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How did Marie's name get on Iroquois Theater fire victim lists?

Thursday, December 31, 1903
Fear strikes the heart of James Curran (1868–1909) as he scans the list of victims in yesterday's horrible fire at Chicago's Iroquois Theater.  His youngest sister, May V. Curran (1881–1904), has been talking of going to work in Chicago and now here is a May Currant listed among the dead. His sister had gone by Marie the last couple years but had been called May as a child and the family still called her May. The fire victim in Chicago is said to have worn a watch engraved, "May Curran" and lived at 299 Webster St.▼2

Fifteen years younger, May was more like his daughter than a sister; James had raised her since she was a girl and their parents had died of tuberculosis, their mother in 1886 and their father in 1892.  When James married in 1895, Mary's children, Winaford and Maude, became like May's siblings.  She'd lived with them at 37 16th Street until last January when she'd taken a room on Adams Avenue.

They hadn't seen much of May since she moved out, just an occasional letter.  His wife and May got on well but even Mary didn't know much about May's life now.  She had been working as a stenographer for a perfume manufacturer, Frederick F. Ingraham, but according to her last letter had changed jobs.  She now worked at a trading stamp company owned by a man named Preston S. Fancher, and was going to Chicago to work for him.  It was worrisome.  Detroit was much larger than it had been in James' boyhood but Chicago made Detroit look small and, according to the Free Press, the trading stamp industry was filled with fast talking crooks.▼3

Hurrah!  A letter from May arrives by messenger.  She says she returned to Detroit from Chicago Wednesday night and saw her name in the newspaper list.  She wants James and Mary to know she is fine.  The messenger says he was given May's letter by a clerk at a hotel near the Grand Trunk depot on Brush Street. The handwriting looks suspicious to James, though.  Could it be a forgery by an imposter?

James and Mary board a train for Chicago to make sure.  Riding as a passenger was a change for James.  Like his father, James worked for Michigan Central Railroad.  His father had been yard master and James was an engineer .▼4

Friday, January 1, 1904
In Chicago, equipped with a letter from Detroit police chief George W. Fowle, James and Mary Curran are assigned a Chicago detective to escort them to Rolston's mortuary to view the female body thought to be May Curran.  To their relief, the body is not May.  James and Mary spend hours touring all the other Chicago mortuaries, viewing the remaining bodies and satisfying themselves that May is not among them.  They become convinced that May is working for the Minneapolis branch of the cash trading stamp company and talk to a newspaper in hopes she'll see the story and contact them.

The body at Rolston's thought to be May Curran is identified as that of Margarethe Annen of Chicago.

Monday, January 2, 1904
Upon their return to Detroit, a second letter from May awaits   With it is a watch that James had gifted May eight years earlier.  The letter expresses incredulity that they think she and the Chicago victim are connected.  The letter fails to assuage her brother and sister-in-law's concern.  They sense that something is amiss and James sets out to investigate.  When he can't learn anything about the delivery of the most recent letter, James focuses on the first letter.  He goes to the hotel and speaks with the clerk who delivered it. The clerk says that the letter was brought to him in the hotel not by a guest of the hotel but by a stranger who darted in the door saying he was in a hurry to catch a train to Chicago and offering payment to have a letter delivered.  The stranger got the clerk's assurance that the letter would be delivered to James Curran as soon as possible. 

Wednesday, January 6, 1904 (approximate date)
James Curran seeks input from an expert.  He takes the two letters and a third one from May to a public school teacher who teaches handwriting, William P. Lyon.  In Lyon's opinion, the recent letters were written by the same person as the one from the past.  James and Mary conclude that May is in Detroit and for some reason avoiding them.  As there have been no problems in their relationship with May, they are perplexed.  Involved is $1,200 worth of life insurance (inflation adjusted: $41,000) in May's two policies, one with Metropolitan Life and one with Protective Home Circle.

Friday, January 8, 1904
A third letter arrives from May. She says she is fine and was just embarrassed to have sprung her ankle and wished to avoid notoriety and gossip.  She is in Detroit and relatives are said to be worried no longer.  [Perhaps May had finally told them the truth.]

January 9, 1904 to February 10, 1904
[Newspapers silent about May Curran.]

Thursday, February 11, 1904
Joseph Ogurkowski's role in The James Boys in Missouri ends after only one night in Ann Arbor. He and fellow cast members travel to Ypsilanti and apply for roles in the Hunt stock company. Unsuccessful, they return to Detroit where Joseph learns he's a father.

Friday, February 12, 1904▼5
May dies of puerperal fever (aka childbed fever and today known as postpartum infection) after giving birth to a son at the Red Cross Hospital in Detroit.  The Detroit Free Press reports that she'd been at the hospital since around January 30, registered as Mrs. Ralph Barton, her husband's stage name.   According to her death certificate she was buried at Mt. Elliot Cemetery but their online records do not include a Curran or an Ogurkowski who died in 1904.  Her brother and sister-in-law were buried there without grave markers but May/Marie's name is not included in family plot.

Saturday February 13, 1904
The Detroit Free Press reports that May had been married for a year before her death, to an actor named Joseph L. Ogurkowski, who goes by Ralph Barton on the stage.  The marriage certificate documents the ceremony that took place on January 19, 1903 at the Methodist Church on Windsor Avenue in Detroit.▼6  The service, witnessed by two women, was conducted by reverend Alfred Brown.  May had concealed her marriage from her brother and sister-in-law, while her husband concealed it from his mother.  The newspaper story offers no explanation for the secrecy. 

The only person known to have been aware of May's pregnancy at eight months was her boss, Preston S. Fancher, who paid a portion of her medical expenses.  He was co-owner of the Cash Buyers Discount Co. with Alcon Faulkner, occupying an office in room 625 of the Chamber of Commerce building in Detroit.▼7

Monday February 15, 1904
May Curran Ogurkowski is buried at Mt. Elliot Cemetery — like her grandmother and later her brother James, without a grave marker.

Friday February 26, 1904
May's will surfaces in probate court. Dated March 4, 1903, two months after May married Joseph, and about the time she began working for Fancher, the document awarded $500 each to James and Mary Curran.

Monday March 6, 1904
Joseph Ogurkowski goes public with a surprising story. He announces he will be filing suit against Preston Fancher for alienation of his wife's affections.  According to Joseph, Fancher appeared in their lives in March, 1903, soon after the wedding ceremony, as a friendly employer of May's stenography skills.  Sometime in the next seven months May went with Fancher to Mt. Pleasant, Michigan where his company had opened a new office.  Upon her return her attitude toward Joseph was different.  Cool, he said.  When he returned in October they met on the street, the last time he'd see her alive, May acted so distant and strange that Joseph made no effort to see her again.  After May's death, Joseph became acquainted with May's family who urged him to expose Fancher.  Ogurkowski talked to an attorney and decided to sue.
"I want people to know about this man, and I am not bringing the suit to get his money. But I can only prove what I say by bringing the matter into the courts. Fancher's attorney has already made a proposition to me, but I would not listen to it. Fancher is now traveling with a kinetoscope company and I expect him back in Detroit next week. His wife is living here at the present time."▼8

Wednesday March 23, 1904
May's sister-in-law, Mary Curran, is named executor of her estate.

Wednesday, July 27, 1904
Baby boy Ogurkowski dies of measles at the Grosse Ile hospital. Reportedly he was taken there to receive proper nourishment, but Grosse Ile's role as gate keeper for infectious disease make it likely he contracted measles in Detroit and was transferred to Grosse Ile.  His first name was not published.

Discrepancies and addendum

1.  James B. Curran served in the Spanish-America war in Company H of the 35th Michigan 16th Infantry. He was captured in Meycauyau and held in a Philippine prison in North Luzon for seventy-four days.  A lengthy transcription of his report on his imprisonment to his commander, Colonel Charles C. Hood, was penned by a fellow soldier, Bert Lyons, and published in the Livingston County Daily Press newspaper.

2. Margarethe Annen's father, Frank C. Annen II (1841–1898) applied for the building permit for 299 Webster in 1882 with an estimated cost of $2,000.  In 1909 Chicago renumbered its streets and the Annen home became 903 Webster.  Members of the Annen family lived there until at least 1930.  It still stands and is lovely.  Today it is a single-family dwelling but during the Annen family's ownership it held two families.  (None named Curran, I checked.)
How did a watch engraved "May Curran" become associated with Margarethe Annen's body? 
Despite the best efforts of police and morgue workers, conditions at the theater and in the mortuaries were such that there were mix-ups.  I found many women in Chicago named May Curran between 1880 and 1920.  The watch could have been worn to the theater by a survivor who was not mentioned in newspapers, or by a woman whose maiden name was May Curran, or a daughter/sister/niece/granddaughter of a woman named May Curran, a woman gifted it by someone who purchased it at a pawn shop, a woman who lived anywhere in the Midwest.
Or an altogether different scenario.  Margarethe's last name was sometimes spelled Annon and Annan.  Watchworks melted in the fire.  Margarethe's body was harmed badly enough that her family members didn't recognize it through two days of searching, which means the watch might have been subjected to damaging temperatures that made the engraving hard to read, perhaps making Annan look like Curran.
What is almost certain is that May Curran of Detroit did not wear the watch to the Iroquois.  She was seven months pregnant in an era when pregnant women didn't go out in public.  I don't think the woman left Detroit after around November.  She was hiding out somewhere, probably with help from Fancher.

3. Stamps that could be accumulated and redeemed for merchandise were given to customers by participating merchants.  The appeal to merchants was the opportunity to encourage cash payments and customer loyalty.  Trading stamps appeared in the late 1800s and continued in popularity into the 1970s.  I remember their popularity in the 1950s.  Throughout 1904 the Detroit Free Press engaged in an anti-trading-stamp campaign.  The newspaper portrayed trading stamps as cost-increasing evils that duped foolish wives into paying higher prices in order to receive stamps, and accused stamp-issuing companies of dishonest practices.  It assured readers that honest merchants were swarming to discontinue the use of stamps and were pressing for legislation to ban the use of stamps altogether.  The strongest objection to stamps came from small rural merchants who were unable to purchase stamps at the same low price as large merchants in metropolitan locations.  Small merchants felt pressured by customers to offer stamps and resented the cost.  The newspaper jettisoned the campaign in 1905.

4. Coincidentally, some of the rail on which James and Mary Curran traveled from Detroit to Chicago was built by construction crews bossed by Thomas Gleason Davis — father of Will J. Davis, manager of the Iroquois Theater in Chicago where nearly six hundred people had just died, including the woman whose body they were going to examine. Thomas Davis had worked for Michigan Central / Michigan Southern / Indiana Northern between 1847 and 1851 supervising crews that built the track from Ann Arbor to Indiana and on to Chicago.  Thomas rode the first work train into Chicago on those rails, then settled in Elkhart in 1852 and gave up railroad construction.  In liquidating Will Davis' estate in 2005 I found a home with a Michigan historian for the payroll records Thomas kept when his crews were working around Ann Arbor. 

5. Some newspapers reported May died on the 11th but her death certificate stated the date of her death as February 12, 1904.

6. A newspaper story of January 4, 1904 reported that May was "prominent in the church work of St. Anne's parish," and I found one reference linking Joseph to St. Mary's church.  May and Joseph's secrecy would have prevented them from having the marriage service at either church. 

7. In 1915 Fancher's wife, Cora R. Fancher, sued him for having abandoned her and their sixteen-year-old daughter, Amanda.  In the suit, Cora said he'd left Detroit in January, 1903 to escape financial problems with his business, Sheehy-Fancher Lumber Co.  No mention of the trading stamp business in which May Curran had worked.

8. I found nothing to suggest that Joseph's lawsuit was filed so perhaps Fancher's attorney talked more persuasively after the newspaper story.

Periam Mingins Abbott and Dymond

Herman Fellman and family

Charles James 3rd generation hardware man

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Story 2987
 


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.


Judy Cooke 2024 All rights reserved ©