Flower in the River: A Family Tale Finally Told

“Catastrophe on the Chicago River” - the Cermak Connection

• Natalie Zett • Season 4 • Episode 150

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In this episode, I finish reading “Catastrophe on the Chicago River,” a Czech-language article by Josef Mach Sr. from 1916. The piece delivers a searing, firsthand account of the Eastland Disaster’s impact on Chicago’s Czech community: families shattered by the loss of multiple members, a grieving husband driven to despair after losing his wife, and three hundred funerals unfolding in just three days.

But then, an unexpected detail rises to the surface.

Near the end of the article, a name appears: Anton J. Cermak. Chief Bailiff. President of the Czech Assistance Committee. The man who would later become Chicago’s first and only foreign (Czech) born mayor—and who would die after the 1933 assassination attempt that also targeted Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Cermak didn’t just oversee a relief fund. According to a 1934 Czech publication, he rushed to the scene, worked without rest for days, and may have never fully recovered.

This was not a new discovery. The Eastland Memorial Society had already traced Cermak’s connection and shared it on their website. When the organization dissolved, that knowledge was left behind. It lingered, preserved yet hidden, waiting in the Internet Archive.

And this cycle repeats itself.

The research is out there. The documentation survives. But when groups dissolve, authors move on, and sites go dark, history sometimes slides back into the river—not because it was never found, but because research gets reduced to a highlight reel and bullet points.

As Elizabeth Shown Mills reminds us, genealogy requires reasonably exhaustive research. That standard doesn’t expire. It doesn’t end when a book gets published or when a historical organization closes its doors.

The Eastland story needs researchers who will keep digging, keep translating, keep connecting the dots, because the cycle of endlessly “rediscovering” what was already known is wearing thin.

Resources:

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 surfaced in family history research. Come along with me on this journey of discovery. Hey, this is Natalie, and welcome to episode 150 of Flower in the River. And I hope you're all hanging in there. This has been an interesting time to live through. At any rate, we are going to get started by concluding the reading of the article Catastrophe on the Chicago River by Joseph Mach or Joseph Mach Sr., published in 1916, gives an intimate account of how the Eastland disaster affected the Czech community in Chicago. I will give you links to the previous episodes, but let's just dive in here and listen to the conclusion because there's a lot to take in. Who can describe the horror, sorrow, and mourning that was shared in these Czech settlements, namely in Cicero, Hawthorne, Czech California, Pilson, and Morton Park? At home, how many mothers' hearts stopped momentarily with an alarming premonition when they heard about the sinking of the Eastland, knowing only that her children might have been aboard. How many fathers shed tears as they reminisced about their children? And the longer the wait, the more horrible were the incoming reports. And alas, these were our fellow countrymen who were hit the hardest, and those terrible premonitions were not false. The pronouncement on the first day of the Chicago River disaster as the worst catastrophe ever to strike the Chicago Czechs was legally proper. Panic and excitement reigned over the Czech quarters, that first day escalating for days afterward. The eyes of them all revealed the pain of despair, boundless sadness, and heartrending grief, and by nine AM the first automobiles were arriving with their loads of rescued fellow countrymen. All were wrapped in heavy covers and were delivered to their homes. Their clothing was torn, muddy and soaking wet, and most of them bloodstained, evidence of a terrible life and death struggle. By their anxiety everyone showed evidence of the torture, fear, and panic that they had experienced. The twenty fourth of july nineteen fifteen was Black Saturday for the Chicago Czechs, in addition to the above mentioned Czech families, all members of whom died in the catastrophe were other families who mourned more than one member. These usually were families with several grown daughters participating in the excursion. The family Strakov lost three members. The family Riedel lost daughters Marie and Rose. The families Astera lost daughters Antonia, Marie, and Julia. The family Dubick lost Mrs. Catherine Dubeck thirty-six and children Catherine fifteen and Joseph eleven. The family Dolias of Morton Park bitterly suffered the loss of three daughters, Rose, Marie and Anna. Anna was to have celebrated her twenty first birthday on the twenty sixth of July. Only the mother, Rose Dolius, and Bessie, twelve, survived. All three daughters were buried together. The family Katovsky lost daughters Johanna and Rose. The family Street lost three daughters. The family Turek lost three members. The couple soon to be married, Irvin Nadernick and Miss Anna Reboat, were buried together, and thus united in death. The family Robert and Marie Youngworth lost two daughters, Lillian eighteen, and Mamie, sixteen, son Fred thirteen, survived. The family John and Francis Salick suffered this touching fate. Mrs. Salick drowned, and Mr. Salek, who managed to save himself, committed suicide by gas inhalation on Tuesday on the twenty seventh of July out of grief over the loss of his spouse. The whole issue of calendar, if devoted entirely to this disaster, could not adequately contain a comprehensive coverage of the grief and pain of each and every Czech family and individually describe their tragic experiences in Chicago, particularly in the Czech quarters in those days. How sad those days were when the funerals of the catastrophe victims were underway. About three hundred funerals were conducted within the Czech quarters over the three days, July twenty sixth, twenty seventh, and twenty eighth of nineteen fifteen, and each of these was attended by thousands filled with sympathy and sadness. Meanwhile, more and more bodies were being retrieved from the river. Who is to blame for the Eastland catastrophe? That was the question that surfaced in the minds of everyone as soon as the extent of the Chicago River accident was known. The universally accepted simple explanation was the criminal negligence, sloppy work, and greed of those who permitted the overloading beyond the legal prescribed maximum numbers of passengers. This despite the fact that the Eastland was condemned long ago as being badly constructed, old and unsuitable for the transport of passengers. Various sources had predicted long ago that a badly constructed ship with improper weight distribution and inadequate ballast would someday suffer a great catastrophe. But this advice and these warnings were ignored, and only after so many hundreds of passengers perished was it admitted that the Eastland was a genuine death trap for its passengers. It was established that the government inspectors did not perform their responsibility when they issued the permit for the permissible number of passengers, that their decisions were biased by various aspects, politics and family nepotism, among others, with such a terrible outcome. Of course, the city, state, and federal government agencies instituted their investigations into the disaster soon after it happened. These are still continuing and they will take a long time. If only the catastrophe would serve as a warning memoir to the investigating agencies and at the same time as the initiator of a fight against the criminal negligence and the official corruption which stains the clean shield of the United States. As was generally conceded, the blame rested in part on the St. Joseph Transportation Company to whom the ship belonged, on the government inspectors who evaluated the ship's suitability, and on the ship's captain and officers, who ignored the safety precautions prescribed by law. Thus, for example, the water ballast tanks were not filled at the time the ship was loaded with passengers, and by this means the rolling and eventual overturning of the vessel happened. In the end, it is said that the ballast tanks could not be filled because the pumps were inoperative. The waterline was incorrectly computed and consequently the ship's balance was easily upset. The ship Eastland was built at an expense of $250,000 in Port Huron, Michigan, but in Cleveland it was soon excluded from passenger transport. After being used there for a while for hauling freight, it was moved to Chicago, where again it was given a permit to transport passengers. The investigation currently underway is to reveal how that could happen. It is hoped that the investigation findings will establish the truly guilty parties and also will seek their punishment for the wasting of so many hundreds of young, beautiful, gifted lives. It was mass murder. May the villains be punished accordingly. The ship's captain, Harry Peterson, was arrested and charged immediately after the catastrophe, and with him all of the ship's crew. As they were being taken away, the thousands of people crowded around them with their anger growing. They were threatening to lynch the suspects had the police not intervened to prevent it. Pederson was publicly called a murderer, and his crew was roughly assaulted. In his testimony, Pederson declared that there was a secret understanding between the ship's owner and the government inspectors in the sense that the ship will take more passengers than was legally allowed. Although previously, on several occasions, the ship had been found unfit to sail, and that no repairs had been made. Up to June, however, the firm had a permit from the government agencies, allowing them to carry up to 2,500 passengers. At that time, Pederson was sent to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the government inspector, Robert Reed, handed him a new certificate for Eastland. Pederson further explained that shortly afterward, Reed's son-in-law, J. M. Erickson, was hired as chief engineer on the Eastland. Walter K. Greenbaum, general manager of Indiana Transportation Company, which hired the Eastland, was imprisoned in the night of the twenty eighth of july nineteen fifteen. The ship's secretary, George W. Munger, who had been missing since the catastrophe, was likewise imprisoned with Martin Flatow, chief agent of the St. Joseph Chicago Steamship Company, which owned the Eastland, and besides them, the ship's chief engineer, Joseph M. Erickson. Charges of murder or of criminal negligence were lodged against each one of them. Three weeks after the catastrophe, the hull of the Eastland was floated to the river surface and towed to South Chicago. The sympathy that surged through every heart in Chicago following the catastrophe was not just platonic. It expressed itself quickly in offers of effective assistance. An assistance committee was formed on the first day. It initiated collections for the family survivors of the victims. That committee operated under the presidency of Mayor Thompson, who returned quickly from San Francisco, where he was attending the fair. The committee collected almost four hundred thousand in the so-called Mayor's Fund. The Czechs also realized the seriousness of the situation, and their leading citizens organized the Czech Assistance Committee, which collected donations for the family survivors of the victims immediately helping those most in need. The president of the Czech Assistance Committee was Chief Bailiff Anton Cermak, and the treasurer was Joseph Halpuck. They collected eight thousand eight hundred twenty-four dollars and twenty-five cents. The author of the article was Joseph Moch, Sr. And I thought I was going to close the podcast here, but wait a second, I found another article. You have to hear this. So we're going to continue. Here's another significant piece of Eastland disaster history that was missed by George Hilton and was missed by nearly every other organization or author in the 21st century, with one exception, the Eastland Memorial Society. The Eastland Memorial Society devoted a page to mayor Anton Cermak. He was born in 1873, died in 1933. I had no idea that Sirmach had any association with the Eastland disaster, but this was not the case. There's another Czech language publication that gives the backstory about all of this. Let me introduce you to Anton Cermak in case his name is not familiar to you. Anton Joseph Cermak was born May 9th, 1873 in Kladno, Bohemia, that's Czech Republic now. It is a village near Prague. He immigrated to the United States as a child, and his father was a coal miner, and soon Anton was working long hours in the coal mines near Joliet, that's Illinois, earning $1.50 a day. After coming to Chicago, Sir Mac worked as a railroad brakeman and in 1892 started a hauling business, wood, coal, etc., and working as a teamster, which would later earn him the nickname Pushcart Tony. Sirmak became a Democratic precinct worker. He organized the United Societies for Local Self-Government and in 1902 became a state legislator. He held the position of chief bailiff in 1915, that was during the Eastland disaster. Sirmak was a founder and president of the Czech Assistance Committee, which we heard about in this article, which was created in response to the capsizing of the Eastland. The committee collected donations for the family survivors of the victims, immediately helping those most in need. He later used his knowledge of government land purchase plans to make a fortune speculating in real estate, earning over seven million dollars. In 1928, Sir Mac ran an unsuccessful campaign as a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Illinois. On February 24, 1931, he won the Democratic primary election, defeating John B. DeVonay. Then on April 7th, 1931, Sir Mac won the general election as the thirty fifth mayor of Chicago, defeating Republican incumbent William Big Bill Hale Thompson by nearly two hundred thousand votes to become the first and only foreign born mayor of Chicago. He assumed office on April 9th in the formal inauguration ceremonies following April twenty seventh at seven thirty PM, where he gave his inaugural address. Sirmack gained the enmity of the Chicago. Mob by protecting his ally, labor organizer Roger Tui. On December 19, 1932, he sent two police sergeants to 221 North LaSalle to arrest Frank Niddy. A gunfight erupted, severely wounding Niddy. To claim self-defense, Sergeant Lang shot himself in the hand and claimed Niddy had fired first. Niddy recovered from the shooting and was put on trial for shooting Sergeant Lang. During the trial, Sir Mac and his aides traveled to Florida to escape Niddy's wrath. In Miami on February 15, 1933, Sir Mac made a public appearance in a parade with President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The parade car moved slowly down the street as President-elect Roosevelt and Mayor Sir Mac smiled and waved. The car stopped, and Roosevelt gave a speech while sitting on the back of the car. Five shots rang out, and a nearby photographer joked, just like Chicago, eh, Mayor? The bullets hit four bystanders, including a mother of five children, and Mayor Sir Mac. Sir Mac had been mortally wounded, shot by Italian immigrant Giuseppe Zangara. The mayor fell out of the car and called out The President, get him away. Roosevelt ordered his car to stop and had the mayor put in with him. President elect Roosevelt held Sir Mac all the way to the hospital. On march sixth, nineteen thirty three, Sir Mac succumbed to his wound. Before he died, he is reported to have said to the president, I'm glad it was me instead of you, Mr. President. Never displaying any remorse for his actions, Giuseppe Zangara was executed in the electric chair on March twenty first, nineteen thirty-three. What I just read to you is from an article on the Eastland Memorial Society's website on the Internet Archive. When I located the original Czech language publication where Catastrophe on the Chicago River was published, I found another Czech language publication. It was printed in Chicago. This publication is called the Lasitelle Calendar. The date is 1934. It's an article about the Eastland disaster where Sir Mac is mentioned. Quote, one of the greatest catastrophes struck Chicago at the time when SERMAC was bailiff. It was the fateful july twenty fourth, nineteen fifteen, when the Western Electric Company organized an excursion for the factory workers to Michigan City. The happy factory workers boarded the boat Eastland, which was then moored at the bridge on Clark Street. Whole families were there, fathers and mothers, older sons and daughters, and also the little ones. Suddenly the boat tilted. Horror, and then also death and destruction. I will not return to those terrible scenes. I will not describe those sad, oh so sad funeral processions, to perhaps all the cemeteries in Chicago and to our Czech ones most of all. I want so much to point out that it was above all Anton Yosef Cermak, chief bailiff of the municipal court in Chicago, who perhaps did the most then for our afflicted and devastated families. On the day of the catastrophe and then for a whole series of days after it, Sirmak did not have a moment's rest, and neither did his people. As soon as news of the disaster reached him, he summoned his people and at their head rushed to the scene. Here much work awaited them, sad and heartbreaking work, rescuing the drowning and retrieving the dead. Everyone worked desperately without rest, and Sirmack and Sonenshine set a great example for all. Then came the rest, identifying the dead in various morgues, transporting them to their homes, and finally the funerals. Listen, dear readers, I do not hesitate to declare if Anton J. Cermak was ever stricken by illness, then its seed had its origin there in the Eastland catastrophe. Hardly had Sirmac somewhat recovered from that exhausting experience and work when other work awaited him. In Europe war clouds were gathering, and finally cannons began to roar, and the United States was preparing. Do you remember, dear reader, our preparedness parades? Surely you surely remember, and you must also recall that at the head of every such parade marched Anton Cermak with his bailiffs, and at every such gathering, Cermak occupied a place of honor. There's more to that article, but this is the part that I wanted to share with you that Cermak was involved with the Eastland disaster. I was reading to you from a translation of a Czech language document that was published in Chicago in 1934. It was called Lostel Calendar. This is another omission, and it shows once again what's happened in the 21st century, in the middle of the 21st century, although we have so much access to so much online, translation tools, etc. Not just about the Eastland disaster itself, but about the many, many people whose lives were touched by the Eastland disaster. There's a big disconnect between what is out there and what is easily accessible, and what you see as presented as the history of the Eastland disaster in many of these 21st century retellings. According to Elizabeth Schoen Mills, you have to conduct in genealogy reasonably exhaustive research. In the two years and two months or so that I've been doing this deep research of the people of the Eastland disaster, this entire experience has been a real eye-opener for me as well. I thought because there was such a solid foundation with George Hilton's work, and then that continued with the Eastland Memorial Society. Once they disbanded, that was it. The research definitely slowed down, and it gave way to other focuses. The stories of the people, the documentation, the source citation, the provenance, that seemed to take a back seat. So what I've been trying to do is restore as much of that as possible. And I have to say it's fascinating work. I mean, to have finished reading Catastrophe on the Chicago River, to see the mention of Anton Cermak, and I had no idea he was even involved in any way with the Eastland disaster, then to find out, lo and behold, the Eastland Memorial Society already had mention of him, and then to dig a little further and find the Czech language publication that went into a fair amount of detail about his involvement. So I love uncovering this history to share with you because I want to make sure that you understand that the history's there. It just has not been explored. But we will explore more next week, I promise. In the meantime, please take care of yourselves and take care of each other. I'll talk to you next week. Goodbye. 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 www.flowerinthher.com. 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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Natalie Zett

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