Forty-year-old Rachel "Hattie" E. Zug Secrist (b.1865) and her eighteen-year-old daughter, June Secrest (b.1885), lived at 2839 Paulina St. in Ravenswood, a north Chicago neighborhood in the Lake View subdivision, today's Lincoln Square community. It is not known where in the theater Hattie and June were seated, but they could have afforded seats of their choice. Since there were few fatalities from the ground floor, they may have been seated in the second-floor balcony.

Hattie and June's bodies were not found for two days, Hattie's at Gavins funeral home; the morgue where June was found was not reported. They were identified from their clothing by Columbus D. Hussey (1852-1925) and their husband and father, Charlie Secrist (1860-1923). Columbus Hussey was Hattie's brother-in-law, married to Charlie Secrist's sister, Maud. Columbus came from Dixon, Illinois, roughly a hundred miles west of Chicago, to help the Secrists locate the bodies and bring them home. It is possible he arrived in Chicago and began the search alone while Charlie Secrist traveled back to Chicago. Charlie's boss, a powerful railroad manager, spent much of his time on the road for Union Pacific, traveling with a group of subordinates that included stenographers and, perhaps, Charlie Secrist.

The Chicago and Northwestern railroad donated the use of two coaches so that eighty people could travel from Chicago to the funeral in the Secrist's hometown, Franklin Grove, Illinois. Held at the First Presbyterian Church on Tuesday, January 5, 1904, the service was conducted by pastor Rev. Seldon. Hattie and June were interred at Franklin Grove Cemetery, resting place for several generations of Secrists since settling there in the 1860s.

Charlie, Hattie, and their children had moved to Chicago in mid-1901 from Omaha, Nebraska, when Charlie was transferred, along with his boss, John C. Stubbs, then traffic director for Southern Pacific, to new positions at Ed Harriman's lines at Union Pacific.

Reporting directly to Harriman, Stubbs, promoted to a vice presidency, set rates for Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, Oregon Short Line, and Oregon Railway and Navigation. As his chief clerk, Charlie Secrist would have had a front-row seat to Harriman's railroad dealings, including his hostile take-over attempt of Northern Pacific Railroad.*

June, nicknamed "Junie," had three older siblings, including Courtland Secrist (1883-1945), who worked for the Chicago and Northwestern railroad at the time of the fire. Her sisters were eighteen-year-old Garnett Secrist (1885-1950) and fourteen-year-old Frances, nicknamed "Frankie" (1893-1922). It was not reported if Garnett and Frances also attended the theater and survived. Around the third grade, June was one of a thousand students at the James B. McPherson Elementary School and the only victim from the school who died at the Iroquois.

Hattie's given name was Rachel, named after her mother, Rachel Johnson Zug. Hattie had seven siblings. Her mother was still living at the time of the fire. Her father, Israel Zug, had passed in 1894. In Switzerland, from which came the first Zug's to America, the word zug in German meant "train" and was attached to various railway entities. Charlie and Hattie may have smiled about the train girl marrying a trainman.

In the years after the fire

Charlie Secrist died in 1923 after a lifetime on the railroad. At his death, he was VP and General Manager of Pacific Fruit Express, with responsibility for 30,000 leased refrigerator cars. Two of his children, Courtland and Garnett, survived, along with his grandchildren, June Betts and James C. Ford, Frankie's son. I did not find evidence that Charlie remarried.

In 1914 Garnett Secrist, married to Curtis Betts, named her daughter after her lost little sister June. The marriage did not last, and Garnett later married Ira B. Fry and moved to Hinsdale, IL. Daughter June Betts (1914-2010) graduated from Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1936, became a journalist, and traveled extensively. She married Henry H. Lyman in 1941. In 2008, at age 94, she revisited Bermuda, one of the countries she'd visited in 1937. Perhaps June was taught to take Hattie's and June Secrist's unexpected deaths as a reminder to live each day to its fullest.

Discrepancies and addendum

The last name was spelled as Segrint in some early newspaper reports, while the same list reported that Mrs. Schrist and her daughter June were missing. In the 1900 U.S. Census, the name was spelled Secrest. On the death certificates, it was spelled Secrest, but the family spelled it as Secrist.

June was reported as being eight years old in some newspapers and nine in others.

* Charlie's would not have been an easy job. Several descriptions of Stubbs portray him as thorough and demanding. One subordinate said of Stubbs, "He shoots questions at us like a Gatling gun and imbibes information like a suction pump." Three days after the Iroquois Theater fire, headlines speculated whether Stubbs would replace Horace G. Burt as president of Union Pacific. Harriman himself added the title to his many others, and Stubbs remained as VP director of UP traffic until his retirement in 1909.

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