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Twenty-three-year-old Florence Hutchins (b. 1880)
lived at 313 Sheridan Road in Waukegan, IL. She was
the youngest daughter of five children born to Edwin
Wesley Hutchins (c1849-1915) and Ida Lyon Hutchins
(1850-1916). Her brother, Edwin Lyon Hutchins Jr.
(1884-1916), identified his sister's body.
Edwin Hutchins was a realtor, and her uncle, G. R.
Lyon, an Illinois state representative. Her
grandfather, Edwin Pierce Hutchins a California
pioneer and mining engineer. Her older sister, Mary
Hutchins, was a school teacher. Both girls, like
their mother, attended Mount Holyoke College in
South Hadley, Massachusetts, Ida graduating in 1872
and Mary in 1896. Had she survived, Florence would
have been in the 1904 Mount Holyoke graduating
class.
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Funeral services for Florence were conducted by Rev. Samuel
Willis Chidester (1853-1939), pastor of the First
Presbyterian church where Florence taught Sunday
school. Pallbearers were Roy Cogswell, George
Saenger, James B. Mitchell, Ralph Parks, Charles and
Will Lyon.*
In the years after the fire
Edwin Hutchins married a Kentucky girl and named the first born of his three
daughters after Florence.
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Discrepancies and addendum
I prefer that
a single web page discusses all the members of a
theater party but in this case didn't discover
Florence Hutchins and
Belle Pinney attended the theater together until
after making two separate web pages. For
the time being I'm opting at this time to let both pages stand alone and
connect them with links.
1904 newspapers reported the death of a school teacher
named Jeanette Hutchins at the Iroquois, but the
coroner's office did not issue a burial permit for a
woman by that name. There was, however, a victim
named Jeanette Higginson and the names Higginson and
Hutchins may have been confused by newspaper
transcribers. The evening of the fire, a
Waukegan newspaper reported that word had been
received by family members that Florence had
survived but that a death certificate was issued and
her name appeared in subsequent fatality lists.
In the first few days after the fire, such reporting
errors were common.
* Other Iroquois Theater victims from Waukegan,
IL were
William and Clara Reid.
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