Introduction and one-year anniversary of the Flower in the River podcast (52 episodes!).
Jacqueline Winspear quote and discussion of the Maisie Dobbs series, highlighting themes of personal growth, historical context, resilience, and the complexity of human character.
Setting the stage: the role of religious identity in early 20th century Chicago.
Introducing the Norwegian Lutheran communities in Chicago.
Meet the Iverson family and the stories of two sisters who died in the Eastland Disaster: Mabel Iverson Gibson and Louise Iverson Theil.
I also share my own connections with the Norwegian community that were forged over lutefisk, green Jello and being involuntarily signed up for a Sons of Norway membership!
Preview of the next episode focusing on Jewish communities affected by the Eastland Disaster.
Introduction and one-year anniversary of the Flower in the River podcast (52 episodes!).
Jacqueline Winspear quote and discussion of the Maisie Dobbs series, highlighting themes of personal growth, historical context, resilience, and the complexity of human character.
Setting the stage: the role of religious identity in early 20th century Chicago.
Introducing the Norwegian Lutheran communities in Chicago.
Meet the Iverson family and the stories of two sisters who died in the Eastland Disaster: Mabel Iverson Gibson and Louise Iverson Theil.
I also share my own connections with the Norwegian community that were forged over lutefisk, green Jello and being involuntarily signed up for a Sons of Norway membership!
Preview of the next episode focusing on Jewish communities affected by the Eastland Disaster.
Hello, I'm Natalie Zett and welcome to Flower in the River. This podcast, inspired by my book of the same name, explores the 1915 Eastland disaster in Chicago and its enduring impact, particularly on my family's history. We'll explore the intertwining narratives of others impacted by this tragedy as well, and we'll dive into writing and genealogy and uncover the surprising supernatural elements that surface in family history research. Come along with me on this journey of discovery. Well, hello, this is Natalie and welcome to Episode 52 of Flower in the River podcast, and 52 episodes mean this is some kind of anniversary. Yeah, it's a year, and my fellow podcasters asked me what I'm doing to celebrate. And I'm doing this, producing another episode, and thank you all for being with me through this journey. Welcome new people and people who have been with me from the beginning. Glad you're still here, and so we will continue the discussion about the varied religions, religious cultures or faith communities of those who died in the Eastland. This will be the last one that I do, for a while anyway, on the Lutheran communities only because there are so many Lutherans, believe it or not, and I need to space these stories out a little bit. But before I get into all of that, here's some food for thought from the author of the Maisie Dobbs series, jacqueline Winspear. Stay with the question. The more it troubles you, the more it has to teach you. In time, you will find that the larger questions in life share such behavior.
Natalie Zett:
If you don't know the Maisie Dobbs series of books, I highly recommend them. They are fascinating and they begin with a story about a young English girl named, yes, maisie Dobbs. When we first meet her, she's a teenager and she's working as a servant in turn of the century England in a very well to do house, and her sharp intellect catches her employer's eye. Instead of just patting her on the back, her employer is one of the good ones and introduces the young girl to Maurice Blanche, a figure who becomes her mentor and teacher. But Maurice isn't just any teacher. He's the kind who shows Maisie that the true magic of a question, for example, isn't just in the straightforward answer, but in the journey and in the thought process that gets us there. It's about the learning curves, the attention we give to our thoughts and how we piece things together, much like examining a pebble and discovering its multitude of colors when looked at closely. So the pebble analogy that Maurice uses isn't just fancy talk. It's a metaphor for our own multifaceted nature. By encouraging young Maisie to see below the surface, maurice is essentially telling us all to embrace the complexity of our inquiries and, in turn, understand the complexity within ourselves.
Natalie Zett:
If you follow the series, you know that Maisie's story doesn't stop with just the philosophical musings. Oh no, it thrusts her right into the thick of history, from serving as a nurse in the trenches of World War I, where she herself is injured, to evolving into a psychologist and private investigator. Maisie doesn't just live through history, she interacts with it in profound ways, often finding herself in situations where she is in danger, and always, always, always, she's asked to do the impossible. So for genealogy enthusiasts, for history enthusiasts, I think we can relate to that type of sentiment. Maisie's journey is a treasure trove, a gold mine, blending personal growth with historical milestones. It's a series that goes beyond the past and it teaches us about resilience, the depth of human character, the intricate dance of fate and of choice and there is not always a happy ending. In each book, by the way, maisie faces down all sorts of tragedies. It also teaches us how paradoxical we are sometimes and tries to teach us to just be with that and not judge that or stomp it out.
Natalie Zett:
Maisie's story is a vivid landscape of lessons, adventures and the undeniable proof that we, like our questions, are much more than what meets the eye, and all of that definitely factors heavily into this Eastland Chronicles series that I have been creating each week on the fly, because I never know who I'm going to discover, how much I'm going to discover and how many brick walls I'm going to have to burst through, or dead ends that I'm going to have to find another way around, I think any genealogist would say and in fact I know they would if you want to stick with doing genealogy, you have to accept the fact that you are not going to get instant answers, and that runs counter to, I think, how we're programmed in society. We want it right away, we want it yesterday if we can get it, and to have to wait and to have to keep struggling and asking questions. It can be challenging and I too confess that I am probably one of the most impatient people I know, but genealogy has really taught me a lot about how to slow it down, how to look in different places and how to wait sometimes for the answer to come to me, because there are times where you just can't force it. Such has been the case for me this week, when I've been looking up the bios of a few people I wanted to profile. I found a lot of information, that's true, but as I tried to get to the heart of the lives of some of these people, I also hit a lot of brick walls. Nonetheless, I want to continue. So, as always, I have to set the stage. Set the scene for our adventures here.
Natalie Zett:
At the turn of the 20th century, religious identity played a big role in a person's life and in the life of a community. This was especially true in places like Chicago, which had an influx of immigrants from all over. For the last couple of episodes, I have intentionally focused on the German Lutheran communities in Chicago only because they haven't been profiled very much, and in this episode I'm going to segue into the Norwegian Lutheran community of Chicago. I should say communities, because they too were very different and they differed from each other, as well as other Lutheran communities at that time, and I want to share what makes them so unique and what makes them so alike.
Natalie Zett:
Metropolitan Chicago's religious landscape is a vivid mosaic, if you haven't figured that one out already and it reflects its diverse inhabitants, from early settlers to recent immigrants. People have brought their religious, cultural, culinary and architectural heritage, creating cities across the United States dotted with synagogues, churches, mosques, temples, etc. Etc. No place is that more evident than in Chicago. So, from the early days to industrial expansion, which is the time around the Eastland disaster, but stepping back, chicago's religious roots trace back to Father Marquette in 1673. Yeah, that long ago. The first Methodist Catholic and Jewish congregations were established in the early 19th century, focusing initially on the city center before spreading outward Post Great Fire and through the industrial expansion. Religious institutions grew alongside the city's booming population, often aligning with the ethnic and social makeup of neighborhoods. This period saw the establishment of numerous churches and religious communities, reflecting the varied origins of Chicago's residents. Chicago's religious geography is a reflection of its economic history too, along with social sorting and the global origins of its inhabitants. Each wave of settlers and immigrants has contributed to the city's complex religious and cultural tapestry, making metropolitan Chicago a microcosm of global religious diversity.
Natalie Zett:
This narrative encapsulates the dynamic interplay between religion, culture and urban development in one of America's great cities, and also, I might add, conflict too. It's not as if we can all just magically get along with each other, and you'll see that, even within groups that really should have everything in common. But there is constantly this need to individuate, I guess, and a need that we all have to see things differently. For example, all Lutherans are not alike, all Roman Catholics are not alike, all Jewish people are not alike, so it's important to keep what binds us, but also what makes us different, as we hold this paradox. Introducing the Norwegian Lutheran communities of Chicago at the turn of the 20th century Got that Okay. As mentioned, the last two episodes provided a high-level intro to Lutheranism and focused on the German Lutheran families whose lives were affected by the Eastland disaster. This episode will focus on another branch of Lutherans those who immigrated from Norway to Chicago.
Natalie Zett:
The Norwegian adventure in Chicago kicked off around 1836, making it the third Norwegian settlement in the United States. It all started when a few families decided to stick around in Chicago instead of moving on. One of the first Norwegians to call Chicago home was a sailor, david Johnson, who landed in 1834. With the opening of the Illinois and Michigan Canal in 1848, more Norwegians flocked to the city, finding work and making their mark in shipping, building trades and tailoring. The early Norwegians settlers pitched their tents in an area called the Sands, a not-so-glamorous spot north of the Chicago River. Despite the tough living conditions, this tight-knit community from western Norway grew, with over 500 Norwegians living in Chicago by 1850. As the city developed, norwegians moved, setting up shop along Milwaukee Avenue, and by the 1860s that's where you'd find the majority of Chicago's Norwegian population. But they were on the move and the scene shifted again to the Humboldt Park and Logan Square areas, forming what would be the final Norwegian colony in the city before it spread out into the suburbs.
Natalie Zett:
By the early 20th century, chicago boasted the third largest Norwegian population in the world, with newspapers like Scandinavian reaching Norwegians nationwide and becoming a cultural powerhouse. The community, though, wasn't just about numbers. It was a hive of cultural and professional activity, from groundbreaking engineers and architects to ski-jump enthusiasts and football coaching legends like Newt Rockney. Norwegians in Chicago while they made their mark. The community's religious life was vibrant too, centering largely around Lutheran churches but also embracing a diversity of faiths, reflecting their adaptability and the broadening of their social roles in their new home. The Norwegian footprint in Chicago is still evident, by the way, with the Norwegian Lutheran Memorial Church on Logan Square holding onto its roots, conducting services in Norwegian, serving a dispersed but still connected community. By 2000, nearly 84,000 people in the area claimed Norwegian ancestry, a testament to the enduring legacy of this vibrant community in the fabric of Chicago.
Natalie Zett:
So there you have it a story, as always, of resilience, community and cultural richness, from the sands to the suburbs and beyond. As is often the case with the Eastland disaster, more than one member of a family was killed. For this episode. I'll introduce you to two sisters who died, Mabel Iverson-Gipson and Louise Iverson-Theil. I want to step back and share their family's immigration story. You have to hear this because it began with their grandfather, ivor Iverson, who was born in Norway in 1828. And he later married another Norwegian immigrant called Anna Torstotter. They settled in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, where they farmed and had several children. Now I should mention that, according to his family's records, ivor fought for the union during the Civil War, and not only that, he marched in Lincoln's funeral. One of Ivor's and Anna's children, theodore, relocated to Chicago, which is about 200 miles away from the family farm in Wisconsin, where Theodore eventually married another Norwegian immigrant, Marie Olsen, and had several children. He worked as a carpenter, but I'm not sure who employed him. I came upon this family as I was researching the records of a Lutheran church in Chicago called the Haugge or Haugus Lutheran Church. In those church records from July 1915, they listed two people who died in the Eastland disaster Mabel Ivorson-Gipson and Louise Ivorson, theel or Teel. Those are two of the children of Theodore and Marie Ivorson. Now I know you're wondering about that name of that church, unless you are Norwegian yourself. Before I go into that, let me give you a little background on this church body.
Natalie Zett:
The Norwegian Lutheran church in the United States grew out of the traditions brought by the Norwegian immigrants, especially during the migration boom from the 1860s to the early 20th century. These immigrants initially belonged to the Church of Norway, which is an evangelical Lutheran church shaped by Norway's constitution. In other words, it's a state church. As they settled in the United States, they formed their own distinct Lutheran communities. You know, since Norway was across the sea and they're in a new place, they had to adapt and adjust and in a sense, reinvent some of that, and that led to the creation of various synods and conferences that have played a significant role in shaping today's Lutheran landscape in the United States.
Natalie Zett:
What's with that Haugge name? That's H-A-U-G-E. I know you're curious about that name? You may be wondering was there a St Haugge in the Norwegian Lutheran church history? Not quite, but in a way maybe there was a religious movement. Maybe it could be classified as a revival movement within the Norwegian church that was started by Hans Nielsen Haugge, a Lutheran preacher who was at odds with the Norwegian state church. Hans was born in the 1700s and died in 1824. Haugge and his followers were persecuted, and thus many of them came to America to practice their beliefs. However, hans Nielsen Haugge did not come to America. Many of these folks settled in Illinois in the Fox River settlement. Early Olsenhetlevet, a Haugian, was an early spiritual leader there.
Natalie Zett:
The Haugie Synod was a Norwegian Lutheran church body in the US that kicked off in the late 19th century, named after our Norwegian revivalist Hans Nielsen Haugge. The group was all about keeping it simple in worship and focusing big time on personal faith, just like Haugie himself advocated. Now they split from the evangelical Lutheran church of North America in 1876 and made their own path. Red Wing Seminary in Minnesota was their educational hub, starting from 1879 until 1917. Eventually, though, in 1917, they decided to join forces with the Norwegian Lutheran church of America, which evolved into the evangelical Lutheran church, which became part of the American Lutheran church in 1960. Now we're not done yet because this group, meaning the American Lutheran church, the ELCA, eventually merged into what is now the evangelical Lutheran church in America, the ELCA. So if you followed all that, you're pretty good. And the Haugie Synod was actually pretty much a stepping stone into the big Lutheran family that we see today in America. So that's its origin story, where it came from and where it is now.
Natalie Zett:
You may be wondering what is a synod? What a word huh. Synod is a formal organization within the broader structure of a church denomination. That's making it really simple there. It operates with set rules, regulations and procedures to govern its meetings, decisions and the implementation of those decisions across the churches that it oversees. Synod's are organized at various levels local, regional or national and they play a key role in shaping the doctrine, worship practices and administrative policies of the churches under their umbrella.
Natalie Zett:
Now let's go back to Chicago. Okay, the Hauges Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church was founded in 1900 in Chicago's Humboldt Park area and their church records from 1915 were in Norwegian. So I suspect their church services were also in Norwegian at that point. They haven't quite reached the integration or assimilation if you want to call it that. However, thanks to eBay, I was able to get their 25th anniversary booklet, which was published in 1925. And this little booklet, which was very well done with photos and all kinds of advertisements, it also provided a terrific lens into that time in their history. It was written in both English and Norwegian. That said, there's no mention of the Eastland disaster in this little booklet. As the years passed and as the older members died, they too lost touch with the old country and the old country ways and became more integrated into the larger community. By the same token, they probably still hold fast to certain traditions, such as marrying within their own community and observing church rituals. I suspect, too, that the Hauges Lutheran Church was a very strong community and provided a lot of support for its members, as the other churches of that time did, and when the Eastland disaster happened they would need that community in a very deep way.
Natalie Zett:
So from my research this week, I saw that there were at least two members of the Hauges Lutheran Church who lost their lives in the Eastland disaster. They were the daughters of Theodore and Marie Iverson. The first daughter was the older of the two. Her name was Louise Iverson, and she was born in Chicago in 1887. She married Roy Theil in 1909, when she was 22. Roy was born to a German immigrant dad and a Norwegian immigrant mom who settled in Chicago. A year after Louise and Roy married, their son, Richard, was born. Roy worked for Western Electric and I'm not sure if Louise was still working there, but in the 1910 census Louise was working for Western Electric but Roy was working there, and I'm guessing that's how they both ended up on the Eastland. I am not sure if their son, who would have been five years old at that point, was with them, but Roy survived, and Roy eventually remarried.
Natalie Zett:
In his obituary there was no mention of his first family, and that's not atypical, by the way. Richard the son well, he went on to have a long life. He had his own orchestra, for a while he worked as a chauffeur and eventually he worked as an engineer. He died in 1993 in Arizona, and in his brief obituary there is no mention of his parents either.
Natalie Zett:
Let's talk about Mabel Younger sister. Mabel Iverson was born on the 7th of April in 1890, also in Chicago, and in the 1910 census she was also listed as working as a telephone operator for Western Electric. It's important to mention too that most of the Iverson children, except the young ones, were working at Western Electric in 1910. Mabel married Nicholas Gibson, who was born to Swedish immigrants. They married at the Haulge Church in 1913 and had no children. It's hard to tell, but Nicholas too may have worked for Western Electric and the listings in the death records for the Haulges Lutheran Church are written in Norwegian and the handwriting is actually very difficult to read. It was a bit of a challenge, but what jumped off the page in the listing of the deaths of the two sisters were the words Eastland Accident, even though it was written in Norwegian with that most interesting handwriting, I knew what that meant.
Natalie Zett:
The sisters were buried in Mount Olive Cemetery, which is in Chicago, and it's located in the Jefferson Township of Cook County and was, and maybe still is, primarily a Lutheran and Scandinavian cemetery. A little bit of trivia about this cemetery the majority of deaths, the early deaths, are those of extremely young persons, and it helps to set the context to realize all the other things that were going on in Chicago during that time period that were killing people. So in these cemetery records there's all sorts of information about the cause of people's deaths, such as typhoid fever, which caused 10 deaths. Cholera 7. Gastrointestinal 6. Diphtheria and scarlet fever, 5 each. Menangitis 3. And convulsions. Many babies died of convulsions. Old age was rare One died at 74, one at 73, and one at 60 from heart disease. And that's a bit of trivia that was captured by the folks who've documented some of the records at Mount Olive Cemetery and thank you for that.
Natalie Zett:
After the Eastland disaster, the surviving Iverson family continued on and I'm guessing that having that tight-knit community around the Hulgee Lutheran Church helped them carry the grief. Marie, their mother, died in 1928. And Theodore, their father, died in 1938. Communities, I know, look different now than they did at the turn of the 20th century and for many of our lives. Well, they don't center around a place of worship, at least the way they did in Chicago at that point. But I have to say this the need for community and connection always remains inside of us.
Natalie Zett:
Here's a little coda to this episode from my life. So, as I've mentioned and if you follow this podcast, you know that I spent a number of years in the German Lutheran Church, specifically the Missouri-Synod Lutheran Church. So, fast forward. When the time came for graduate school I thought, hmm, let's try a different branch of Lutheranism and see how that feels, see how that fits. So I relocated from out east, as they say here, to Minnesota, where I had never been before and thought I had no connections, familial or otherwise, to. I've always liked starting over and I always like fresh slate, so this seemed like a fresh slate. I had no idea at that point how fresh of a slate that this was going to be, because when I was living at the seminary and my whole world was Lutheran seminary and any of its offshoots, I worked for the American Lutheran Church and I was involved in all things Lutheran.
Natalie Zett:
It was so dramatically different from what I understood as being Lutheran, as being brought up in that German Lutheran tradition. Lutheran seminary was very, very Norwegian influenced and many of the people were actually from Norway. So I got a taste of Norway without ever having to cross the Atlantic. The food was different, the expressions were different, the prayer book was different, the hymns obviously were the same, but even the liturgy was remarkably different than what I knew and the inside jokes that I didn't get because I wasn't Norwegian or Swedish. So in some ways I was of them, but not quite of them, and yet I have to say I really love them too, even though a lot of the time I didn't know what in the heck they were talking about.
Natalie Zett:
The funniest story that I have is when several of my seminary friends invited me to this lodge that they belong to in Minneapolis. It was called the Sons of Norway, and I later found out that the lodge served a number of purposes, including early on, to help Norwegian immigrants adapt, or, if they were running into financial hardships, they would be there to support them. But they also work really hard to sustain and promote Norwegian culture. So I was at this Sons of Norway annual dinner event. Here's the one thing that Lutheran organizations had in common, and that would be Jell-O salads. At least they used to have Jell-O salads in common, and I'm talking about that green Jell-O with the sliced carrots inside, or sometimes even marshmallows for an extra bit of sugar. That seemed to be universal at that point.
Natalie Zett:
And other than that, I was looking at this spread that they had for us, and all of the food was white. I mean, there were things like krumkake, lefse and that thing that makes me kind of sick. Oh, lutefisk, that thing. That was the most amazing thing. I was used to a little more variety in my diet than what they had and, to the best of my recollection, there was no kind of spice anywhere other than salt. So I just remembered this.
Natalie Zett:
The food was actually really good, but I was astonished at how different everything was, and differences are always interesting to me. I enjoy them because they really blow my mind, other than the Jell-O that is. The Jell-O was something I could hold on to. It was my anchor point that said, yes, this is the center of all things Lutheran, but beyond that everything was so different. Yet again, in that difference I have found so much that I really love.
Natalie Zett:
What I have always appreciated about Scandinavian people in general I'm being general here is the reserve, because I too am very introverted and I like to take time to get to know somebody. So actually this has really worked out well for me in terms of making friends and getting to know people. Up here. It's the usual once people get to know you and trust you, they make you part of their lives. So what somebody did at the end of the event she was one of the very active membership committee people and she took it upon herself to sign me up with the Sons of Norway and she came over smiling and said thank you for your membership, and I said whoa, you might want to rethink that. I mean, I'm not a son and I'm not a Norwegian. And she said well, you're Lutheran. I said yeah, and she said you can join, no problem. So at any rate, I am a member of the Sons of Norway, although that, like so many other things in my life, was pure accident. So that's the little weird story and that's it for this week.
Natalie Zett:
Next week, we're going to take another detour into the Jewish communities that were affected by the Eastland disaster. In the meantime, I don't know, I have this sudden hankering for green jello, so I'm going to sign off. Have a good week and I will talk to you next week. Hey, that's it for this episode and thanks for coming along for the ride. Please subscribe or follow so you can keep up with all the episodes, and for more information, please go to my website that's wwwflowerintherevercom. 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 experience the Eastland disaster of 1915. Goodbye for now.