Flower in the River: A Family Tale Finally Told

Letters, Ledgers, and Lost Lives

• Natalie Zett • Season 3 • Episode 116

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It’s May 31st—an important date if, like me, you have roots in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. On this day in 1889, the South Fork Dam gave way, and a wall of water wiped out most of the city. Over 2,000 lives were lost. It was a manmade disaster—tragic, preventable, and all too familiar.

In this episode, I begin with the story of Maggie Irwin, a chambermaid who died in the Johnstown Flood at age 18. Her mother saved the letters Maggie sent home during her brief time working in a hotel—and because of those letters, we remember her today. She’s buried among the unnamed in Grandview Cemetery, but her words still speak.

From there, we fast-forward 26 years to another disaster—one that changed my own family’s trajectory: the Eastland. And this is where things get personal again.

You’ll hear about the Schultz and Kempa families—John, Veronica, and their baby Edward, all lost in the Eastland Disaster. What surfaced recently were fraternal insurance records—documents full of detail, legal battles, and emotional fallout that most histories skip over. These aren’t just forms; they’re grief, held in carbon copy.

This family—John, Veronica, and Edward Schultz—were the relatives of the late Rosemary Pietrzak. Rosemary was one of the very first people I connected with when I started this journey. She was kind, wise, and generous with her family history. She helped me understand not just the facts but the long shadow the Eastland cast over so many lives.

When I came across the Schultz family’s insurance file this year, I felt a responsibility—not just as a researcher, but as someone Rosemary trusted. I wanted to tell this story with care, because she deserved that. Her family deserved that.

She once said to me, “They may not have died on the Eastland, but they surely died of it.” That line stayed with me—and I repeat it often.

This episode is about what happens after disaster. The paperwork. The disputes. The forgotten stories. It’s about how we carry loss, and how even the most overlooked documents can bring dignity back to people who were nearly erased.

💛 For Maggie. For Rosemary. For all of them.

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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 episode 116 of Flower in the River. How are you doing? I hope you're doing well. Well, as always, we have a lot to talk about, so I'm going to jump right in Before we get into today's story I should say stories we've got a couple here. I want to give a shout out to Mike Brady at Ocean Liner Designs for his recent video on the Eastland disaster. My Google alerts well, alerted me that there was a new Eastland documentary and of course I was curious. I share a lot of outside content here when people go the extra mile to treat these stories with respect, and Mike absolutely did that An entirely different perspective, and I really enjoyed that, and I think this will further the reach of the story of the Eastland disaster.

Natalie Zett:

Mike is based in Australia and he is a gifted illustrator who loves ships, and he's turned that love into, among other things, a YouTube channel where he features the histories of various ships, ocean liners, and he's super prolific. His video walks through the disaster from a technical, historical and emotional lens. He and his team he has a team of people doing this with him. They're excellent at using artificial intelligence, historical footage and still images very powerfully. Also, what I like about him I was looking at his website and other work that he's done. He's super generous and transparent about his process, which I think is awesome, and it really helps other people if they're interested in doing this type of work. And what struck me more than the video itself, which is quite fine, was the comments section. People were stunned that they'd never heard of the Eastland disaster and some, of course, had family ties, and one person was actually angry that no one was really ever held accountable for this. Mike has a reach that most of us don't have. I have a theory that I can't quite prove, but it's more anecdotal than anything else.

Natalie Zett:

I think one of the reasons that the story of the Eastland disaster hasn't traveled the way other major tragedies have is that it's been contained and localized For a long time now. The broader narrative has been filtered through a fairly narrow lens, and that's made it harder, but not impossible, for the story to expand. But not impossible for the story to expand. However, the good news is this In this era, with access to artificial intelligence, digital archives, global communication and growing interest in untold stories, in untold histories, this will not be the case for very long. So many people have taken their part in telling the various stories, and there are stories. There's no single story of the Eastland disaster. There are stories of multiple families, multiple people, multiple communities who were affected, and they don't fit under a neat container. So, as I found out, as much as I love Chicago, this isn't just a Chicago story. The people came from all over. Their families spanned states, countries and even continents. The ripples of this tragedy reach far beyond the city and now the story's doing just that too. I'm relieved that there are so many gifted voices coming out of different places with no agenda, and they want to open up the story and, mike, I'm grateful for you and the work that you do so.

Natalie Zett:

Today I'm recording the podcast on May 31st 2025. This is a very special day for me and so many other people who are from Johnstown, pennsylvania. This day is the 136th anniversary of the Johnstown flood and I want to open with a Johnstown story for you. On May 31st 1889, the city of Johnstown, pennsylvania this is in Western Pennsylvania was almost entirely wiped off the map. After days of relentless rain, the South Fork Dam that was up the hill from Johnstown gave way, sending a wall of water thundering through the Connemaw Valley. In just minutes, homes were obliterated, entire neighborhoods vanished and more than 2,000 lives were lost in what would become one of the deadliest disasters in American history. Like the Eastland disaster, this was not a random quote-unquote act of God. It was human failure. Again, I know recurring theme.

Natalie Zett:

So a couple of weeks ago I was trolling eBay, just browsing, trying not to buy anything, when I stumbled across a copy of the centennial edition of the Johnstown Tribune Democrat. This was published in 1989 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Johnstown flood, and I ordered it right away. I was there, I had the entire paper once I picked it up, while I was staying with my cousin in Johnstown during the centennial, and who knows where that paper disappeared to after that. Although my family moved to Cleveland for years, all of us my mom, dad and sister and I would drive back to Johnstown during the weekends. Growing up, I heard all of the stories about the Johnstown flood. You could see the watermarks on various buildings, such as church steeples the ones that weren't decimated, that is and as a child I walked among the identical white stones at Grand View Cemetery. Each one of these unmarked graves marked a victim whose name had been lost to time.

Natalie Zett:

When I was there in 1989, my cousin and I visited the Johnstown Flood Museum and watched the Charles Guggenheim documentary narrated by none other than historian David McCullough. Honestly, seeing that film helped me to understand how layered this story of the Johnstown Flood was, of the Johnstown flood was. It was very complicated and it could not be contained as if you could contain a flood or a story about a flood to a single narrative. It was extremely nuanced and amazingly complicated. This film, it told stories of people, real people with names, faces and lives, and their reactions to what was going on during that awful day. Despite growing up with stories of the Johnstown Flood, watching this movie was the first time I realized the Johnstown Flood was entirely preventable, preventable.

Natalie Zett:

So there was an organization called the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. This was located about 14 miles up the hill, upstream from the city of Johnstown, and it was a retreat for Pittsburgh's wealthy elite. Names like Carnegie, crick, mellon are those familiar to you. Well, they acquired this land and had also acquired the dam and modified it for their pleasure. They lowered it, they removed discharge pipes, they installed fish screens that clogged easily and they ignored the warning that it might fail someday. Someday arrived on May 31st 1889, and the resulting wave that was created after it rained and then the dam broke, crushed and destroyed everything in its path and the headlines of the time. I've seen them. They certainly captured the spectacle of fireballs, twisted steel, entire buildings swallowed up by water, and they also included stories of lives lost, lives saved.

Natalie Zett:

When I got the paper, I was flipping through it again and it was so exciting to see it. Then I ran across an article about a young woman called Maggie Irwin and a short article about her very short life that included excerpts from her writing. Given what I've been doing in the last few years, I locked and loaded on that. I thought, wow. So Maggie was an 18-year-old woman working as a maid in the Holbert House Hotel. She wanted to help support her family. She wanted to help support her family. Her dad died a year before, leaving her mother and nine children at home. Folks, this was during a time where there were no social support systems for people. So Maggie, two days later, applied for a job at this hotel and she relocated to Johnstown. She wasn't living too far from her mom and siblings, but far enough where she couldn't travel and see them all the time. And she was killed in the flood. Her story should have been lost. Okay, there were no headlines about her at that time. She was just one of the many of the 2,000 plus who died.

Natalie Zett:

But here's the thing during the year or so that she was working at the hotel, she kept sending her mother letters and her mother saved those letters and I don't know what happened after that, but I do know that they are now housed at the Johnstown Area Heritage Association. And looking at those letters and the sheer ordinariness of those letters was just wonderful. Maggie, she's 18 years old. She only has, I think, one or two dresses to wear and they're made out of heavy material. She's hot. She asked her mother for a dollar or two because even though she was getting a salary, it wasn't enough for her to buy a new dress. So she was hot. She asked her mother for a dollar or two, because even though she was getting a salary, it wasn't enough for her to buy a new dress. So she was hot. She was miserable, but she tried to make the best of it because she knew she had no choice. She had to do what she needed to do for herself and for her family.

Natalie Zett:

And here's another part of the story that when I read it, it stopped me cold. After the flood I mean, this just took place in a day they located Maggie's body. They were able to identify it, but her mom could not afford to bury her with the headstone with her name on it. So Maggie lies among the unknown graves in Johnstown's Grandview Cemetery. As a child, I probably walked past her grave more than once, because many of my family members are buried near the plot of the unknown. She shouldn't have been lost, but they couldn't afford to remember her in this way. It also reminded me, in parallel with the Eastland disaster, how easily people like Maggie are erased from history, not intentionally, but just because. Had Maggie not written those letters to her mom and had her mom not saved them and turned them over to. Whoever she turned them over to, we would have lost her story. In memory of Maggie, my fellow Johnstown girl, as I call her, I made a quick video, very quick video, with some excerpts from her letters to her mom. It's already posted. I wanted my Johnstown relatives to see it and I'll share a link to it in the show notes.

Natalie Zett:

The Johnstown flood and the Eastland disaster are actually crossover events, if you want to call them that, in my family's greater history. My great-grandfather's sister, julia Pfeiffer, and her family were in the flood of 1889, and they survived it. But, understandably, after their boarding house that they were running was wiped away, they left Johnstown for Chicago. Why Chicago, I don't know. I suspect either my great-grandfather's sister had friends or other family there, or perhaps her husband did, and then my great-grandparents followed them to Chicago a few years later and of course, for my family that move did not prove providential. 26 years later, another tragedy struck. That would be the Eastland disaster.

Natalie Zett:

And 82 years later, after the Eastland disaster, when I first found out about it, I started writing about it, writing articles and writing all sorts of things that would eventually turn into Flower in the River, and back then I thought, if nothing else, this will be interesting to my family. But I soon learned that stories like this appeal to a lot of people. People relate to stories. Stories live in us and that's how we are drawn to people. That's how we resonate with people. We don't resonate over publicity campaigns, over numbers of dead, over the sensationalism of an event like the Eastland or like the Johnstown flood. Actually, that can make us grow numb because it's overwhelming. But a story of an 18-year-old woman trying to do her best, working in a hotel a lot of us, we can relate to that type of life. It's a connection from heart to heart. So that's my Johnstown story. And now we're going to move on to another family, and now we're going to move on to another family In February of 2025,.

Natalie Zett:

I shared a surprising source of information insurance records that's what I said from the Polish Roman Catholic Union of America, or PRCUA. I found them while searching on the Eastland disaster in the full text search tool. It's a feature of familysearchorg and if you go there you have to type familysearchorg, then forward slash labs. As far as I know, that's the most direct way to reach that tool and there I was surprised to find over 20 individual family groups connected to the Eastland disaster who had purchased fraternal insurance through PRCUA, and I featured several of those stories back in February. But there's one more I wanted to cover here.

Natalie Zett:

Each of these family record sets or record groups usually contain standard documents and those would be the PRC member death benefit register page. Then there's a death report or record of death and sometimes there's letters of guardianship and probably one of the most important things is the PRCUA beneficiary certificate. It's quite lovely, but it also has the name of the person, how much they were insured for and other details which were needed at the time of the Eastland disaster. And each one of these people who died on the Eastland have coroner's letters from coroner Peter Hoffman attesting to the fact that this person died as the result of the Eastland disaster. I'd never seen these documents before, never ran across them in any other website or any book devoted to the Eastland disaster. So as far as I can tell, this was a first, a world premiere.

Natalie Zett:

So this type of documentation creates a whole other level of reporting post-Eastland disaster. It's focused on the administrative processing of documents and insurance payments. So it's not just the obituary in the paper or the quote-unquote undertaker's notes or cemetery records. These documents combined are part obituary, but they're also part claim validation. In some of these cases things didn't go smoothly and so a number of these files, these record sets for individual families, have other documents that go beyond the straightforward insurance claim filing process. Insurance seldom goes smoothly anyway, and over 100 years ago it was the same thing and these documents have been a real challenge. Many of them probably are not complete. I'm sure that I don't have all the documents that were once a part of these files, so they're out of sync and many of them are written in Polish, so that makes it an extra crispy bucket of challenge too. So putting them together has taken a bit of time, and again it's much like reconstructing ancient texts, of which I have a little bit of experience, and if you love jigsaw puzzles, that's pretty much a prereq for doing this type of work pretty much a prereq for doing this type of work.

Natalie Zett:

So in past episodes I did share snippets of the story of one particular family, the Schultz family, and they were John, veronica and their baby Edward. They all died on the Eastland and there was also John's brother, joseph. Now Joseph survived the Eastland while his wife Sabina did not, and that left Joseph with two little children at home. And John actually did not work for Western Electric, he was a streetcar conductor and his wife, veronica, was a young wife and mother, and their little baby, edward, was only 17 months old. Why this family is special to me?

Natalie Zett:

Well, that was the family of the late Rosemary Petersuk, who was one of the first people I met, who also lost a family member in the Eastland disaster, who also lost a family member in the Eastland disaster. Now Rosemary, at the time that I met her, was a retired school teacher and since she grew up knowing her family history, she had a lot of wisdom to offer to me and we bonded over this shared experience and she was so kind to me. She was shocked at learning that I had just learned about this portion of my family's history and the connection to the Eastland disaster. She said, well, how are you coping? She was worried about me and I said not very well.

Natalie Zett:

At the time it was quite overwhelming, and so for now and forever, I will always appreciate Rosemary's kindness. What a fantastic person. She was quite the historian, quite a role model, and not just because she had information, but again, she had life experience to share with somebody like me. And so she was talking about some of her other relatives that survived the Eastland disaster, but their lives went out of kilter. And she said, natalie, these people may not have died on the Eastland, but they surely died of the Eastland, and she was so emphatic about that. She was referring to what we now call post-traumatic experiences. Everybody processes or lives with traumatic experiences differently, and Rosemary's family was no exception, and my family was no exception.

Natalie Zett:

So this story, this experience of locating Rosemary's family in the records of the Polish Roman Catholic Union of America well, because of my respect for Rosemary and all she did for me, I wanted to be very careful in how I presented this information to you. And these records are rich. Yes, they're messy. Remember what Krista Cowan says family history is messy. These stories aren't all tidied up. In fact, they continue to live and they unfold as information is located. But you do have to be dedicated to searching, and I think that's one of the things that's been lacking in so many of the stories of these people of the Eastland. A lot of the coverage has been very superficial, and yet there's so much to be discovered, and much of it is available online, but you do have to do a lot of digging.

Natalie Zett:

And until this year, honestly, insurance records in the Eastland disaster. Well, I never put the two together but they really should have been put together long ago by people who came way before I did, because so many people from these various communities, specifically immigrant communities in Chicago, they bought insurance through these various organizations because don't forget that programs like social security didn't exist back then. When people had something happen, a lot of times they were destitute. There was nobody to really help because everybody in their neighborhood, in their family circle, was in the same position. But let's get back to Rosemary Petersick's family. That would be the Schultz family, and this record set had some of the usual documents in there, but it also had some other information.

Natalie Zett:

I also came across something else unexpected A letter not from the PRCUA, but from a completely different fraternal benefit society, the Catholic Order of Foresters. I've discussed them as well in previous episodes because a number of Eastland victims or their families bought insurance through this organization as well. There was a note dated September 25th 1915. This is a couple months after the Eastland disaster and it was addressed to Mr Stanley Wawowiak at 1317 City Hall Square building. It sounds official and it reads I have yours of the 24th.

Natalie Zett:

In regard to the benefit of $1,000 due on account of the death of John Schultz, we will hold payment of this benefit until the adjustment of the conflicting claims. It was signed by Thomas H Cannon. By Thomas H Cannon. Hi, chief Ranger, what's going on there? What was this doing in a PRCUA record set?

Natalie Zett:

So here's what I found out John Schultz, who died, was insured by both organizations at least it appears that way and the family conflict was over who was entitled to benefit, the Schultz family or the Kempa family? And that pulled in fraternal societies. Who are the Kempas? They are the family of John's wife, veronica or Vera, so she was born Vera Kempa. Veronica or Vera, so she was born Vera Kempa. And the PRCUA clearly filed this letter for reference or possibly to document the extent of the dispute, and it shows that immigrant families. They probably thought, well, we'll just buy as much insurance as we can afford. But what happened is then they had multiple overlapping policies through these various organizations and they probably weren't expecting that a massive tragedy would strike them. I mean individual things, accidents at work, of course, those happen quite a bit, but something like the Eastland disaster. No one could prepare for.

Natalie Zett:

This Tragedy exposes fractures in a system, and that's what makes these records so powerful and so painful. They don't just tell us what happened. They show us how grief plays out across family lines. They bring forth questions like who is considered next of kin, who gets to decide what happens after death, and what happens when both sides of a family feel they have a right to claim everything. So the PRCUA and Catholic Order of Foresters weren't just dealing with paperwork. They were mediating emotional and legal fallout, trying to honor the dead and support the living. Here's the thing there's so much missing from these files that we don't know the exact timeline or final terms, but the matter was eventually settled and benefits were paid. So even in tight-knit communities like this, one tragedy doesn't always unify. Sometimes it divides. So, in summary, what happened was John, veronica and Edward had been invited aboard the Eastland by John's brother, joseph, who was a supervisor at Western Electric. That's how that happened. Joseph survived. His wife Sabina who was pregnant at the time, by the way did not, and Joseph and Sabina had two small children, julia and Stanley, both of whom survived.

Natalie Zett:

I'm finding out one thing, and this is why I would like to see more insurance records. They cast a light on what happened to families after the Eastland disaster, and the paperwork left behind is really interesting. Grief held in carbon copy. That's how they used to make copies of things, and sometimes there could be legal disputes that followed. So John Schultz had a life insurance policy with the Catholic Order of Foresters.

Natalie Zett:

Veronica had her policy through the PRCUA, the Polish Roman Catholic Union of America. These policies were for $1,000 each and you might assume, since their only child died, that the policies would simply be split amongst the families. But it wasn't that simple. Now Joseph Schultz who was aboard, remember had two young children to raise on his own. The Schultz family was still reeling and saw the future of their family line resting in those two surviving children. The Schultz side argued this, since Veronica named John as her beneficiary and John may have died after her, even if only a few minutes later, then John's estate. By extension, his family should receive Veronica's insurance payout for the kids. And then, on September 30, 1915, their attorney sent a formal letter to the PRCUA demanding that no funds be paid to anyone until this gets resolved. Meanwhile, on the Kempe side that would be Veronica's family her mother, leoncadia, had already filed paperwork to become legal guardian for three surviving Kempe children.

Natalie Zett:

So a little backstory about this family. The Ancadia wasn't just grieving her daughter, son-in-law and grandson. She also buried another son a couple years later who had a child, and she was just trying to keep her household together. What happened? What appeared to happen? Based on the records I do have, the family came to a truce. They agreed that the Schultz family would receive the payout from John's Catholic Order of Foresters policy, the Kempe family would receive Veronica's PRCUA policy minus 15% as per PRCUA rules. Each side promised not to pursue further claims and during this time when families probably felt like they were collapsing, these two families managed to find an agreement to move forward. But that wasn't the end of it. There were other things going on and the documents show how both sides scrambled to establish legal guardianships, verify errors and secure what little stability they could. Leoncadia filed affidavits in Cook County confirming the names and ages of her surviving children. Joseph Schultz and his siblings appeared before a judge to be officially named as John's heirs.

Natalie Zett:

This wasn't about greed, by the way. This was about basic survival. $1,000 in 1915 wasn't a windfall, but it was what you needed to cover burial costs, support surviving children and family members and keep the family afloat. It was what you hoped would prevent the children ending up in an orphanage. Or if you were older and not working, you could end up in a poor house and be totally destitute.

Natalie Zett:

And these are what these records tell us. They aren't just administrative. They're continuing stories of people like you and me trying to make sense of something totally senseless. And there's one more thread I want to touch upon before we close. You may have noticed that there are no insurance records for Sabina Schulz. She was the wife of Joseph. Now. She was also a victim of the Eastland disaster, so why isn't her information included in this record set?

Natalie Zett:

The likely reason is that Sabina may have been Irish Catholic and the PRCUA was a Polish ethnic fraternal organization. It might sound strange to us, but at that time, in 1915, these societies were often exclusive to people of a certain heritage. Even within the broader Roman Catholic community, irish, polish, german and Italian Catholics often belonged to completely separate parishes and mutual aid groups. So, simply stated, sabina might have had her own insurance policy with another organization, or she might not have joined. And if she wasn't insured through a workplace or some other group. She may have had no policy at all. We also have to consider the gendered reality of the time. If a woman wasn't employed or didn't carry her own policy through a fraternal organization, her death might have been legally invisible, acknowledged only in burial records or coroner's reports. So Sabina's absence in the paperwork is its own kind of story. She was a pregnant woman, a mother of two, a young wife, and yet in this particular archive she mostly vanishes.

Natalie Zett:

While the biography of the Schultz family can tell you who they were in life, these insurance documents tell us who picked up the pieces after they all died. That's why a superficial investigation of the people of the Eastland disaster doesn't cut it. It doesn't tell us who they were. It doesn't tell us how this disaster affected people. It's much deeper than what I originally learned from different sources. That's why it's particularly true in a case like this with the Eastland disaster.

Natalie Zett:

Certainly some research has been done and I've done some research but because there is often a situation just like the one we talked about here, records suddenly appear out of nowhere, records that you didn't even know existed. They are suddenly available and that can change the whole trajectory of your work. That can change the profile that you've created for a person and you have to be willing to change that. You have to be willing to say I got it wrong the first time, through and re-examine. So I hope that you're encouraged by this, the fact that new information is appearing in sometimes very unlikely places. It gives us hope that we can, if not discover the entire history of the Eastland disaster, or rather the people of the Eastland disaster. We can always discover something new and truly no one is ever an expert in this, because it's a very humbling journey. I can say that and I continue to learn every week. I find something new that I often say I didn't know that, and I hope you find this engaging and intriguing, not just for the disaster but for your own family history.

Natalie Zett:

So, and I'll put a link to that earlier podcast about this family and also link to Rosemary's interview from many years ago. But I wonder if she even knew about this dispute. She very well may not have. This happened, after all, years before she was born, so who knows if the family talked about it or not? Speaking of Rosemary, how about if we have her close out this episode?

Natalie Zett:

And in this interview she's talking about the anticipation that her family and others had on that fateful day. This was a time for excitement because they had very ordinary lives. To be traveling across Lake Michigan at 15 miles an hour was high adventure. 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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