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John and Anna Fitzgibbon
A teenage girl and her brother, Anna and John
Fitzgibbon, died in the 1903 Iroquois Theater fire.
Their classmates from Notre Dame and Saint Mary of
the Woods Academy in Terre Haute, IN attended their
funeral. That is all that was said about these young
people at the time of their deaths and, despite
wearing out the web, I've been unable to learn much
more.
Notre Dame University and Saint Mary of the Woods
Academy
John Joseph Fitzgibbon Jr. (b.1885) was in his
second year at Notre Dame University, having
matriculated in 1901 at age sixteen. His sister,
Anna G. Fitzgibbon (b. 1887), attended boarding
school at Saint Mary of the Woods Academy in Terre
Haute. John and Anna were the oldest son and
daughter of Annie Cunnea Fitzgibbon (c.1851-1927),
widow of John J. Fitzgibbon Sr. (1836-1892). The
family lived at 2954 Michigan Ave in Chicago.
Grieving with Annie were her surviving children:
James C. Fitzgibbon (1889-), Gerald A. Fitzgibbons
(1888-) and Coaina J. Fitzgibbon (1892-1981).*
An interesting couple
Annie had married John Joseph
Fitzgibbon Sr. in 1884. An 1867 Irish immigrant, John graduated from
Notre Dame University in 1862,
tried his hand at teaching, then became a prosperous
businessman. In 1879 he co-founded the Chicago Distillery company.
In 1884, to Annie’s relief (she
had temperance views), he retired from the
distillery and three years later sold his shares (as a protest
against his partners’ action to enter the business
into a trust). He invested the proceeds in a
bank Annie and her brother (John Cunnea) had just
purchased - the
Calumet National Bank in South Chicago.
Annie took hold
In the decade between her
husband’s death and 1903, Annie was busy raising
their five children and tending to their assets. In
1902 she purchased a three-story brownstone for her
family at 2954 Michigan Avenue (for $20,000,
comparable to half a million today). The home was
previously owned by
Joseph Austrian, possibly built
by Dr. J. S. Mitchell. After the deaths of John and
Anna at the Iroquois Theater, the challenge of managing her banking assets
gave purpose to Annie’s life and helped relieve her
grief.
John and Anna's
bodies were identified by a George J. McCambridge (1884-) of Morris, IL.
George worked as a teller, probably at the
Fitzgibbon's bank, and was a family friend. It
was reported that John attended the theater with
Anna that afternoon as a special favor to his
sister.
There was a funeral service
with high mass said by Father McGuire at St. James
Church on Wabash and 29th in Chicago, and a sermon
by Father James French (1859-1941) of Notre Dame.
The bodies were then shipped by train to the Cavalry
Cemetery in Evanston, IL.
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Annie the Feminist.
Not Banking was the Cunnea
family business and Annie’s involvement in banking
persisted through marriage, childbirth and
widowhood. Nevertheless, in 1902 Annie expressed the
opinion that women should not work outside the home.
(Or vote. Annie said women would probably vote just
like men so their votes were not needed. An
Illinois native, Annie was one of eight children
born to Irish immigrants. Her father, James Cunnea
(sometimes called John), founded the First National
bank in Morris, Illinois. Upon his death, her
brother, John Cunnea, became that bank's president,
a role he also assumed for the Calumet National bank
upon the death of John J. Fitzgibbon Sr.
When not studying bank stocks and mortgages or
raising her children, Annie played
euchre with a group of women in the Catholic Women’s
League and helped with various church-sponsored
charity events.
In the years after the fire
Coaina lived a long life.
She published a book in 1927, "The Influence of
Donatello on Florentine Painting of the Fifteenth
Century," traveled to Europe several times and died
in San Sebastian, Spain at age eighty-nine. No evidence of a
marriage or children.
The 1929 stock market crash destroyed the Calumet
bank but Annie and her siblings had sold their
interests for $85,000 a decade earlier.
~~~~~~~~
While learning about the Fitzgibbon family I noted a number of
common paths with Iroquois theater manager
Will J. Davis. Davis’
wife,
Jessie Bartlett Davis, grew up in a large
family in the small town of Morris Illinois, as did Annie Cunnea
Fitzgibbon. Will
Davis and John J. Fitzgibbon both collected rare books
and counted several Catholic priests as friends.
Jessie Bartlett Davis contributed financially to St.
Mary’s Academy in South Bend, IN; Annie
Fitzgibbon and her daughter attended St. Mary's in
Terre Haute. |
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Discrepancies and addendum
In an newspaper interview Annie referred to her son
by his middle name, Joseph. In a family with two
John Josephs and two Anna's, one of the John's was
called Joseph and one of the Annas was called Annie
and "Ann".
The name Fitzgibbon is frequently spelled
Fitzgibbons but I think this family spelled their
name without the s.
*Annie may have adopted Coaina, sometime between 1901
and 1910. Though eight years old, Coaina did not live
with the Fitzgibbon family in 1900 and in that
year's census, Annie reported having only four children,
all living. After 1910 Coaina was living with the
family and in the 1910 & 1920 census Annie reported
having had five children, of which three survived.
Verifying Coaina's name took some effort because
census worker handwriting in 1910 made it look like
Colina but subsequent census reports, as well as her
passport, show it as Coaina. Still, it is an unusual
name so I dug a little deeper, first finding a bit
of evidence that I'm probably not the only person
who is not familiar with the name: only seven people in
the U.S. are named Coaina presently. More
interesting is that in 1867 a novelist, Anna Hanson
Dorsey (1815-1896), who specialized in
Catholic-themed fiction, gave the uncommon name
Coaina to a character in one of her best known
books, "Coaina, the Rose of the Algonquins." The
novel told the story of a pretty Algonquin maiden
living in a Catholic community near Montreal who
chose to marry God rather than a mortal man. As a
recipient of Notre Dame's annual Lætare medal in
1889, Dorsey's work was likely familiar to Annie
Fitzgibbon, who had attended St. Mary's Academy. I
wonder if Coaina was given her name by her birth
parents or by her adopted mother, and if she was
given the name because she was a native American or
as a homage to a favorite fictional character.
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