Flower in the River: A Family Tale Finally Told

Roll Up Your Sleeves—A Lesson in Preserving History

• Natalie Zett • Season 3 • Episode 101

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History isn’t just about what’s remembered—it’s about who makes sure it’s remembered.

 In this episode, I take you to Fall Creek, Wisconsin—a small village with a deep familial connection. It’s also where I first saw what real historical preservation looks like. Their approach to honoring the past contrasts what I’ve found in my research on the Eastland Disaster, where some victims remain without grave markers more than a century later.

 How did this happen? What does it tell us about how we preserve history? And what can we learn from a town of about 1,000 people who manage to keep their own history alive?

 In This Episode:

 📖 Fall Creek’s surprising link to the Eastland Disaster—and why this small town’s dedication to history changed my perspective.

🕊️ The missing grave markers of Eastland victims—whose stories have been lost, and why their memory still matters.

🔍 Fact-checking an unverified claim about unmarked graves and burial customs in 1915 Chicago.

💡 Why independent researchers, genealogists, and communities play a crucial role in preserving history.

 Suggestions for Keeping  History Alive

 💬 Share this episode with history lovers, genealogists, and those passionate about remembering the past.

🔎 Look up an Eastland victim on Find a Grave—see if they have a source-cited memorial, and if not, consider contributing.

📚 Support historical research—whether through independent projects, community genealogy groups, or simply asking more questions.

🧐 Don’t be afraid to cast a critical eye on historical claims—especially those without source citations. If something doesn’t add up, dig deeper. History deserves accuracy, not assumptions

 Links:

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. Hey, this is Natalie and welcome to Flower in the River. This is episode 101 and thanks for joining me. And before I launch into all this material for this week, I want to welcome so many new listeners and I know that because my stats have blown up since my appearance on Krista Cowan's stories that live in us and I'm so grateful that so many of you are interested in this topic. And again I want to publicly thank Krista for what she's done, and I thanked her on Instagram and I said thank you, krista, for caring about these people. It meant the world to me. I would carry on no matter what, but wow, finding somebody on this journey who has such a huge amount of knowledge about what it takes to put together family history. And also the people who follow Krista are obviously genealogists, family historians, people who are interested in history. Anyway, thank you all.

Natalie Zett:

When my podcast switched direction from focusing solely on my book and my family and I branched out into talking about other families, the main reason for doing this is that I noticed that so many individuals and families and communities were not documented anywhere. Well, actually they were, but they weren't documented in a central place where people could go to get information about the people of the Eastland. That was the first motivation, because I really wanted to do some world building. I wanted to understand Chicago 1915, the place where my family was living and experienced so much loss. I wanted to make sure that there was some kind of record for each one of these people that was easily findable and easily accessible by anyone who was looking for this history. And this is a work in progress, but I am making progress on this.

Natalie Zett:

One of the biggest lessons I've learned is that, while I have some actually a lot of misgivings about crowdsourcing history, I have also witnessed firsthand that individuals often do a much better job than many organizations, that individuals do the research, writing and storytelling themselves, rather than relying on institutions to do it for them. Or I should say, allow them to do it, and sure, it's not always perfect. Without a built-in system for error checking, mistakes can slip through. However, most of us are very good at checking each other's work, and what I've found time and time again, even as recently as in the last couple of weeks, is that individuals are often more thorough, more conscientious and more invested than many official organizations, and in a way, it's part of a bigger movement, the zeitgeist that started with musicians and then it shifted to authors, thanks in part to Joanna Penn, who's known as the Creative Penn. She's been a strong advocate for independent authors, encouraging us to take control of our work, retain our rights and keep what little money we earn instead of handing it over to some middleman. And now we're seeing the same thing happen with history. Whether it's through podcasts, blogs or other independent projects, people are stepping up to keep history alive. They're not waiting for permission from some outside organizations, and we do this because it's a calling, because we care, so while we're here, we take care of it, and beyond that, it's meaningful, engaging work.

Natalie Zett:

So I promised to talk about the case of the missing grave markers last week, and I will do that, but first I do need to share about my early adventures in genealogy. So I'm about to dive into a story that I haven't talked about at least in the podcast in a long time. It's actually in my book, a fictionalized version of the story, but this did happen. Visiting my interview with Krista and thinking about that, I was reminded of how much I've learned from people like her, elizabeth Schoen Mills and so many others who set such a high bar for documenting family history. However, long before getting to know them and studying with them, maybe 25 years ago or maybe even more, I picked up a completely different lesson, not from a class this time. This was in the beginning of my genealogical adventures, but this one was from experience, and that experience shaped how I approach family history, and it's probably why I tend to zero in on the details, especially with the Eastland disaster. The ship, the Eastland itself has been very well documented, and I always refer people to George Hilton's book. It's thorough, it's agnostic, meaning there's not one agenda that's being pushed forward. It's simply a detailed, source-cited, very academic book of what happened with the Eastland disaster. However, remember, the primary focus of this book is the ship itself. The primary focus of this book is the ship itself, my journey into understanding.

Natalie Zett:

My family's connection to the Eastland disaster began in the late 1990s when my mom's older sister, pearl Cerny, then in her late 80s, felt the clock ticking and before she died she created a 38-page family history to share with the younger relatives page family history to share with the younger relatives. I was into my adult years by then, and living on my own and having a pretty interesting career, and was only vaguely aware that I was missing a big chunk of my family's history. I mean, my mom's mother, who could have been one of the cornerstones of our family story, was little more than a name. She died when my mother was just three years old, and so we, including my mother, knew almost nothing about her. She wasn't just a missing family member, she was a complete mystery. Beyond her name, her headstone at Grandview Cemetery in Johnstown and the fact that she died young, most of her story had been lost.

Natalie Zett:

So my grandmother relocated to Johnstown, pennsylvania, from Chicago and that's where my mother was born, and my mother ended up being raised by her father and his family after her mother's death, and meanwhile, in Chicago, her mother's people, including my mother's half-siblings from my grandmother's first marriage, might as well have been strangers in a distant land. That's how not in contact they were. And there were a variety of reasons for that. One of them was the era my mother was born in 1931, so travel back and forth was not as easy as it is now and communication was not as easy as it is now. And in terms of these half-siblings, my mother only met them a handful of times during all of their lifetimes. So how's that, for interesting? That void in our family history had always been there, but my mother never made an issue out of it. I don't know if she was trying to shield herself against further pain. Also, the people who ended up raising her they were her father's people, not primarily her father, but they weren't very kind to her and they often spoke poorly of her mother, and so there was a lot of bias that happened. Isn't it crazy how these types of things can get woven into a person's history, and when you're a child you don't question them.

Natalie Zett:

And it wasn't until in the late 90s, when I got that document from my mother's older half-sister and immersed myself in its contents, I started to feel the weight of that long lost history from my maternal grandmother's side, and it began to feel very heavy and I thought, uh-oh, maybe this was important. And it was very overwhelming to realize how much had been lost, how much there was still to uncover Not just the connection to the Eastland disaster, since I saw that right away, but there was so much more to this family. It was huge, for one thing, and I also realized that time was not on my side. My Aunt Pearl was in her 80s. Some of the other relatives that I met during that time period, who were new to me, they also were in their 80s and 90s and I thought, oh my gosh, really didn't know what to do. And at that point I was just beginning my journey into family history. I had never even made a family tree, but I was a journalist, and a very experienced one, by then. And as a journalist I did what I always do I took action. My Aunt Pearl's family history was meticulous.

Natalie Zett:

Besides creating a family history, pearl inadvertently created a roadmap to all kinds of places. That roadmap, of course, first of all led me to Chicago many, many times, where I stayed with Pearl and I used to think, had she and I been contemporaries, we would have been more than aunt and niece, we would have been best friends. We were so similar and that manuscript. Besides Chicago, it guided me somewhere completely unexpected and that would be Fall Creek. Of course, you've never heard of it. It's a tiny village in western Wisconsin and get this. It was about an hour and a half drive from where I live in St Paul.

Natalie Zett:

I'm not from this area originally and I could not believe that I had moved to the upper Midwest without realizing I had deep ancestral roots growing right under my feet when I began this journey with Pearl's manuscript and tried to decode it and figure out what was going on. That's when the uptick of experiences that fall under the category of unexplained started occurring. But picking up everything and relocating to a place that I didn't know anything about, didn't know anyone here, just because it felt familiar, that was kind of weird. And then, years later, finding out that I had moved to an ancestral homeland for no other reason other than the fact that it felt familiar, that remains one of the most powerful experiences of my life, and this is evidence too for me that there was more going on when I relocated here than just me wanting to move around for the fun of it, which I did a fair amount of earlier in my life.

Natalie Zett:

One of my early adventures was driving to Fall Creek for the very first time, armed with my Aunt Pearl's document, and I was going to figure out what this place was and trace the footsteps of my widowed great-great-grandmother, who had immigrated there along with several of her children. Now, what does Fall Creek, wisconsin, have to do with Chicago and the Eastland? I will tell you. While most of that branch of the family put down roots in Fall Creek, one of my great-great-grandmother's daughters, my great-grandmother Bertha, made the fateful decision to move to Chicago. It was Bertha's daughter, my great-aunt, who would later lose her life in the Eastland disaster, creating a thread that connects the small Wisconsin village to one of Chicago's greatest tragedies. How is that for a connection? Fall Creek is one of those blink and you miss it. Kinds of places, typical rural America types of places, and it's also a place that time seems to have gracefully passed by and it never got larger than a thousand people I think that's still the case yet it holds years and years of stories within its bounds, and you're going to hear how this small, ancestral village takes care of history.

Natalie Zett:

What I discovered there my first day transformed my understanding of how we preserve our past, and it was another experience of setting the bar very high. So when I drove to Fall Creek that very first time, I couldn't believe it. The entire downtown was about two blocks long. I felt like I was on a movie set or something. I'd never seen anything like this Most of my life. I had lived in various cities like Cleveland and Detroit.

Natalie Zett:

Then I got out of the car and walked to the Fall Creek Bank it was just called Bank. Inside the bank there was a book for sale. Sights and Sounds of the Valley was a 138-page history of Fall Creek, and the contributors were the townspeople, many of whom I later found out were my relatives, and I was blown away. I still have the copy. It's beautifully illustrated and it is available online. You can download the PDF. Keep in mind that this is primarily a farming community. It's not a wealthy community. People work really hard there. But, my goodness, they care about their history. They care about the history of the village in a way that I've never quite seen before.

Natalie Zett:

So after I bought that book, I took it over to the Fall Creek Library, which was called Library, and it was right across the street from the bank, and then I sat there for a while looking at the book and met one of the librarians. There was only one woman in there and she kind of glared at me when I was in there. It was obvious that I was not from there. They know everyone who lives there and it's like who's this stranger in the leather jacket sitting there with a book? You know what is that. And then I started talking to the woman, who turned out to be a relative, by the way, but that was later. I found that out and I gave her the names of the families that I was researching. She went to the back of the library, pulled out all these records and copied a couple hundred pages of church records for me that had direct family and extended family listed. I was so overwhelmed that I didn't even know what to do with that. And then, even later, I located a history of one of these churches, also penned by a relative, and Fall Creek has a history museum that is still going strong today.

Natalie Zett:

Most precious of all, they provide a living connection to the past. It's not negotiable. History is something that they live as they live their lives. So there's a Fall Creek Facebook group, by the way, and it's very active, very engaged, and recently someone asked why the village was originally called Cousins and they added and I don't know if they were trying to be funny they said is that because we're all related to each other? And I thought that was hilarious because, well, yes, it seems like everyone in the town is related one way or the other. I've done extensive genealogy on that branch of the family and we are all related to each other. A lot of times it's by marriage, but there are several occasions in my extended family where two sisters married two brothers, for example. So you have this situation of double cousins and it's not that uncommon. By the way, it does get kind of confusing when you're doing genealogy. However, fall Creek was not called Cousins because we're all related. It was called Cousins because it was actually named after someone whose name was originally Cousins.

Natalie Zett:

Well, fall Creek taught me a lot, but it really brought home something profound. From Fall Creek I learned that preserving history isn't about funding, it isn't about publicity, it's about resolve. There are places and people like Fall Creek who just roll up their sleeves and do their work. Who knows, maybe I've inherited a little bit of that drive and resolve from that family line that I never knew about, that drive and resolve from that family line that I never knew about. My Fall Creek family understands this one thing that every story matters, every name matters, every name deserves to be remembered and each piece of the past holds value beyond a dollar amount. And also, what I love about these people they don't make a big production out of everything. For the most part, these are not people who draw attention to themselves. So when I arrived in Fall Creek I knew next to nothing about this side of my family's history, and by the time I left that first day I had a book and a box of copies of church records that all pertain to my family's history. So because of that experience, I just assumed that historical organizations all of them would do at least as well as the people of Fall Creek did, if not better, because they had access to more resources. At least that's what I assumed.

Natalie Zett:

Well, now it's time to segue into the case of the missing grave markers, something that I mentioned briefly in last week's episode. A couple of weeks ago, another writer brought something to my attention, something that I missed entirely in my own research of the people of the Eastland. This writer said that some Eastland disaster victims still don't have grave markers, at least according to their biographies. On Find a Grave and disaster people, for example, they either have missing biographies or their biographies aren't properly documented or source cited, still not having any grave markers for some of these people. That surprised me.

Natalie Zett:

After nearly 110 years, how is that possible? You might be thinking, who cares? That was a long time ago. Does it really matter? These people have nothing to do with us in present time, right, but what is history if not people and those people from the past? They have a lot to teach us. I wish we'd listen sooner. Right, it doesn't matter that they're gone from the earth. More often than not, their stories live on. Think of the title of Krista Cowan's podcast Stories that Live In Us. They live in us, they live outside of us, and love for history isn't just about claiming to preserve it. It's about doing the work, about rolling up your sleeves, getting to it and writing a book, maybe like my relatives in Fall Creek did.

Natalie Zett:

But I have to say that learning that some of these people had no grave markers, no headstones etc. That really got to me. I found that really disturbing. So I'd like to share some information about these people who, right now seem to have no grave markers, but this information comes from Find a Grave and this information is current as of February 2025, and it is subject to change. What I'm going to do is list the names of these people and then I will return and give you some biographical information about a few of them and give you some biographical information about a few of them. The first person is Augusta Polk Adler. The next person is Maria Marie Adamkiewicz, her sister Martha Adamkiewicz-Darka, then there is May C Larson Anderson, david G Benson, albert P Beale and James Harries.

Natalie Zett:

Now there probably are a lot more people, but these are the ones I was able to locate fairly easily and I wanted to bring them front and center. So how about if we return and we get to know a little bit about the stories behind the names of a few of these people? The first person whose name I shared with you is Augusta Polk Adler. As mentioned, she has no headstone and there's no bio about her on any official Eastland site. However, I was able to find her obituary and I was able to find an article. This brief article actually features her husband, who survived the Eastland disaster, and he's not listed anywhere in terms of the history of the Eastland disaster. This article is in the Kansas City Post, sunday, july 25th 1915.

Natalie Zett:

Edward Adler of Cicero, a suburb, was pushed off the Eastland and in the scramble was separated from his wife. He tried to save her but saw her go under the water. She did not reappear and Adler, seeing his sister-in-law, mrs Minnie Polk struggling in the water, caught her in his arms and swam ashore. He tried to swim back to search for his wife but was forcibly dragged. The obituary for Augusta. This appeared in the Union Leader in Chicago on August 7, 1915. Headline Victim of Eastland, sister of Brothers Polk, buried at Concordia Cemetery.

Natalie Zett:

Mrs Augusta Adler, an Eastland victim, was buried Thursday July 29, at Concordia Cemetery. Deceased was the wife of Edward Adler we just learned about him and she was the mother of Clarence and Raymond, aged six and three years respectively, daughter of Mr and Mrs Gustav Polk and sister of Anna Minnie, lillian William and Charles Polk, the two latter members of Division 308. The funeral was held from the parents' residence at 2047 West 21st Place. I do need to do a deeper dive into what happened to them, but it's a huge family, at least on her side. The next two people listed with unmarked graves are Maria Marie Adamkiewicz and Martha Adamkiewicz-Darka. Once I made the family tree for the sisters and included their parents and their siblings and extended family members, it became quite confusing and I've got a lot to unravel here, including the fact that several members kept changing their forenames and their surnames. So this is going to take a little more work, but I will get back to you with their bio, but I just need to make sure that I get all of the information for all of them and try to see if I can break through some of these brick walls.

Natalie Zett:

The next person is Mae C Larson Anderson, and this is her obituary from the July 31, 1915 issue of the Chicago Tribune. Anderson Mae, 28 years old, 230 North Sacramento Avenue, who was the wife of Gustav Anderson, who had been unemployed for a long time. She was born in Chicago and graduated from the Montefiore School. She was a member of the Order of the Eastern Star. Her sister, mrs Gertrude A Berg, and baby Irene Berg were also drowned. Funeral was held from the Vold Undertaking Chapel and burial at Graceland.

Natalie Zett:

Mrs Anderson went on the outing because her sister's husband was unable to go with them. After procuring tickets. Mrs Berg and child were buried at Mount Olive Besides her husband, mrs Anderson leaves an aged mother, mrs Martha Larson, and some daughters. That one needs more investigation as well. But I wonder again, why an unmarked grave for her? Maybe back then the family could not afford it.

Natalie Zett:

So at this moment I'm looking at the family tree that I made for her and it's on Ancestry, and we have a few details that we need to talk about. First of all, her husband's name was not Gustav, it was August R Anderson. I know that because I have the marriage record, and it was from the 15th of October 1898. Marriage record, and it was from the 15th of October 1898, and they were married at the independent evangelical Lutheran Bethania congregation. I later found out that this was a Norwegian church and so that's the correct name for her husband. Her husband was born in 1871, by the way, and he died in 1935. They had three daughters Grace Anderson, helen Anderson and Gertrude Anderson. In terms of her sister, gertrude, who also died on the Eastland, her married name was Berg and Gertrude was married to someone who was named Gustav. So maybe that's where the confusion happened. And of course, gertrude had a baby called Irene, and Irene died as well, and it does appear that they both have grave markers, but that also needs further investigation.

Natalie Zett:

The next two people I found are David Benson and Albert Beale. I will do bios on them separately and in another episode. But now I want to bring you to the final person on this list of people with unmarked graves, james Harries, and he is very unique in so many ways. I'm going to read his obit from the July 31st 1915 Chicago Tribune. His obit is also his biography.

Natalie Zett:

Harries James, 30 years old, was an employee at the Western Electric Company in Department 2902. He was living at the time of his death with a married brother, john, at 2905 South Park Avenue. He was born in Dumfries, scotland, where a widowed mother and two brothers are living, and had only been in the United States for 14 months. He was buried at Arlington Cemetery and, by the way, this Arlington Cemetery is in Elmhurst, illinois. He was born in Kilmarnock, ayrshire, scotland, in 1885. He immigrated around 1914, and he lived with his brother John, his brother's wife and child in Chicago and worked for Western Electric.

Natalie Zett:

James Harries is the first immigrant from Scotland that I've profiled for this series, so he's special that way and I was able to find his family records in the various Scottish census records. That was interesting for me too, because I seldom do Scottish genealogy, and the other reason was that I spent a fair amount of time in that area at one point in my life and I always loved that area a lot, and I wondered, too, if there was more information about James Harry's online, and I did locate another piece of information about him. However, there's no source citations. I'm not going to repeat it verbatim, because I don't know where that thing originally came from. I was able to call some information from that that I was able to verify. And here's the strange thing from this article In trying to explain why James has an unmarked grave, this writer claimed that burying single men in unmarked graves may have been customary at that time in Chicago.

Natalie Zett:

This is what this particular writer asserted. Just to be clear about that. First of all, I thought where are they getting this information from? But they didn't cite their sources, so who knows? Then I thought, okay, let's investigate. Maybe they know something you don't.

Natalie Zett:

I reviewed my past episodes for this podcast series and during this time I've documented numerous cases of young single men who perished on the Eastland. Not once have I encountered any being buried in unmarked graves. So this was my starting point my own research so far. Then I expanded my research, conducting general searches and consulting multiple AI research tools, including ChatGBT, clawed and Perplexity, the latter being particularly useful for historical research. I always request citations from these tools, by the way, since AI can sometimes hallucinate or generate inaccurate information that requires verification.

Natalie Zett:

After this investigation, I found no credible sources supporting this claim. Now there were certain circumstances in 1915 Chicago where unmarked graves were used, for instance, when the deceased was institutionalized, imprisoned or when their identity couldn't be verified due to things like extreme poverty or lack of family connections. There's also historical evidence of unmarked graves being used for convicted criminals and in the case of our Eastland victims who lie in unmarked graves, it very well might have been that the families could not afford them, but nowhere have I found anything that backs up that statement that unmarried single men same thing were typically buried in unmarked graves. The reason I'm addressing this claim is important. If left unchallenged, someone researching their family history might incorrectly assume this was standard practice in Chicago at this time. This is exactly why we emphasize reasonably exhaustive research in genealogy and also source citation. While my investigation here isn't complete, I will continue looking into this. It demonstrates why we shouldn't accept historical claims without verification. This kind of fact-checking and thorough research is crucial, not just for historical accuracy but as a way to honor these individuals and their stories and their families. Historical narratives can go wonky. They can become distorted very quickly if we don't take the time to verify these claims and challenge unsupported assertions.

Natalie Zett:

James Harries was living with his brother, and his brother's name was John, and John was working, not at Western Electric, but he was employed as a machinist, and he did not provide a grave marker for his brother, and I'm not sure why, but I do know that soon after this happened, john and his family relocated to Montana. At one point, john was living in New Jersey, where he met his wife, who was from England, and they married there. For a while they lived in Iowa and, of course, chicago, and then ultimately in Montana. My question, though, is, since I haven't run into too many Scottish immigrants in Chicago during that time why did they come over in the first place? So I found out that the situation in Western Scotland, where they came from, where the Harry's brothers came from, was complex, and while there was work in Glasgow and along the River Clyde, there were several serious underlying issues, pushing young men to leave a lot of the times. So the shipbuilding industry, while massive, was notoriously cyclical, experiencing dramatic boom and bus cycles, and when orders dried up, entire communities could suddenly find themselves without work, and the shipyards would often hire and fire thousands of workers as contracts came and went, and this created a sense of economic insecurity. I don't know if this was the thing affecting these brothers, but that's just speculation on my part, and this will take more research, and maybe I will find out at some point why these two brothers decided to immigrate, because I don't think anyone wants to leave their home, they only.

Natalie Zett:

One of the coolest things about doing this podcast and digging into the lives of the people connected to the Eastland disaster is how often it gives me insights into how I approach my own family's history, which is tied directly to the disaster. It wasn't until I started putting this particular episode together that I realized, though, how much my first trip to Fall Creek, wisconsin, shaped me, seeing how my extended family there preserved and cared for their history. That set the bar really high, and right now I find myself looking at various institutions and organizations that don't show that same level of care, and I wonder why, after all, isn't caring for shared history, just basic respect for the people who lived it? But that foundation, well, it started on the drive back from Fall Creek, wisconsin, to St Paul, minnesota. If a tiny rural village can put this much care into preserving its history, then really what's stopping anyone else from doing the same? Well, we'll continue this discussion next week. In the meantime, have a great week and I will talk to you soon, soon.

Natalie Zett:

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, ebook, 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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