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Twenty-seven-year-old Mary S. Wenthe Allen (b. 1876) married forty-two-year-old
Canadian, Edward Everett Allen (1860-1942) in 1898
as his second wife. Two years later she bore
their daughter, Myrtle E. Allen.* Myrtle was
three years old when her mother died at the Iroquois
Theater.
Edward, described as inconsolable upon finding his wife's body at
Rolston's Undertaking on Friday, January 1, 1904,
was in the company of friends. He may have
searched for his wife's body for two days or may
have been on the road in his sales job at the time
of the fire and two days passed before he was able
to return to Chicago and find her body. Her
funeral was held two days later on Sunday morning,
January 3, 1904, at the Allen's home at 5546 Drexel
and she was buried at Oak Woods Cemetery. Edward was laid
by her side decades later. The 1904 date on Mary's
grave marker suggests she lived for a short while
after the fire but nothing was reported with which
to verify that. Her grave marker and Edward's
are identical and may have been produced at his
death in 1942 by family members who substituted the
year of Mary's burial, 1904. That
distinguishes Mary's stone from other Iroquois
victims. A majority of Iroquois victims'
families, even when their relatives died during the
first week of January 1904, chose to use 1903 as the
date of death on their grave marker. |
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Paint biz
Edward Allen was a shoe
salesman when he and Mary married. He later
became a paint salesman. He was hired as a
bookkeeper for the paint company but switched to
production because he wanted to learn the business
from the ground up. Over the next twenty years, he moved
into sales and in 1921 formed his own paint
company. It operated out of an office in the LaSalle
building in Chicago so manufacturing may have been
contracted out and the products private-labeled.
One of his customers in the 1930s was the Schwinn
bicycle company for whom he supplied small cans of touch-up paint. A
few cans have turned up on Ebay. Near-zero web
references to the company may indicate a small
company.
In later years he cited two wives but there were at least three,
with four children. During an
era when divorce was unusual, two of his wives
divorced him, each after only four years of
marriage. One sued him for an additional $25,000,
cause unknown.
In the years after the fire
Mary's daughter Myrtle
attended Normal College and in 1933 married Donald
J. Martin.
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Discrepancies and addendum
* Also living
with Mary and Edward in 1903 was his son by a prior
marriage, James E. Allen (1882-1967), mother known
only as B. E. Allen, possibly Belle E. Allen.
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