at that point. Later on you'll see that she was working in a candy shop or candy factory, but that's moving ahead a little bit. And once again Find a Grave came through and I was able to get some more information about Emma Meyer. Emma was born in Wisconsin and the family came to Chicago. Not sure why, but her dad was a blacksmith, as was my great-grandfather, who also relocated from Johnstown to Chicago, so maybe at that point there were a lot of blacksmith jobs available.

Natalie Zett:

While searching through the records I found another coincidence. I found Emma's death record from Christ Lutheran Church in Logan Square, chicago. The records are all in German. In that church record is not just Emma Meyer but also Frida Kahnberg, who I profiled in episode 51 of this podcast. So it's important to note that two of these women who died on the Eastland were members of Christ Lutheran Church in Logan Square. Yet looking at this church record, it still wasn't explaining why she was buried in late August when the Eastland happened on July 24th. Now my first clue I should say clue-ish came from a Polish language newspaper, and I've used this newspaper quite a bit because they really did a great job. What's not so great are my Polish translation skills, but I'm going to give it my best shot here, and I do rely on Google Translate and ChatGPT and the tiny bit of Polish I do know. But it's from Zien Chikagosky and its volume 26, number 194,. Date is 19th August 1915.

Natalie Zett:

Yesterday, at the Czech National Cemetery, that would be the Bohemian National Cemetery, the body of a girl, one of the victims of the Eastland disaster, was exhumed. I want to pause and let that well sink in. In other words, they dug up this grave and they removed this woman's body. I'll continue In her place. The body of another girl was soon buried. As the two were so similar they could have easily been mistaken for each other. The exhumed body will ceremoniously be reburied on Saturday.

Natalie Zett:

A mistake was made during the identification process. The first girl was named Emma Meyer, while the second was Emma Schroll. During identification, one was taken for the other. Yesterday the mystery was clarified when it was discovered that the body of the girl who had been lying unidentified in the morgue until then was Emma Schroll. Emma Meyer was very popular, so a grand funeral will be organized for her. Funeral will be organized for her, okay.

Natalie Zett:

So if we stop our researching at this point we can conclude that this was a sad situation, but it was easily resolved, or was it? Later on I found information in other newspaper clips that say oh no, it was not Emma Schroll, it was another woman. We'll talk about that and we'll talk about why this confusion happened. And at the end of all this, will we have answers to our questions? So far we do not, but this is the groundwork for our research. So you are going to join me on a genealogical adventure. Reading from the Chicago Tribune date August 19, 1915.

Natalie Zett:

Exhumed body of Eastland victim buried in error. Mistake made in case of two women righted at the grave. The body of a beautiful blonde girl was exhumed yesterday in the Bohemian National Cemetery by Coroner Pete M Hoffman. A short while later, the body of another girl who in life might have passed for her twin sister, was placed in the same casket and lowered into the open grave without funeral obsequies. On Saturday the other body will be started on a second journey toward the same cemetery. Girl scouts and members of civic organizations will form an escort of honor. It will be a public funeral, the funeral of the last of the Eastland victims to find a final resting place. All of the Eastland bodies are now identified.

Natalie Zett:

Among the victims who were lost on the Eastland was Miss Emma Meyer, who lived with her widowed mother at 2545 South Hamlin Avenue. She was 21 years old and worked at the candy factory of Ruckheim Brothers in Epstein. She was of athletic build, a striking blonde, and was a favorite among her fellow employees at the factory. She had one sister, who was married, and the mother of two children. Search in vain for body. Emma left her home early on the morning of the disaster. That was the last scene of her. For days, her relatives and friends searched the morgues in vain for her body. One by one, the bodies were claimed and buried. Finally, only one body remained. It lay at Sheldon's Morgue. It bore the number 571.

Natalie Zett:

Body 571 was that of a blonde girl. Hundreds viewed it and hundreds more viewed the photograph. No one could identify it. No one came to claim it. It began to look as if, after all, the Eastland would have its mystery. Members of the Girl Scouts sought permission from Coroner Hoffman to bury the body with honors, just as the Boy Scouts had done for Willie Novotny the little feller. Miss Meyer's friends, doubtful Civic organizations and lodges also offered to pay the expense for the funeral. Coroner Hoffman refused, still hoping the body would be claimed.

Natalie Zett:

Relatives and friends of Miss Meyer were positive. It was not that of the missing candy maker. She had not been as physically strong as Miss Meyer and there was no scar on the forehead and no mole on the left shoulder blade, they pointed out. Friends of Miss Meyer went to the office of the city custodian Krieger where the effects of the victim had been taken. There they found her coat. That proved nothing, however.

Natalie Zett:

Coroner Hoffman was just on the point of acceding to requests of the organizations to be allowed to bury 571 when he decided something might be disclosed by a search of the envelopes in which the jewelry had been placed. The envelopes had gradually dwindled in number, but there still remained a large number which had not been turned over to relatives. A city fireman obtained a description of the jewelry worn by Miss Meyer on the day of the disaster and furnished Coroner Hoffman with this. The jewelry in envelope 571 did not tally. Then the searches came up upon an envelope bearing the name of Mrs Emma Schroll. It was learned the body of Mrs Schroll had been buried. She was the wife of Julius Schroll, who also perished with her. Her sisters, anna and Paula Straka, also were drowned, suspected the Mistake. In the Schroll envelope was found a scroll bracelet bearing the initials EM.

Natalie Zett:

Coroner Hoffman immediately suspected there might have been a mistake in identification. The body buried as Mrs Schroll might have been Miss Meyer. Mrs Eggleshaler would not consent to the exhumation of her daughter's body. Her condition was so critical. Coroner Hoffman did not persist, but other relatives came to the coroner yesterday and admitted there might have been a mistake and gave the necessary authority for the exhumation. Mrs Engelschaller was not to be informed for fear the news might prove too great a shock. The body was taken up. Miss Meyer's sister made the identification by means of the scar on the forehead and the mole on the left shoulder blade. An Oak Park dentist who had treated Ms Meyer made identification positive with an examination of the teeth.

Natalie Zett:

Grave Gets. Other Body Body 571 was placed in the grave. There was no funeral services and probably will be none. As soon as the identification of Miss Meyer's body reached the factory, the girls there asked to be permitted to attend the funeral in a body. Accordingly, the funeral was set for 2 o'clock Saturday afternoon, when they will be able to attend.

Natalie Zett:

Let me share what I found. So it is confusing. The reporting is who was Mrs Engelschaller? Where did she come from? So at first I thought it might have been Emma Meyer's mother and they just mistook the name. But what I realized after doing the research is that they were referring to the other Emma. Emma Schroll, that is, her mother, was Mrs Engelschaller or Engelthaler. What happened was Emma Schroll's mother was also widowed. However, she remarried and that's where the Engelschaller or Engelthaler came from and that's the way it's spelled in many of the records, such as the census, such as their marriage record, but Emma Schroll's maiden name was Straka. So Mrs Straka remarried Engelthaler or Engelschaler. It's just that the reporter did not explain the relationship. That's what happened there.

Natalie Zett:

What's instructive about what happened here is that if I relied on the newspapers totally without referring to the genealogy work I'd done on these families, I might have taken it at face value. Doing the genealogy, I found out what happened with the other family and something else to keep in mind. Please remember that this was an insane situation, a real hellscape, and the fact that they did as well as they did all of them, the families, coroner Hoffman, the reporters, whatever it is still commendable in the midst of something that I just cannot imagine going through. Yet we still have to deal with all of the problems that we're running into here the reporting issues, the mistaken identities, and now we have an exhumation that has to take place. Oh my goodness. But let's back up At this point in the story. It looks like Emma Schroll, julius Schroll and Emma's sisters, anna Stracca and Paulina Stracca were all buried on July 27, 1915, at the Bohemian National Cemetery. So that's what it says, and right now what they're saying is that the body that was passing for Emma Schroll was not her. After all, it was really Emma Meyer. So far what we have are these two articles. The Chicago Daily News had a different spin on this story. This is from the Chicago Daily News, july 29th 1915. So we're going back a little ways. Says others took body.

Natalie Zett:

Two cases of alleged wrong identification of victims of the Eastland disaster came to the attention of the authorities today. One is the allegation of Mrs Anna Decker, 2544 South Hamlin Avenue, that her sister, emma Meyer, was found in the 2nd Regiment Armory on Sunday and that the body disappeared before she could claim it. The presumption is that it was taken by another family for their own. My cousin, walter Baum, who lives at West 23rd Street and Oakley Avenue, identified my sister on Sunday at the armory, said Mrs Decker, he was so overcome that he forgot the number and left. When I visited the bodies after he told me I couldn't find it, I had a nervous breakdown and couldn't go back. Now the body is gone. Walter is positive. It was Emma. Someone else has taken the body of my sister, thinking it their own.

Natalie Zett:

This is a fascinating story and I'm sure this is not the only time something like this has happened in regard to misidentifications with the Eastland disaster. What's interesting to me is why this story of the Eastland has never made it to the forefront. Other than that one piece in the book that is self-referencing, there's really nothing that I've been able to find easily. But the good news is that we have the story now. Even if we don't have all the answers, we do have something to work with, something to build with. We are going to keep going.

Natalie Zett:

So here's another article from the Chicago Daily News. This is Friday, august 18th 1915. Girls' bodies still unclaimed. Number 571 is only one of Eastland victims. Now at the morgue At Sheldon's morgue. A tag proclaims it to be body 571. It is the body of a girl, the only one rescued from the Eastland. Until today that has not been identified. For almost three weeks it has lain in the morgue, unclaimed and unrecognized, somewhere out of the city. Coroner Hoffman believes parents are wondering why they do not hear from their daughter, who came to Chicago just a few days before the Eastland turned over. The girl was about 18 years old, rather tall and blonde. Her initials are either M B or BM. Today Joe Wellick, an investigator from the city's attorney's office who has been working for the last week to try to identify Body 571, is attempting to trace the purchase of small slippers she wore. He has already canvassed the entire village of Cicero for identification and had tracers looking for baggage on the Roosevelt checked as 3644. This baggage check was found on the body of the girl and shows how nearly she came to escaping this tragedy.

Natalie Zett:

I want to stop for a second. The Roosevelt was another ship that was supposed to board passengers to go to the picnic. That's what they're referring to. Back to the article. She had evidently prepared to sail on the Roosevelt but boarded the Eastland upon learning that it sailed first.

Natalie Zett:

A large picture of the girl's features has been taken and will hang in the floating morgue which is in the river near the wreck, waiting for the bodies of the victims still in the hold. Everybody coming aboard the scow morgue in quest of the body of some friend or relative will be asked to look at the picture, which shows the face of a pretty girl. There are traces of freckles in the otherwise clear complexion and the center front tooth shows a small gold filling. A signet ring with the initial M engraved on. It was lost in the confusion of disposing of the bodies shortly after recovery. Body 571 has been wrongly identified on two occasions. The father of Margaret Morgan, 6125 Ogden Avenue, identified it once as his daughter, but later found his mistake and the body of his daughter. Another time a queer-acting man announced it to be the body of Minnie Anderson, 4452 North Cicero Avenue. Okay, folks, that's the end of that article. So, as you can see, it's getting more chaotic, more confusing, because body 571 has been misidentified not just once but a couple of times, and so we will need to continue with this.

Natalie Zett:

Here's another article from the Chicago Daily News. This is August 19, 1915. Last of Bodies Identified. The last of the bodies recovered from the Eastland now has been identified. Body 571, held at Sheldon's Undertaking Rooms for three weeks, was identified yesterday. It was that of wait for it, anna Straka, 22 years old, 4734 South Throop Street. I'm going to pause for a second. So the Chicago Daily News is saying this body was not that of Emma Schroll but the body of her sister, anna Straka. So this new piece of information must be considered as we're trying to figure out what happened here.

Natalie Zett:

I will continue with the article. A body had been buried as that of Miss Straka, one of three sisters who met death in the river. This body was exhumed yesterday and identified as Emma Meyer, 21 years old, 3544 South Hamlin Avenue. She had been reported as among the missing in the disaster. To Joseph Wellick, an investigator from the city attorney's office, is due the credit for the final identification of body number 571, which has been claimed three times by relatives of missing girls. This identification was made through a scar on the forehead, a mole on one shoulder and bridge work on the teeth. The clue to the mistaken identity came through jewelry in the police custodian's envelopes. Mrs Anna Decker and John L Meyer, brother and sister of Emma Meyer, identified the body after it was exhumed. Their mother, mrs Anna Meyer, a widow, was too feeble to go to the cemetery or the undertaking rooms. That's the end of that article, and the word feeble was one that was used in 1915. It wasn't meant to be insulting, by the way. They're just saying that Mrs Meyer was very distraught.

Natalie Zett:

Oh my, what do you think about all that? The situation of the Eastland disaster is very extreme and unusual, but when genealogists do a family tree for themselves or they start research for someone else, such as a client, they often have to go through a lot of back and forth and back and forth and correction, and it often can take many years to get to the answers, to break down the brick walls, or sometimes you just end up with a lot more questions. This is pretty typical, by the way, and the Eastland disaster situation is pretty atypical. So if you look at a basic genealogical quest, it can be challenging as it is, but add to it a disaster like this, that becomes even more complicated and requires more work. Sometimes no neat and tidy conclusions can be drawn from something like this. But we are not done yet.

Natalie Zett:

I am going to read an article from the Lithuanian newspaper. I feature them in previous podcasts because they have a lot of good, detailed information as well, and they reported on all of the communities, not just the Lithuanian community. The publication is called Catalikas, and it was, and the date is August 19th 1915. And I'm going to read a translation. It's very similar to what we read in the Chicago Daily News, by the way Daily News. By the way, the last victim Yesterday at the morgue, the last victim of the Eastland disaster, was identified. This girl is Anna Straka, who had remained unidentified for a long time. Her body was lying in Sheldon's morgue and was marked with the number 571. With this. Everything is now resolved. No more bodies have been found in the river. The ill-fated Eastland has been pulled from the river and taken to the dry docks near Goose Island. There it will be fully inspected and its future fate will be decided.

Natalie Zett:

So all of this started with a chance finding or was it a chance finding of Emma Meyer's name on the list that appeared after I did a search on Heritage Hub. When I started reading that story, I didn't want to touch it with the proverbial 10-foot pole. By the same token, I know I needed to explore it and so I did. And I suspect the complexity of this story and the mess of the story and the lack of resolution of this story. This very well might be why it hasn't been picked up. Had I found this sooner, I would have started digging sooner, because I think it is compelling and fascinating. Because I think it is compelling and fascinating and it's something that I hope I've laid the groundwork for and will continue researching it, and I also have created family trees for all of these families and individuals. So I'll see what pops up as time goes by. So this is a testament to all of these people, families, people who were involved in the investigation, in the identification, in the reporting all of them, and the story of Emma is really quite striking and I hope to expand on it in the future.

Natalie Zett:

But before I go I want to add another story. Do you remember the other woman who was mentioned, mary Morgan? She was one of the other people who was misidentified and this is a story from the Evansville Journal, july 28, 1915. Father was mistaken, mistaken identification, halted one funeral. Today, quote who are you looking for? Asked a policeman at the morgue. As a boy walked in and looked anxiously about Mary Morgan, came the answer Mary Morgan has already been identified and her body has been taken home, said the officer. I know all about that, said the boy, but the body at Morgan's is not Mary.

Natalie Zett:

A short time later the boy identified Mary Morgan's body as one that had been brought from the river on Monday. The mistaken identification had been made by her own father. That is the end of the article. Who was this boy? I don't know. They don't tell us, but this one also needs more research. The father was distraught and who knows what condition that body was in.

Natalie Zett:

That's the other thing to consider and to me again, it is unfathomable that these people went through all this. So that was the situation, and it's just incredible, mind-boggling. Whatever types of adjectives I have, they don't even hold the emotion that I feel as I read these stories. None of us were living in 1915. So I would always say have empathy and compassion for these people, because the majority of them were doing the best they could. I would just say hold them up If you think of them, just wish them peace and remember them with fondness, and I indeed think that I need to do a lot more research on this.

Natalie Zett:

This is just a first pass through on a situation that needs to be untangled further. So I will be back next week with more stories. So take care, have a good week. Hey, that's it for this episode and thanks for coming along for the ride. Please subscribe or follow so you can keep up with all the episodes, and for more information, please go to my website, that's wwwflowerintherivercom. I hope you'll consider buying my book available as audiobook, e-book, paperback and hardcover, because I still owe people money and that's my running joke. But the one thing I'm serious about is that this podcast and my book are dedicated to the memory of all who experienced the Eastland disaster of 1915. Goodbye for now.

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