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On the first anniversary of the
Iroquois Theater fire, newspapers ran stories about commemorative
services held at churches and increased
traffic as families visited cemeteries to mourn
their loved ones.
The graph pictured above mentions cemetery
dispersal of fewer than half the Iroquois Theater victims
and was probably compiled from public inquest records by the
coroner's office.
In addition to cemetery and
church visits, six hundred people gathered in Willard Hall
at the Women's Temple for a service conducted by the
Iroquois Memorial Association and a smaller group on
the sidewalk and in Randolph street outside the
former Iroquois Theater, by 1904 operating as the
Hyde & Behman. The theater had planned to
operate on December 31, 1904, but public censure
shamed management into closing from noon until 8:30 pm. While street
peddlers hawked paper memorials outside Willard
Hall, inside people sang hymns, shared pictures of
their loved ones and consoled one another.
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Consecrated in 1859 and affiliated with the Catholic Church, Calvary
Cemetery is north of Chicago on Lake
Michigan in Evanston at 301 Chicago avenue (Clark
St.). Considered full now, it's 20,000
interments include twenty-three Iroquois Theater
victims.
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Concordia Cemetery was established in 1872 at 7900 Madison St. in Forest
Park as a 60-acre German Lutheran facility. Today there are over
60,000 interments, of which two are Iroquois Theater victims.
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In 1873 there were two
adjacent cemeteries, Waldheim and Forest Home.
They merged in 1969 and are today known as
Forest Home, the official address at 863 Des Plaines
Avenue in Forest Park, a Chicago suburb.
Around thirty Iroquois Theater victim graves are at
Forest Home.
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Established in 1860, Graceland Cemetery by 1893 contained 60,000
interments. The cemetery added a hundred
Iroquois Theater victims in January 1904. Located at 4001 N.
Clark, Graceland consists of 119 acres.
Like Rosehill, Graceland boasts many Chicago celebrity
tombs, including Marshall Field, noted architects
David Adler, Louis Sullivan, Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe and Daniel Burnham, Pinkerton Detectives
founder, Allan Pinkerton, and Cyrus McCormick.
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At 184 acres, Oakwoods is
one of Chicago's largest cemeteries (second only to
Rosehill). It is on the north side of the
city at 1035 E 67th street .
Fifty Iroquois Theater fire victims are
interred at Oakwoods, as well as Jessie Bartlett
Davis, wife of Iroquois T heater manager Will J.
Davis. Oakwoods was the site of thousands
of Confederate soldiers who died at Camp Douglas.
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At 350 acres, Rosehill Cemetery at 5800 N. Ravenswood Ave
on Chicago's north side
is the city's largest. At its dedication in 1859 the
city's population was one hundred thousand.
It is the resting place of many
famous Chicago pioneers —
including names familiar in America's homes for
decades, such as Sears, Montgomery Ward and Schwinn — along with
around seventy-five Iroquois Theater victims.
William Boyington designed the ornamental limestone
entrance (as well as the Chicago
Water Tower).
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Five years after the fire, in conjunction with its annual remembrance services,
the Iroquois Theater Memorial Association dedicated a granite monument in Montrose Cemetery at 5400 N. Pulaski northwest of
Chicago. That evening a memorial service was held at Willard Hall, led by speakers reverend Jenkin Lloyd Jones,
Rabbi Tobias Schanfarber, and health commissioner Dr. W. Evans.
Kircher donated the burial plot and the Memorial Association purchased the stone to pay tribute to all the victims of the
Iroquois disaster and mark the burial site of the last unidentified victim of the fire. The burial had taken place in
June of 1904. Described as in her fifties and with minimal facial damage, the victim was said to have been viewed
by hundreds of people.
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Two of those viewing families were the Fellmans and the Wickershams, who never located the bodies of their mothers. Seventy-year-old
Bertha Fellman's family petitioned the court to have her declared dead after her daughter-in-law, who had
accompanied her to the theater, testified to Bertha's presence at at the matinee. Three members of fifty-four-year-old Lillian Wickersham's family searched for nine days. They
finally accepted the police department's assessment that Lillian's body had been mistaken for someone else and would never be found.
Discussion of missing and unidentified victims (in progress as of 4/15/25 so this link might not deliver the goods for a few days).
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