Sigmund had immigrated to America from Dorston, Germany, in 1868 with his parents. Ettie was born in Louisiana and Natalie in Illinois. Sigmund and Ettie had married in 1891. Natalie was their only child. The family lived at 4349 Forrestville Ave in Chicago and Natalie attended the LaSalle elementary school on Hammond and Eugenie streets.

Henrietta was Sigmund's second wife. One son resulted from his first marriage.

Ettie's body was found at Carrol's Funeral Home and identified by Sigmund's nephew, Jacob Leonard Eisendrath.  Her uncle, Joseph A. Berger found Natalie's body at the Cleveland.

The funeral was held at the North Chicago Reformed Hebrew Congregation Temple on the corner of LaSalle and Goethe on Sun Jan 3, 1904, and the Eisendraths were buried at Rosehill Cemetery. The funeral service may have been conducted by Rabbi Abram Hirschberg. Rabbi Hirschbert eulogized the Eisendraths and other Iroquois Theater victims in a commemorative service held at the temple on the first anniversary after the fire.

The Eisendraths were active members of a Jewish community in Chicago estimated at 75,000 in 1900.

In the years after the fire

Sigmund M. Eisendrath remarried in 1919, to Tillie Funkenstein. Sigmund was co-founder of a sheepskin tanning company, Weil & Eisendrath, at 2231–39 Elston Ave. His partners were his brother-in-law, Emanuel Raphael Weil, and Samuel Weil. In August 1921, Sigmund was shot by bandits at his plant who rode up on motorcycles. He was wounded but survived, and the thieves got no money.

Discrepancies and addendum

One report had Ettie and Natalie seated in the first balcony, found dead in each other's arms, crushed and smothered. It is unlikely the location where they were found was known. Only two bodies were identified at the scene, neither named Eisendrath. If Ettie and Natalie clung to one another in their final minutes, their limbs may have been intertwined and their bodies left joined when transported to the morgue, identified there by family. (Being beneath a pile of people was, for some, a lifesaver because the bodies on top created a protective barrier from flames, heat and smoke. In some locations, however, for people in the direct path of the fireball, the heat was so intense that though bodies on top prevented those beneath from charring, cellular denaturing caused muscles to separate from the bone. Torsos and limbs of those on the bottom collapsed and were crushed beneath the weight of those above, making separation at the scene a grisly affair of dismembered limbs and sloughing skin that probably gave first responders nightmares for the rest of their lives. The slings used to carry bodies from the theater, made of bed linens donated from Chicago Loop department stores, had multiple benefits. Best case, the blankets enabled a pair of workers to more easily transport a body; worst case it helped keep a body intact or provided a way to keep dismembered limbs with the torso.)

A January 1904 newspaper report of the coroner's inquest cited police officer  John B. Brady as having carried a Leonard Eisendrath of Lincoln, Illinois, from the third floor of Northwestern University to St. Lukes hospital, where he then died. This was an error. Ettie and Natalie were the only Eisendrath fatalities at the Iroquois Theater fire. The fatality from Lincoln, Illinois was  Leander Diffenderfer, but he was not carried into Northwestern; he jumped into a fire net. The Eisendrath's had a nephew with the middle name of Leonard, and he identified Ettie's body. If his name was mentioned in the proceedings, perhaps the newspaper confused the names.  A boy named Herbert Eisenstaedt died, and out of respect his aunt and uncle S. H. Eisensteadt postponed an engagement party honoring their daughter Alice and her fiance, James Samson Eisendrath. James was quite probably related to Moses Eisenstaedt, but was not at the Iroquois.  The cancellation of the engagement party was published in the Chicago newspapers.

Dr. Daniel N. Eisendrath treated victims at John Thompson's diner next to the Iroquois Theater. He was Natalie's first cousin once removed. Her father, Siegmund Eisendrath, was Daniel's first cousin. Daniel's father, Nathan Eisendrath, was a brother of Siegmund's father, Moses Samson Eisendrath.

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