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 and welcome to episode 59 of Flower in the River podcast. Today, we are going to explore a transformative movement where platforms like Reclaim the Records, wikitree, jetmatch and Find a Grave exemplify a rising zeitgeist. This is where ordinary people, empowered by technology and the internet, are taking the reins of historical documentation into their own hands. First of all, do you know Reclaim the Records? If not, you might want to take a look at their website. They really do stand out as a nonprofit organization that advocates for public access to historical documents, using legal means to unlock archival records previously hidden from view. What they've done is they've taken on some of these institutions where hiding these records or limiting access to them makes no sense. This approach underscores a societal shift toward transparency and communal ownership of history, and I just checked their website this morning and they displayed prominently these words, quote we want our records back and we got them. More than 60 million records reclaimed so far, and they haven't been in business that long, so check them out, they are amazing. The second one on my list is Wikitree. Do you know that one? They illuminate the power of collaborative genealogy, and this is a place where users around the world contribute to a unified family tree, showcasing how shared knowledge can eclipse traditional gatekeeping in family history tool, and I think it was invented by just one guy and let's just say it has evolved dramatically. Although it was supposed to allow genealogists who tested in different companies to share their DNA, it has become instrumental in solving cold cases. Yes, gedmatch has demonstrated how citizen scientists can go beyond genealogical research to impact broader societal issues. Of course, most of us use GEDmatch for our genealogy work, but it also has other uses as well, and what happens in the future remains to be seen.
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Now let's get back to Find a Grave, because that's the one I really want to talk about, and Find a Grave also began as a simple endeavor to catalog grave information, but it, too, has grown into an indispensable resource for genealogists and family historians, allowing people to create virtual memorials and connect family links across generations, and I think it helps, too, that Ancestry bought them around 2013, so they have that behind them as well. Now, all of these platforms that I just described have experienced a lot of growing pains. They've gone through a lot and they have, as the years have passed, significantly improved, largely due to the extensive involvement of their users, who provide essential checks and balances, and I have to say I was not keen on Find a Grave and these types of sites at first, because I was used to a fair amount of quality control. However, as time passed, increasingly I had concerns about this quality control stuff. Actually, it wasn't the quality at all I was concerned about. It was the control, some of the control that these organizations felt they had over certain information that really should be available, but it's not. Well, that concerns me, but thankfully, as you can see by these other organizations that have sprung up, I'm not the only person with this concern, and while it's clear that a few institutions might prioritize control over quality, others, like the Newberry, like the Chicago History Museum, like the Chicago Public Library and so many others, exemplify transparency and do an excellent job of making history accessible. As I step back and look at this from a distance, it seems that these initiatives are part of a broader democratization of history and genealogy. And there's more good news the shift toward collaborative and open source models isn't just confined to history and to genealogy. It extends to music, visual arts and writing and writing. Like many, many others at this point, I too am an independent participant in this empowering movement which encourages direct involvement across various fields.
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Now I promised that I would talk about Find a Grave last week and explain how to use it, and I will do that, I promise. But first I got to tell you what happened last week. Because I'm still not sure how to interpret this, I titled this section Another Detour. Long-time listeners know that I'm all about sharing my weekly discoveries about the people and communities touched by the Eastland disaster. These episodes are like sketches and are not usually exhaustive research. I'm laying tracks for myself and anyone else drawn to the stories of the Eastland's people and, as I always say and will keep saying, I'm constantly adjusting course because new information is popping up faster than I can track. Not that I'm complaining, but the irony is, before all of this, I would usually take my sweet time with research, and my research pace was usually slower than molasses in January. Yet here I am diving in without a safety net because, frankly, many of these stories have waited long enough to be told.
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So what happened last week? Well, after publishing the latest episode, which featured two Eastland victims that would be Theodore Hollis, a Greek immigrant, and Mary Helen Egan, a 15-year-old schoolgirl new and crucial information surfaced. I had told you Mary's story, based on an obituary from the July 26, 1915 edition of the Chicago Tribune, which only listed her immediate family. But then, a twist, a more detailed obituary from July 31, 1915 popped up, which I had missed. This later obituary answered many of my questions and connected Mary to a group of people, including a family that gained prominence post-Eastland disaster and who are still talked about today. I have to confess that had I found this July 31st obituary earlier, mary's story might have been delayed, because I really haven't wanted to focus on people whose stories have been told many, many times. Ah, but here's something else I learned Even the stories of well-known families in the Eastland disaster have parts of their stories untold, so they need to be examined again as well, because new information is always becoming available as we speak, there's probably new records coming online. So how about this? Let me read the updated obituary to you now, then explain the context and at the end of the podcast I will tell you how I added this information to Mary Helen Egan's profile on Find a Grave. On Find a Grave, this is Mary Helen Egan's updated obituary.
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South Kilbourne Avenue was with a party of 12 friends, all but one of whom were drowned. She completed her sophomore year in the Austin High School in June. Those who went down with her were Mr and Mrs George Sindelar and their five children, miss Regina Doziel, mrs Sindelar's sister, mrs Tom Woods and her three-year-old son and a brother of Mr Woods, all of 4557 Jackson Boulevard. Miss Alice Woods, 16 years old, was the only survivor in the party. Miss Egan was the daughter of Redmond J Egan and Julia A, egan née Sweeney and the sister of Redmond J Jr, edward E, donald W and Julia E. The funeral was held Wednesday from the home to St Mel's Church where high mass was celebrated. Interment was in Calvary Cemetery.
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Well, let's go with the easier stuff and work our way up. First of all, it tells us where Mary lived, and that would be 319 South Kilbourne and according to the Chicago Ancestors page, which is operated by the Newberry. By the way, it tells us that this is the West Garfield Park area and we know that she completed her sophomore year at Austin High School in Chicago. The Chicago Public Library has this info about Austin High School, quote the Austin neighborhood is seven miles west of Chicago's Loop community number 25 of Chicago's 77 official communities. It is on the western edge of the city, bordering Cicero, oak Park and Elmwood Park.
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Austin was annexed into Chicago in 1889. Austin High School has served Chicago's Austin community since the last quarter of the 19th century. Delos Bazell was Austin High School's first principal from 1876 to 1879. During that time the school occupied one room of the North School on Ohio Street. In the late 1870s, austin High School's library consisted of some 700 books, which led to the hiring of the school's first librarian. From the Austin community's settlement's annexation to the city of Chicago in 1889, the Austin High School's student population grew dramatically, from 400 students in 1900 to 2,298 in 1920 and 6,815 students in 1931.
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And I'll stop there only because the Eastland took place in 1915, and I want to stay focused on that era and the fact that Mary went to Austin High School provided a clue for me. I have the feeling that, since there were other girls her age who were on the boat journey together here, they might have gone to the same high school. That remains to be seen. But we'll continue. I'm going to introduce you to the people in this article, even though you may have already heard of some of them. Here's an interesting thing these people are not only connected via the disaster, but they're also connected to each other somehow. They all knew one another, knew one another.
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Let's take a closer look at the Sindelar and Doziel families. On July 24, 1915, all eight members of the combined Sindelar and Doziel families perished when the SS Eastland capsized in the Chicago River. This devastating loss marks the largest single-family casualty in the disaster. So both George Sindelar and Josephine Doziel Sindelar they're married to each other. They are at the heart of this family's story. They were both children of Czech immigrants and emblematic of the vibrant immigrant community in Chicago. At that time, george worked as a foreman at Western Electric. Interestingly, historical footnotes also reveal that George's uncle, albert Roch, once served as an alderman in Chicago Heights, adding a layer of local historical significance to their story.
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Alongside the Sindelar and Doziel narrative, there were others like Mary Egan and the Wood family, who shared connections to this group, yet have scarcely been noted in historical accounts. In fact, regina Doziel, a pivotal figure because she was related to the Sindelar family via marriage, is sometimes overlooked entirely. Now, it's not uncommon in historical documentation where some narratives become focal points while others remain in the shadows. However, in our research into the Eastland disaster, we found that every individual story contributes to a fuller understanding of the event's impact. By exploring these lesser-known tales, I aim to provide a more comprehensive recounting of that fateful day. Ironically, had I not explored the history of a quote-unquote unknown person, that would be Mary Helen Egan. This unknown person was the one who cast a light over the Sindelar family again, so I think that's fascinating.
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Now, catherine Marren Wood, who tragically died in the disaster and who was connected to this party, was married to George John Wood, a survivor. Despite this, she was erroneously referred to as Mrs Tom Woods in this obituary. Additionally, their three-year-old son, george John Jr, also perished in the disaster. Meanwhile, alice Wood, george's 15-year-old sister, survived, adding yet another layer to that family's narrative, survived, adding yet another layer to that family's narrative. And, furthermore, adding to the complexity, there's a mysterious mention of George Wood's brother, whose identity definitely needs further investigation. In terms of final resting places, the individuals from this intertwined group were laid to rest in various cemeteries, reflecting their diverse backgrounds and family connections. Mary Helen Egan was buried at Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Evanston, while the Sindelar and Doziel families found their final resting place at Bohemian National Cemetery, and the Mar and Wood family members were interred at Mount Carmel Cemetery.
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Each of these details not only adds depth to our understanding of the disaster's personal impacts, but it also highlights the importance of accuracy and thorough research in piecing together historical narratives. By correcting these errors and investigating the lesser known aspects, we ensure a more accurate historical record. All of these families need more detailed profiles, but that's something that I'll need to do in a future episode, because this one's going to take a little more time. So, as promised, I'm going to talk about the use case for Find a Grave and explain step-by-step how I was able to post Mary Helen Egan's updated obituary to Find a Grave. As I've been doing these Eastland Chronicles series, I have really fallen in love with this site. I should explain too. It's not the Find a Grave generic site. I mean, I like that as well, but there is a specific area in Find a Grave that is devoted to the Eastland victims. Familysearchorg has a pretty decent introduction to Find a Grave on its wiki, so let me read that to you now.
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Find a Grave hosts the world's largest gravesite record collection, with over 226 million memorials in 564,000 cemeteries around the world, expanding daily. All information on Find a Grave can be viewed for free without registering. All information on Find a Grave can be viewed for free without registering. The memorials, headstone photos, GPS locations and everything else you'll find are contributed by the Find a Grave community, a network with millions of passionate volunteers whose mission is to find, document and record burial information memorializing those who have passed. Since 1995, this site has provided tools to let people from all over the world work together, share information and build an online virtual cemetery experience for free, so that everyone can find information about their ancestors, family and friends. This is why I refer people to the Eastland Disaster Victims Memorial site on Find a Grave when they first start researching. It's a great starting point.
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So let's do this thing. Let's update Mary Helen Egan's profile on Find a Grave. Fortunately, she already has a profile page with her photo the gravestone that is also on that profile. I'm not sure that is hers, but we'll deal with that later. Again, the site which is within Find a Grave is called Eastland Disaster Victims Virtual Cemetery and it was created by user Bert, and I want to say thank you, bert, and I will give everyone a link to this site in the show notes. So you go to the information page and you locate Mary Helen Egan's profile.
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So I had Mary's obituary prepped and ready for upload. But let me tell you a little bit about the tools that I use and what I did is I used Snagit to get a screenshot of the obit and I noticed that it was still kind of blurry. So what I did was I put it into Photoshop kind of blurry. So what I did was I put it into Photoshop, which I think most people know, and I adjusted the contrast very slightly to make it easier to read. Then I saved this file to my desktop as a JPEG and I named it with Mary's name as well as the newspaper and date of the newspaper where I got this information. So it was ready to go.
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Then, from Mary's profile on Find a Grave, there's a button that is called Add Photos. So I clicked on that button and the first thing it does is open a separate window. Then I drag the image of the obituary over to this page. It appears right away on the left-hand side. Then I added a caption which is the name of the file Mary Helen Egan's Obituary from Chicago Tribune, saturday, july 31st 1915. And they have an option where you have to select a phototype. Your choices are grave, person, family or other. I wasn't sure what to put in there, so I put other, then I saved it and right away it uploaded to her page.
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Then I looked at the rest of the page and I realized we need to add some more information to her profile. For one thing, the rest of Mary's family was not showing on her profile, so I thought at least I want to get her parents in to her profile. So what I did again was open Mary's profile and I selected a different option that is called Suggest Edits. And I forgot to tell you that. One of the other things I did was to actually get the text from the obituary, and I did that with Snagit, by the way, and I copied and pasted the text into Mary's obituary information that is on this edit page. Why I did that? If I just left Mary's page with the obituary, which is saved in JPEG format. If somebody searches for information about Mary, they won't be able to see the text because, well, it's hidden in the JPEG format. So what I wanted to do for the sake of accessibility as well as improving the SEO information for this site, is to also copy and paste the text into the edit screen for Mary, so, after I save it, the information's text will be available and it will be searchable and findable.
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Now the other aspect to Mary is that we don't have her parents, and that's a little more of a challenge. While I was able to locate a profile page for Redmond, her father, I had some difficulty locating a profile page for her mother, so I need to do a little more research for that. But it's important, when you're working in Find a Grave and working between two profiles, to connect people to get the memorial ID. This is a unique ID that Find a Grave assigns to each profile. In this case, I copied Redmond's memorial ID into the edit page for Mary under Father and saved it, and then, voila. And then voila the information was saved. However, someone still on the find a grave side needed to review my edits and make sure they were okay before posting and I do appreciate that bit of control in the beginning and it didn't take long for it to be approved, most likely because I cited my source and had the original document for her and had the correct memorial ID for Redmond. So we need to do a little bit more work with Mary's profile, but she looks a heck of a lot better than she did, and now that I'm more confident dealing with this, what I will do is make a series of training videos for you to look at, to watch how I go through these, or you can take a stab at it yourself based on what I just shared with you.
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How does that sound? I want to conclude with these thoughts, thoughts. I sincerely hope that my family's story, as I told it in Flower in the River, serves as a launch pad for other people who are interested in the Eastland disaster. However, my family's story is just a launch pad, or a launching pad, and it's not a single story. What do I mean by that?
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In her seminal TED Talk, nigerian author Chimananda Ngozi Adichie warned against the dangers of quote a single story. She explains that it creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. I'll say that again because it's really kind of riveting. Adichie says that the problem with stereotypes's not that they are untrue, but they are incomplete, and furthermore, she says that they make one story become the only story. That is the cautionary part of doing this kind of work. So, needless to say, this concept is powerfully relevant when considering historical narratives, particularly how the story of the disaster and similar stories that have kind of fallen off the radar are managed and communicated.
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So keep that in mind as you continue on your own journey and I'll be back next week and we can continue this discussion. Take care and have a great 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 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.