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Two families named
Bartlett lost loved ones in the Iroquois Theater
fire. The family described here was from Bartlett,
Illinois, directly descended from
the town's original founder.
Their Iroquois party foursome was made up of two
Bartlett women and two friends from nearby
Naperville, Illinois.
(The
other Bartlett family with Iroquois victims
involved the wife and children of an English
immigrant who sold dry goods in Grossdale, a
community known today as Brookfield, Illinois.)
Sophia Bartlett knew about loss. She had endured the
deaths of two of her children when they were very
young, and that of a grown daughter in 1878. In 1880
had come the death of Luther, her husband of
thirty-eight years. Two of her daughters had also
become widows; Carrie lost Frank in 1892 and Elma
lost John in March. Only Cora's husband still lived.
In all, though, the last two decades had been good.
Sophia didn't see enough of Bascom, who lived in
Minnesota, or Ira in England, but her other children
lived close by. Luther Jr. and Carrie lived in
Chicago, Cora in Elgin and Francis and Chester still
lived on the farm in Bartlett. Luther would have
been surprised to see how much Bartlett had changed.
Over three hundred people lived there now, and there
were telephones!
The family would have been glad to be able to offer Elma
and her little girl a home, and happy to help look
after baby Elma for a few days while her mother and
Chester's wife, Emma, went to visit the Bird family
in Naperville. Marion Bird and her brother in law,
James McKee, had arranged for a group to attend an
afternoon matinee in Chicago's newest playhouse, the
Iroquois Theater.
When a stage fire spread to the auditorium, nearly six hundred people perished,
including some of Sophia's loved ones.
Bartlett Iroquois Victims
Sisters in law Elma and Emma Bartlett. Emma was
married to Elma's brother, Chester.
Elma Julia Bartlett Adamek
(b.1862), age forty-one, wife of the late Algonquin, IL
native, John W. Adamek (1862-March, 1903), married
in 1900. Prior to John's death, he and Elma lived in
San Antonio, TX where he operated a wallpaper store,
Adamek Bros, with his younger brother, Joseph Adamek (1863-1936),
at 501 East Houston St. After
John's death, Joseph found a new partner for the
wallpaper store but Emma took their two-year-old
daughter and returned to her hometown in Bartlett,
Illinois. She moved to the family farm where she'd
grown up, living with her mother, Sophia, and aunt
Francis Bartlett, a school teacher. Next door was
her uncle Chester, who had taken over the running of
the farm after her father died, his third wife,
Emma, and Emma's three children from a prior
marriage.
Emma Ulrich Dolsen Bartlett (b.1854) in
1884 divorced Samuel Lathrop Dolsen, father of her
four children, and married Charles Douglas Bartlett
(1855-1924) (who was a brother of another of Samuel's ex-wives, Margaret "Etta" Bartlett).
Naperville Iroquois Victims
Brother and sister in law James McKee and Marion Bird. James was the widow of Marion's
late sister, Frances.
James Ward McKee (b.1839) had been a widower for four years when he died at the Iroquois. He
and his late wife, Francis L. Bird (1837-1899), married in 1860,
were the adoptive parents of one child, Catherine Irene McKee Hadley
(1880-1946). Catherine married at age sixteen and at the time of her
father's death had two young sons. James's parents, David McKee and
Sarah Ward McKee, were among the founding settlers of DuPage County,
Illinois,
James attended Wheaton College then started his own eighty-acre farm that would
eventually grow to 185 acres and involve crops and dairy farming. He
and Chester Bartlett, Emma's husband, were fellow officers in the
Illinois Farmers Institute.
Marion Irene Bird (b.1839), a native of Rockton, Illinois. Marion was a sister of James McKee's
late wife, Frances. She was the youngest daughter of eight children
born to Frederick Bird and Louisa Goddard Bird, early settlers in
Chicago and DuPage County and credited with founding Warrenville, Illinois.
For sixty years Marion crafted a floral crucifix from the hair of
sixty-six of her family members. It is on display in the Warrenville Museum.
Elma was the fourth child that Sophia lost. Four months later she
lost a fifth: Cora Bartlett Hutchins.
Sophia's surviving daughter, Frances, took time out from
teaching to help raise Elma's two-year-old and
Emma's teenagers. They sold the farm in 1908 and
Sophia, Frances and Elma rented a large new home in
Elgin. At her death in 1917, five of Sophia's eleven
children were living.
Born in South Deerfield, Massachusetts in 1817, Luther grew
up on his father's farm. At twenty-six he moved to
northern Illinois west of Chicago, purchased land,
married a fellow Massachusetts transplant and became
a sheep farmer. He initially stocked his farm with
sheep purchased in Michigan and herded over one
hundred miles to Wayne township in DuPage County,
Illinois. A wife was easier to acquire. Nine years
younger, his bride was a distant cousin, Celia
Sophia Bartlett (1826-1917).
Over the next thirty years, the Bartletts accumulated
eleven hundred acres, twelve hundred sheep, one
hundred cows and nine children.
From the children's
viewpoint, their father gave away forty acres of
forest in exchange for having a town named after
him. As adults, they would learn to appreciate the
cost savings to a farm in having a train depot
located in the back yard.
Adaptability and farsightedness seem to have been
hardwired into Luther Bartlett. When the market for
wool proved uneven, he kept the sheep but planted
acres of wheat. By the time the first section of
Colonel Hough's Chicago and Pacific (C&P) railroad
made it to Wayne Township (on its way to Elgin and
the Mississippi), the Bartletts were breeding Durham
cattle too, and shipping their grain and herds east
to Chicago stockyards. When refrigerated cars became
commonplace, Luther was the first in the township to
go into dairy farming.
Cousins Ada Simpson and
Caroline Woods
Iroquois Theater fire
started chain of tragedy
Locusts to fire
Other discussions you might find interesting
Story 1003
A note about sourcing. When this
project began, I failed to anticipate the day might come when a
more scholarly approach would be called for. When my
mistake was recognized I faced a decision: go back and spend years creating source lists for every page, or go
forward and try to cover more of the people and circumstances
involved in the disaster. Were I twenty years younger, I'd
have gone back, but in recognition that this project will end when I do, I chose to go forward.
These pages will provide enough information, it is hoped, to
provide subsequent researchers with additional information.
I would like to
hear from you if you have additional info about an Iroquois victim, or find an error,
and you're invited to visit the
comments page to share stories and observations about the Iroquois Theater fire.
