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On a winter afternoon in Chicago on
December 30, 1903, nearly two thousand people gathered at the
city's newest luxury playhouse, the Iroquois Theater. They were
there to see Klaw
& Erlanger's production of Mr.
Bluebeard, an extravagant pantomime for children brought
from the Drury Lane theater in London.
Soon after the start of the second act, a fire started on the stage when a bit of drapery fabric caught on
an arc lamp. In seconds the stage was aflame and soon spread to
the auditorium. nearly six hundred died that afternoon, the worst
theater fire in America's history.
Amongst the fatalities was a nine-year-old boy named Willard Miller (b. 1894), son of William
P. Miller (1870-) and Eva Morrow Miller (1870-1905). He went to
the theater with his aunt, forty-one-year-old Sarah "Jenny"
Morrow (1862-1943).
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Willard attended the Willard School along with
eleven-year-old
Arthur Bergch.* In addition to his aunt Jennie Morrow,
in Willard's theater party might have been Arthur
and his mother Annie, both of whom died at the
Iroquois. I found nothing in newspapers to suggest
or support this, am just guessing. In addition to
the Willard boys being classmates, their father's
worked in the tobacco industry.
The families grief might have been multiplied if not
for his two-year-old brother, Robert, that kept his
mother Eva at home as caretaker. His aunt Jennie was
one of his mother's two older sisters, the other one
being Sylvia Della Morrow Nevin (1861-1935). The
three girls and their two brothers, Harry and
Clarence, had been born to the late Robert and
Margaret McMichael Morrow.
Jennie badly injured
She spent a week in the hospital before going to her
sister's home to recuperate. In keeping with
beliefs about shock at the time, word of her
nephew's death was kept from her for most of that
week.
Body identified
Willard's body was identified by a twenty-one-year-old Benjamin J.
Crandall who had worked for Crump Bros tobacco house
earlier in 1903 but when it failed in November had
to find a new job.
Willard's father worked as a traveling salesman. It
is possible that Crandall went searching for Willard
because Willard was out of town.
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In the years after the fire
In April, 1905 Eva and
William were blessed with twin daughters, Elizabeth
and Margaret. It must have eased her grief at
Willard's death. Their joy lasted five days. Eva
died from a pulmonary embolism. Accounting for up to
20% of deaths to new mothers today, blood clots were
even more common in 1905.
Newspapers reported that
Eva was buried in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago but
1903 newspapers reported Willard's burial was in
Oakwoods Cemetery. Find-A-Grave entries for each
burial were entered based on an assumption the
newpaper stories were accurate and have not been
verified with cemetery records or a photo of a grave
marker. William Miller was financially comfortable
enough to bury his son and wife where he chose and
it seems unlikely they were buried in separate
cemeteries. They are not in the cemetery in Lisbon,
Ohio with Eva's parents and siblings.
William moved his brood to Elgin, Illinois after
Eva's death. Elgin is about forty-five minutes
northwest of Chicago. They lived there in a lovely
home at 1216 Bellevue Avenue. Around 1917 William
and the children moved to New York and he married
Mae E. Swank (1885-1959).
Jennie Morrow married Gustavus Vallet (1854-1934) in
1911 and moved to Ames, Iowa.
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