3 March 1879 – 6 February 1947 Philomena and her first husband Vito were both born in Italy. On the 1920 census – the first one I can find for them – Vito lists his immigration year as 1899, but there isn’t a year listed for Philomena. From their ages, I presume they married in […]
22 November 1896 – 24 July 1915 The Eastland, one of five chartered excursion boats meant to ferry employees, their families and friends from Chicago over to the Michigan City shore for the annual Western Electric Company picnic, keeled over into the Chicago River while still at dock, trapping hundreds inside its hull and leading […]
Maria Carmela Russo born 23 May 1839, Laurenzana, Provincia di Potenza, Basilicata, Italy died 11 June 1898, Chicago There isn’t much to find out about Maria Carmela as she died in that census gap after 1880 and prior to the 1900 census (which is really quite a good one for fact-checking other records because it […]
John and Julie (Houle) Benoit John (1847 – 1903) and Julie (1845 – 1903) were both born in Quebec and came to the US as young people. There are some conflicting census records, but it appears Julie’s family emigrated when she was a toddler and several of her younger siblings were born in Illinois. John […]
9 Nov 1835 – 17 Dec 1922 John H. Bass was born in Salem, Kentucky, and came to Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1852. He first worked as a grocery clerk while he studied bookkeeping at night school, then worked for a railroad concern as an auditor. The next year, he joined his brother and some […]
16 March 1851 – 18 April 1915 Mary was born in Ireland as was her eventual husband John O’Brien. They met and married in the US in 1871, after he had immigrated to get into the lumber trade around 1867. He arrived as a recent graduate of Christian Brothers College in Dublin (which was a […]
This absolutely stunning building also sits by the lake near the more famous Getty mausoleum. It is quite large, and Graceland’s index lists 23 people interred from four generations of the family. Going by the interment records, this mausoleum appears to be quite old compared to many of its neighbors. The earliest entombment listed was […]
Edward “Eddie” Grimms 25 Mar 1892 — 24 Jul 1915 The Eastland, one of five chartered excursion boats meant to ferry employees, their families and friends from Chicago over to the Michigan City shore for the annual Western Electric Company picnic, keeled over into the Chicago River while still at dock, trapping hundreds inside its […]
John “Johnny Appleseed” Chapman 26 September 1774 – 18 March 1845 Johnny Appleseed was a folk figure from the early days of the United States, famed for roaming the wilderness frontier that later became Ohio, Indiana and other parts of the Midwest and Canada, often shoeless, and usually carrying a bag of appleseeds he sowed […]
John Samuel and Maud G. (Kennedy) Holmes John (1868 – 1931) was originally from Canada and came to the US as a teenager. Maud (1878 – 1955) was born in Michigan, the oldest of 5 children. The couple married in Chicago in 1900 when John was 32 and Maud was 22. In 1910, the census […]