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Floy Olson and Bessie Stafford probably looked forward to spending time together at the theater.  They had become friends through their activities at the Warren Street Congregational church in the East Garfield Park community in Chicago but since Floy's family moved to Minneapolis three years prior they had few opportunities to spend time together. 

Both women's bodies were identified by their husbands.  Their funerals were conducted by Reverend Frank Smith at the Congregational church at the corner of Warren and Albany in Chicago.  They were buried close to one another at Forest Home Cemetery.

Floy I. Olson

Floy Irene Love (b.1873) and Oscar Olson married in 1895 and at the time of her death they had two boys – Charles Olson (1898-) and Sidney F. Olson (1901-1929.  The family lived in Chicago until early in 1900 when they moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota.  On December 30,1903 they were visiting relatives in Chicago.  After the Iroquois Theater fire, though their father remarried, Charles and Sidney were raised by their maternal grandparents, George M. Love and Elizabeth "Libbie" Amsden Love.

Oscar M. Olsen was a native of Norway who immigrated to America in 1880 with his parents.  Oscar worked in the telegraph industry throughout his life, beginning as an operator and eventually becoming a Western Union branch manager in Minneapolis -- an accomplishment for a man who left school after the seventh grade.

Floy was born in Illinois.  She had one sister, Lotta Love.  Floy's funeral was held on Sunday, January 3, 1904.

Some Minnesota newspapers reported it was suspected that Oscar Olson was also lost in the fire but I found no verification that he attended the theater with Floy and Bessie.  If present, he survived to remarry three years after the fire.  He and his second wife, Hilda, had one child, a boy named James Olson (1922-)

Bessie M. Eastman Stafford (b.1874) was just twenty years old when she married. Her husband was a dentist, Dr. Frank Harrison Stafford D.D.S. (1866-1916).  She was one of four children born to Mary R. Eastman (c.1850-1918) and the late Fred L. Eastman Sr. (1840-1901), a civil war veteran and railway freight agent.  Bessie's three siblings were William F. Eastman, Fred L. Eastman Jr. and Gertrude L. Eastman.

Frank Stafford graduated from the College of Dental surgery in 1892 and married Bessie the following year.  In 1895 he invented a dental light.  I found no evidence that they started a family before Bessie's death.  He remarried in 1909.

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