Flower in the River: A Family Tale Finally Told

A Tsar, A Serial Killer (??), and a Cabinetmaker from Myjava

• Natalie Zett • Season 3 • Episode 114

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In today's episode, I take you on a journey through my unexpected DNA discoveries and how they've connected me to both famous and infamous historical figures. This discovery some new (but very old) Hungarian connections inspired me to research Hungarian immigrant victims of the Eastland Disaster, leading to some remarkable stories of transatlantic families.

My Family Background

  • All four of my grandparents immigrated to the US from Eastern and Central Europe in the late 1800s/early 1900s

Unexpected Royal Connections

  • DNA testing in 2016 revealed a surprising maternal haplogroup connection to Nicholas II Romanov, the last Tsar of Russia
  • This connection was especially meaningful since my mother had always been fascinated by the Romanovs
  • While this is a distant connection shared by millions, it created an emotional link to history

The Blood Countess Connection

  • Recently discovered connections to Hungarian royalty through my father’s line—specifically, the Bathory family!

Hungarian Immigrants and the Eastland Disaster

  • I profile the story of Paul Marton and his teenage son Paul Jr., who were labeled as Hungarian victims of the Eastland disaster
  • The Marton family came from Myjava (now in Slovakia), a stronghold of Slovak Lutheranism
  • The Marton family's story is a rare one: multiple immigration trips, and children baptized in both Chicago and Slovakia.

Reflections on Identity

  • Eastern European identity is complex, with shifting borders, overlapping languages, and blended identities
  • Many immigrants identified as Hungarian, Slovak, Austrian, or Rusyn depending on the time period
  • These threads of connection to the past, whether to royalty or ordinary people, take on the meaning we give them

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. Well, hello there, this is Natalie, and welcome to episode 114 of Flower in the River, and I hope you're doing okay. So today's episode will be way different, because I'm going to start off by talking about some DNA matches that I didn't quite expect and how that discovery, in a very indirect way, led me to an Eastland family that had a lot of twists and turns and rabbit holes a lot of twists and turns and rabbit holes, and I want to talk about what DNA testing can reveal, and this is beyond finding out about ethnicity or connecting with newfound relatives. What it can do now is connect us to people from the distant past, and I'm not talking about hunter-gatherers. These types of people. The people I'm talking about, are still in the distant past, but close enough where we can sometimes create an emotional connection to them. My own journey to the past started really slowly, but let me give you some background about my immediate family to put it in context for you, and why these findings were so strange for me.

Natalie Zett:

So all four of my grandparents immigrated to the United States from Eastern and Central Europe in the late 1800s and early 1900s the ethnic Germans from Poland, that's my mom's side. They did a bit better financially than the Eastern Europeans, aka my dad's side, most of whom were from what is now Slovakia. When my mom married my dad and my dad grew up in poverty, her father cut her off for a while. He was none too pleased about her marrying a Catholic, aka fish eater, as he called my dad. My grandfather was Lutheran, by the way. My dad, a musician who didn't make much money, took on a string of blue-collar jobs that he wasn't particularly suited for. And our early years as a family that would be my mom, my dad and my sister there were times where we didn't have a car and sometimes the electricity got cut off and we didn't live in the best neighborhoods. And then, to top that off, there were messages that I got early on. One that stuck came from my second grade teacher who told our entire class most of whom were immigrants or, like my family, we were recent descendants of immigrants or African-American and descendants of immigrants or African-American that unless we could trace our family back to the Mayflower, we didn't really have a family history and, furthermore, we weren't real Americans. Yes, indeed, and when I told my mom about what the teacher said, I think she rolled her eyes and said look, our family history was lost. In Europe. We do have a family history, but remember, we are nothing special, we're not royalty, we're no better and no worse than anyone else.

Natalie Zett:

And for our family it took a while, but by the time my sister and I were teenagers, things had gotten better for us financially just a bit. My mom was now working at the post office all night. My dad had a steady job as a security officer for the Federal Reserve Bank in Cleveland and he also worked nights. And ironically, my mom had been an honor student in high school and a Latin scholar, and she so wanted to be a teacher, but once again, her father didn't allow it. He wouldn't give her the money for that. So what she did? She redirected her teacherly energy into raising her children, and it was a delight to grow up in a house where reading was encouraged and trips to every free museum and historical society in Cleveland were a regular thing for us as a family. In that sense, I had a very rich upbringing, even when lunch was just wonder bread and mustard. And here's the thing about my mom she loved, loved history and loved telling stories about history, and she was fascinated to the point of being fixated by the Romanovs, the last imperial family of Russia, who were all executed in 1918. I remember watching movies and TV specials with my mom about the mystery of Anastasia, one of the Romanov family's daughters, who some claimed had survived.

Natalie Zett:

Fast forward now to 1993. Dna analysis was just beginning to be used in forensic identification and it was eventually used to confirm the remains of the Romanoff family. Yeah, scientists were able to determine Tsar Nicholas II's maternal haplogroup and prove that all of his children, including Anastasia, had died with him. The women who claimed to be Anastasia well, they were not related at all. Then, of course, in 2003, the Human Genome Project was completed and later on, consumer DNA testing became a thing, and I took one of those consumer DNA tests in 2016.

Natalie Zett:

I was reluctant because I thought, okay, maybe it will be fun to see my ethnicity breakdown, but I pretty much thought I knew what that would be and several years before I'd already filled in the black hole. That was my mother's mother's side and that would be the Pfeifers in Chicago who were affected by the Eastland disaster. I didn't expect much else, but of course surprises galore were waiting, and they continue until this day. So I tested with several companies and uploaded my results to GEDmatch and all those other platforms. So my DNA is all over the place. And then a couple of these companies flagged a connection to a quote unquote notable individual and my first thought was yeah right, scam or error. I mean, as I was reminded in second grade, I'm not a Mayflower person, I grew up in humble circumstances, but the notable figure I was connected to none other than Nicholas Romanoff himself via his maternal haplogroup. Several DNA testing companies have confirmed this, and when I first got that information I thought oh my God.

Natalie Zett:

And when I finally came to my senses I called my mom in Ohio, who fortunately was still alive and still doing very well, and I said are you sitting down? And then when I told her she said you're kidding me. Come on, is this a joke. Nope, as far as I can tell mom, it's legit. And what happened after that? The whole family got excited about this news and even one of my young nephews found it really intriguing. I think what's happened there is it sparked a deeper interest in family history. For many of them as well. It's like wow, I'm related to this guy and his family. What happened to them? Oh wow, this is kind of sad.

Natalie Zett:

Now, to be clear, our connection to the Romanovs is very distant, okay, and millions of people likely share this haplogroup, if my DNA results are any indication of that. Oops, there I go with the shop talk. Let me stop for a second A haplogroup. What is that? Simply stated, it's a set of genetic markers that get passed down more or less unchanged for thousands of years on, either your maternal line via mitochondrial DNA, or paternal line via the Y chromosome in biological males. I hope that makes sense.

Natalie Zett:

Now back to the discussion about the Romanov family. What struck me is how my mom had somehow felt drawn to this family, their story and their tragedy. Looking back and stepping back, that changed something for me. Suddenly, the Romanovs weren't just historical figures in the distant past in a place called Russia. They were part of a distant familial web and, thanks to mom, I already knew their story very well. But now it felt personal, emotional and I even have an icon of the Romanov family in my study with all my other icons For context.

Natalie Zett:

The Russian Orthodox Church canonized the entire imperial family Nicholas II, alexandra, olga, tatiana, maria, anastasia and Alexei. The Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia canonized them in 1981 as martyrs, and the Russian Orthodox Church followed in the year 2000, calling them passion bearers. So passion bearers in Orthodox Christianity are saints who face death with humility, gentleness and forgiveness. Not necessarily martyrs for their faith, but icons of grace and suffering. That's how they categorize them.

Natalie Zett:

My DNA test didn't just tell me I was 89% Eastern European, with a slew of cousins out there. It connected my family, through my mother's line, to history, to royalty and to a heartbreaking legacy, and I thought that was it for the big news. But just a few weeks ago I made another discovery, and this time from my father's side, and honestly, as of this moment, I am still trying to wrap my mind around this one. A little backstory I shared with you a while ago that I attended RootsTech 2025, and that would be the world's largest genealogy conference and one of the most compelling sessions that I attended was called Ancient DNA Meets Genealogy how 23andMe's Historical Matches feature connects you to the past. And this was by Dr Adine Harney, a scientist who teaches at Harvard. And yes, I'm aware that 23andMe is having trouble, but that doesn't negate the work of folks like Dr Harney. Then later on 23andMe's website, I got a notification that I had some updated historical matches. I signed up for that feature just because I thought it would be kind of fun to see how many more Eastern European Vikings I was related to.

Natalie Zett:

Yes, there is such a thing To clarify again, these are people from long ago and these historical matches, their DNA, is often recovered from bones buried for centuries, from places like royal crypts, forgotten graves etc. Etc. And somehow, through the strange miracle of modern science, we often find that we share something, a sliver, a whisper of a common code that connects us to history, to the past. And here's my latest one. I saw a slew of connections under the category of Hungarian royalty and I thought what so? The first thing that threw me is the word elite, attached to my dad's family. Well, that didn't fit.

Natalie Zett:

And the notation on the first one. It reads Ottoman period, transylvania elite PER 08, 1450 to 1660 CE. And there are several other ones from the same crypt, and so that's five people who are related to each other, who are related to me through my father's line, and the first thing I saw was Transylvania and I thought what is this? Am I related to Count Dracula? Many a thing said in jest. So I clicked into this first profile for details and it read Bathory Family Chapel, parice, suliach County, romania. Then I clicked into the next one and the following profiles for these individuals and learned that they were all found in the Botheree family chapel and I thought, oh no. And I read more, and I bet right now some of you know who I'm talking about. But let's build the suspense here for a second. A little bit about this Ottoman period Transylvanian elite, dude PER08. The remains of this person, a member of the Transylvanian Elite during the Ottoman period, were excavated from a 15th to 17th century chapel at Perici, a village that's now in Romania, but at that time it was part of the Kingdom of Hungary. Let that sit with you for a second, because it's going to get confusing. And this chapel belonged to the aristocratic Botheree family, who were Hungarian nobles. Several Botherees became princes of Transylvania, while others held powerful roles across the kingdom's military, religious and political life.

Natalie Zett:

Oh, but 23andMe left out the most infamous member of the Botheree family, elizabeth Botheree, aka the Blood Countess. She's often called history's first female serial killer. I'm sure many of you already know who she is, so isn't that interesting? That's a little bit different than finding out you're related to Nicholas II. I've thought about her before this because I listen to supernatural and horror podcasts and I often wondered was Elizabeth really the monster legend they made her out to be? And I often wondered was Elizabeth really the monster legend they made her out to be? Did Elizabeth really bathe in the blood of young girls to stay youthful, or was she the target of a ruthless smear campaign by powerful men who owed her money and wanted her land?

Natalie Zett:

Elizabeth is tricky to research thanks to all the myth and mayhem. Just search her name, say, on eBay, and you'll see that she has a serious fan base. I am not kidding about that. She's become a fixture in true crime and horror podcasts, not to mention a muse for fan art. So much fan art so we'll probably never know the full truth about her. And, as interesting as it is, I'm not going to dive too deep into my distant cousin Liz here. Instead I want to point you to an excellent podcast. It's called Reading the Past. It's by historian Dr. It's by historian Dr Katrina Marchant, aka Dr Cat, and she's out of the UK and she does such a great job of cutting through the hype with solid research and she presents a thoughtful, balanced take on Elizabeth and the world she lived in. I would recommend you listen to it if you're intrigued. I bet you are intrigued by now.

Natalie Zett:

Dr Cat ends this episode with this compelling, haunting question. She said exploring the life of Countess Elizabeth Bathory is a bit like trying to focus a beam of light through a prism. The more you look, the more paths there are to follow. She shifts depending on your point of view, I think. In some way I wonder if the person we think she was criminal or otherwise tells us as much, if not more, about ourselves than it does her. But what do you think? Who, or perhaps what, do you think elizabeth was? What makes you think of her in the way you do? I would love to take a class from Dr Cat. Holy smokes. That quote in and of itself is just incredible.

Natalie Zett:

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around how many ways my life has changed since getting that detailed family history from my Aunt Pearl over 25 years ago. That filled in that long lost history about my maternal grandmother and our connection to the Eastland disaster, and since that time the discoveries just keep on piling up. Then I look at another milestone in my genealogical journey and that's everything I learned since doing the DNA testings and I quickly moved into studying and getting deep into genetic genealogy and family history and now taking everything I've learned to date and applying it to creating biographies for my larger Eastland disaster family, back when I started to realize that so little had been done in that area, so few biographies, so few annotated biographies anyway, here's my guilty pleasure about this podcast. What I love about doing this podcast is that I learn something each week. A lot of times I learn how much I don't know, and that's not a bad thing. I have found that it's best to approach this project that I've given to myself with openness and also with humility, and I hope that you realize too that when I create these stories, these are just sketches. I don't know everything, and if I'm wrong and I am from time to time I'll correct my errors, and thank you to the people who have helped me do just that Now, speaking of which, for this upcoming story that I'm about to share with you.

Natalie Zett:

This is one of the most complicated ones I have done to date and I'm sure that I'm missing quite a bit, but I want to lay track and lay the groundwork for this family, because I have the feeling they have descendants that are still alive and may be wondering about their loved ones from the long ago past, that are still alive and may be wondering about their loved ones from the long ago past. It will be nice to have this story here waiting for them in case they ever go searching for their folks. So let's get into how finding out about the Bothery family connection, specifically the Hungarian connection, took me down another rabbit hole. Even before I found out about this Hungarian royalty discovery, I knew I had Hungarian roots. My great-grandmother, juliana Beliak, was born in a tiny village that's now Slovakia, but was part of the Kingdom of Hungary back in the 1860s when she was born.

Natalie Zett:

I have found that Eastern European identity is very complicated and confusing sometimes. My paternal line mostly comes from what's now Slovakia, but the region was under Austro-Hungarian rule for a long time, and some ancestors saw themselves as Hungarian, some as Slovak, and their church records, depending on the year, were written in Hungarian. And my early immigrant relatives, once they came to America, they often referred to themselves as Hungarian, slavish, austrian. Dear goodness, but that's Eastern Europe. It's a place where borders shifted, languages overlapped and identities blended. Certainly that's the case even in my family today, and my Hungarian Slovak family had been in the Kosice region for at least several centuries and, as far as I can tell, there was nothing elite or noble about them. But I've only been able to get back to the 1700s in their records, so who knows what went on before that. But it's time to talk about the Hungarian immigrants who were part of the Eastland disaster.

Natalie Zett:

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw massive waves of immigration to America. Between 1871 and 1913, over 2 million people left the Kingdom of Hungary for the United States. As a reminder, when we hear Kingdom of Hungary, we tend to think only of ethnic Hungarians, but the term actually referred to everyone living within its borders at that time. That included Slovaks, rusyns, germans, slovaks, rusyns, germans, jews, romani people, croats and so many others. It really was a diverse mix all ruled under the same crown, even if their identities, languages and cultures were very different. And they immigrated for a lot of different reasons seeking opportunity, fleeing conscription, fleeing economic hardship, or simply following family members who had already made the journey. And, of course, many settled in industrial centers like Pittsburgh or Johnstown, where my relatives settled, cleveland, where many of my relatives moved, and Chicago, where others moved, and Detroit, where still even more of my relatives moved, finding work in steel mills, factories and slaughterhouses.

Natalie Zett:

And there were a few people not that many, who died on the Eastland, who either identified as Hungarian or were identified by others as Hungarian. I already profiled one of these folks in an earlier podcast. This was a woman who immigrated alone and was working not for Western Electric but as a tailor and sending money back to her husband, a military man in Hungary, and her children. So that brings me to today's story another immigrant family from the complicated Hungarian-Slovak borderlands whose journey led them to Chicago and ultimately to the deck of the Eastland on that fateful day. So to find out who was identified as Hungarian, I went back to the 1915 Cook County Coroner's Report, as well as the July 31st 1915 issue of the Chicago Tribune, and just started looking, and that's when I came across Paul Martin and the surname is spelled M-A-R-T-O-N and his teenage son, paul Martin Jr. They died on the Eastland and they were listed as Hungarian.

Natalie Zett:

But as I followed the trail, a more complex picture began to unfold, one that led through church records, multiple immigration documents and old world parish records. But let's read the obituary first, and you're going to hear some very unusual things in this. So here's the obituary from the July 31st 1915 issue of the Chicago Tribune Martin Paul, 37 years old, and Paul Martin Jr, 18 years old. 1224 Augustus Street. Mr Martin was a cabinetmaker at the Western Electric Plant. Three of his children, john, anna and Paul, are living in Vienna, austria. His widow and seven-month-old baby live in Chicago, and you're probably wondering what is going on here.

Natalie Zett:

Well, I was as well, and the first thing I did was set up a family tree for them. Figuring their history would be fairly accessible. The paper probably made some mistakes. It was, after all, a very chaotic time. That was not the case. Let me tell you what I did learn, and I don't have everything all sewn up into a neat package with this family, but I want you to hear what real-time genealogical research looks like for me. Anyway, here's something that's somewhat unusual about this family. When you and I talk about immigration stories, whether it's our ancestors or somebody else's, we often imagine a one-way trip to a new life in the new country. But for families like the Martins, it wasn't that simple. They went back and forth and back and forth from Chicago to their country of origin.

Natalie Zett:

Their story begins in a place called Mjava it's spelled M-Y-J-A-V-A it looks like it's my Java if you're using American English and it's a town tucked into the hills of western Slovakia, near the Czech border. Today, back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, this region was part of the Kingdom of Hungary under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Now here's something else that I did not expect to see. Mijava was a stronghold of Slovak Lutheranism. Now, while Slovakia is often associated with Roman Catholicism, greek Catholicism, byzantine Christianity or Orthodox Christianity, mijava and its surrounding villages were historically Protestant, specifically the evangelical Lutherans of the Augsburg Confession. Now, this religious identity had deep roots dating back to the 16th century Reformation, and for many families there, lutheranism wasn't just about faith. It was about cultural preservation and quiet resistance in a region often defined by shifting power and pressure from both church and state. So this is the world that Paul Martin and his wife Katerina Adamik came from when they immigrated to Chicago. They certainly didn't leave that identity behind. So Paul and Katerina settled in Chicago and started a family.

Natalie Zett:

As far as I could tell from the records, all of their children were born in Chicago, and we have Paul Martin Jr, who was born in 1902 and died in 1915 on the Eastland, with his dad, then Jan or John Martin, who was born in 1904 and died in 1980. Anna Martin, who was born in 1910 and died in 1981. Who was born in 1910 and died in 1981. Yuri, aka George Martin, who was born in 1911, not sure when he passed away. Then there was Stefan Martin, who was born in 1914 and died in 1916.

Natalie Zett:

Here's what stood out. All of these Martin children were baptized at Trinity Slovak Lutheran Church in Chicago, and then I found something that really threw me. As I was digging through each child's records, I found baptism entries for each child in the Lutheran Church books in Mijava, slovakia as well. I'd heard of this practice, but I'd never seen it in any of my ancestry or any of the families I've profiled to date. Now we know this family traveled back and forth, but maybe they arranged for the baptisms to be entered through correspondence.

Natalie Zett:

Regardless, it sent a clear message they weren't cutting ties with their homeland, they were reinforcing them. This is conjecture on my part, but I think this goes a lot deeper than nostalgia. Like many immigrant families of that era, the Martins may have planned to return to Slovakia once they had saved enough money. America wasn't always a permanent destination for people. It was a place to work, survive and send money home. This actually is what one set of my great-grandparents who were from Slovakia did. They were in the United States for a while, had a child here, but then they returned, and they never came back to the United States. United States.

Natalie Zett:

So here's a brief introduction to Trinity Slovak Lutheran Church in Chicago, which was the Martin family's church. There was a longstanding tradition of Slovak Lutheranism in various regions, and when Slovak Lutherans came to the United States they of course brought that identity with them. And Trinity Slovak Lutheran Church probably meant a great deal to these newly arrived immigrants a home away from home, a place of community and a place of connection while they adjusted to life in Chicago. Here's a surprise at least it was for me. One of its early pastors was none other than Yaroslav Petikhan. Before he was a world-renowned theologian and professor at Yale. He was preaching to Slovak immigrants on Chicago's near west side. Well, that name, yaroslav Pedykan, jumped off the page for a lot of reasons. I'd been aware of him and acquainted with his work for a long time and certainly studied his writing when I was at seminary. So it was a huge surprise for me personally to find out that this was where he began his ministry, at Trinity Slovak Lutheran Church right there in Chicago. And Slovak Lutheranism is still going strong today. There is even and I just learned this a Slovak Zion Synod within the ELCA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.

Natalie Zett:

But let's get back to the Martins In a March 22, 1913 list or manifest of alien passengers for the United States. Paul Sr was on the list of passengers. He returned to the United States aboard the SS Prince Friedrich Wilhelm sailing from Bremen to New York. This record shows his wife Katarina was living in Miava at that time. Now this strongly suggests something that's called bird of passage migration. I'm not sure where that title came from. It wasn't until I did some in-depth study early on in my genealogy education that I learned that this going back and forth was fairly common among certain groups of immigrants such as Hungarians, slovaks and Southern Italians. The immigrants, again, did not intend to stay in America permanently. Many moved back and forth between continents, but the Martin family, well, they are still somewhat unusual in the amount of travel back and forth. When you run into a family like this and you don't realize what's happening, well, it can be really confusing. Realize what's happening, well, it can be really confusing. So we had the Eastland disaster where both Paul Sr and Paul Jr died, and most likely in that obituary remember where they said that the other children were living in Vienna, austria. It might have been a generic term used by reporters for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, I don't know, it might not have meant the literal city. So to pause for a moment.

Natalie Zett:

When I began researching the Martin family, I thought I'd get some answers, and I did, but I have also ended up with a lot more questions about what happened before, during and after the Eastland disaster to this entire family. And the strange thing, though, is after the disaster, katarina, that's Paul's wife she seems to have disappeared from the records, at least in the United States. Now. The obvious reason for that is that she probably did return to Meava with the remaining children to be with their families there, but I'm not sure. So I began researching the records for each of the children who survived to adulthood, and I want to tell you about the son, jan John, what happened to him afterward. So Jan Martin was born on August 5th 1904 in Chicago. His birth made him a US citizen by right, but his life, too, would be anything but straightforward when the Eastland disaster took his dad and brother.

Natalie Zett:

Jan was only 10 years old, but I located a passport application for Jan, and this is from March 1923. And he was just 19 years old at that time. He applied for a US passport from the American consulate in Prague. His application included a lot of curious details, including this one where he claimed to have been living in quote Hungary, now Czechoslovakia, since 1905. Now that's almost certainly not accurate. He was born in Chicago in 1904, and his baptism was recorded at Trinity Slovak Lutheran Church. But this record does suggest something else. Jan may have spent part of his youth in Europe after the Eastland disaster. At the time of this passport application, jan reports that he was living at 791 Mijava in what was then Bratislava Džupa, czechoslovakia. That's according to this application. By the way, to prove his US citizenship, he submitted his Chicago baptismal record, signed by Reverend Jan Samora, and letters from his uncle, george Martin, who lived at 4566 Austin Avenue in Chicago, and George was also listed as Jan's US contact and likely served as his legal guardian. George was the brother of Paul who was killed on the Eastland.

Natalie Zett:

Now, a few months later, in October 1923, jan sailed back to America on the SS Westphalia, listing George's address as his address. So whatever time he spent in Meava, he returned to Chicago. There was a sister called Anna and she also made her way back to Chicago, and records reported that all of the siblings who lived to adulthood returned to Chicago or were living in Chicago. They married and raised families and built new lives in the same city where their father and brother had perished. As for Jan, he married a woman named Violet and eventually moved to San Francisco, where he died in 1980.

Natalie Zett:

Closing the chapter on a life lived across borders shaped by loss, endurance and the long reach of family. The story of the Martin family is one not just of migrations well, in their case, multiple migrations but it's also of memory, and it brings to mind the various ways people sometimes try to pull themselves back together after everything in their world seems to fall apart. Maybe yawns going back and forth was part of that, and I hesitate to put a 21st century consciousness or awareness on somebody who was born so long ago. And the other thing that we run into here was this identity Hungarian, austrian, slovak, in this case, all of these people who were listed as Hungarian that I have found, who died on the Eastland disaster not just Paul Martin and his son Paul. There were several others who also were listed as Hungarian but seemed to be Slovak Lutheran.

Natalie Zett:

So if we're going to do due diligence on the biographies of these people of the Eastland or any other ancestor for that matter we do have to examine every detail. The ethnicity or nationality assigned to them, in this case by the coroner or anyone else, wasn't always accurate. Take my Aunt Martha, for example. She was labeled German, which was only partly true. Her family actually came from what is now Poland, and part of our family history is Polish. That kind of complexity might have been hard to untangle in 1915, but it isn't now.

Natalie Zett:

We know so much more today about genealogy, migration and historical context, and it's on us to take the time to do the deeper work to reconstruct who these Eastland victims and their families really were and to critically examine the narratives that have been handed down. The one thing I've learned, not just from doing my own genealogy but from doing the genealogical studies on the people of the Eastland, is that history is a really powerful thing. Otherwise people wouldn't try to eradicate it or sanitize it or reduce it to just a handful of family narratives or act as gatekeepers, so people have to come to them to ask for it. If history weren't powerful, people wouldn't be doing that. So remember when you know your history or when you understand the history of where you come from, where your people come from, that's a lot of power. If it wasn't, people wouldn't continue to try to rewrite it or keep it from you. So remember your power, okay. So remember just on the off chance that you have some difficult or challenging days, console yourself with this. At least, you're probably not related to Elizabeth Bothery.

Natalie Zett:

Okay, I'll talk to you next week and we'll have more stories. Take it easy and take care of yourselves and each other. 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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