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Percy Austin Folsom (1859–1929) was one of five children born to
early settlers of Bloomington, IL, the late Peter Folsom and Cordelia Soule Folsom.
Nine months before the Iroquois fire Percy had married a divorcee fifteen years his junior.
Clara Bigger (1874–1964) worked as a milliner and lived with her parents in Rushville,
Indiana after her divorce. It was Percy's second marriage as well; no evidence of
children from either of his marriages.
To residents of Bloomington, Percy may have
been best remembered as the man who had been married
to hometown writing celebrity, Lizzie Irons Folsom. Percy's first marriage to Elizabeth Irons
lasted about twenty years and ended without fanfare around 1901–1902. Lizzie went on to
become a court reporter for
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over a decade, then a prolific author of
short stories published by McClures, Everybody's Magazine, Sunset, Smiths, Youth's
Companion, Ainslees, McCalls, and Munsies. The first of her stories I found online was published in 1887
by Peterson Magazine: "A Bit of Life." She won the 1923 O'Henry short story
award for her "Natural Selection" story.
Her story is interesting!
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Discrepancies and addendum
1. The term Looky-Lou doesn't seem to have been coined yet and I've seen no evidence of shame in
gawking. Morgues had to limit the number of people permitted access because so many
people wanted to tiptoe through the rows of bodies on the floor and drink in the horror of it all,
including people from parks, toting their ice skates.
2. A rough and unscientific estimate based on the assumption that each
of nine hundred fatalities and injured victims drew at least two friends/relatives. Newspapers
and periodicals cited many search parties of up to a half dozen friends and family members but that isn't a
reliable indicator. Large search parties were more apt to receive media coverage because they were
made up of people who booked hotel rooms after coming to Chicago by train to lend
their support. It took journalists five minutes to figure out they'd find
interviews at hotels. If the missing person and their family lived in Chicago
they were less accessible to the media thus less information was published about
their searching.
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