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Hulda Edith Holm (b. 1879
Hulda lived at 176 N. Western
Avenue in Chicago, at the corner of Lake St. The
structure is now gone, but the family probably lived
above her father's drapery and upholstery shop.
Her body was found at Carroll's funeral home and
identified by her brother-in-law, Percy E. Douglas,
husband of her older sister, Eva, from a pin bearing
her name. The funeral was held at noon on January 3, and
her body was interred next to her father's at
Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago.
She was the daughter of Cecilia Pearson Holm
(1839–1920) and the late Ludwig A. Holm (1838–1903).
Ludwig, who worked as a cabinet maker as a young
man, and went on to become a drapery upholsterer of
several decades in Chicago, had passed away eight
months before the Iroquois fire.
Ludwig and Cecelia Holm were Swedish immigrants who
had married in 1870, the same year they emigrated.
Cecelia gave birth to four children, of which only
Hulda and Eva survived as of
1900. Ludwig and Cecelia owned their home, no small
feat on a 1903 tradesman's income.
Anna "Annie" B. Hanson (b. 1882)
In a victim list published the day after the fire, a
twenty-three-year-old Miss Nina Hansen was included,
her residence given as the same as Hulda Holm's. A
death certificate was not issued for a Nina Hansen
but one was issued for a twenty-one-year-old Anna B.
Hanson of Gibson City. The relationship between the
women is not known but possibly they were family
members.
The Hanson family dentist,
Dr. William A. Hoover, traveled to Chicago with Anna's father
to help identify her badly burned body.
Identification was made on the basis of her teeth,
recently purchased shoes from the George Bloom store
and her rings.
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Dr. Hoover was more than Gibson's most prominent dentist. In 1900 he and his wife,
Laura Howver Hoover, had also been Anna Hanson's employers, and she may have lived with them
still at the time of her death. The Hansons were a family of modest
means, and Anna worked for the Hoovers as a servant while attending school. At
that time the Hoovers had one child, daughter Sibyl, but later adopted another
daughter. It's not hard to imagine that the Hoovers may have played a mentoring
role to help Anna become a teacher in the city's fledgling high school.
Anna's parents were immigrants, having emigrated from Sweden in 1881. They were
Nels▼2 Hanson (1848–) and Annette Frederickson Hanson (1862–1925). She was one of
four children, all living prior to her death. At home were younger siblings
Oscar and Esther.
Anna was buried in the Drummer Township▼3 Cemetery in Gibson City, Illinois,
following a service on Tuesday, January 5, 1904, at the Presbyterian Church in
Gibson. In her obituary, Anna was described as a very beautiful young woman.
Gibson City, Illinois was a small city about two hours southwest of Chicago,
with a population in 1903 about the same as it is today - around 3,000. It got
its first phone system the year of the Iroquois fire.
In the years after the fire
Hulda Holm's sister Eva married a dentist named
Percy E. Douglas and helped him found and operate a
resort motel, Douglas View, in Paw Paw, Michigan.
After his death, she married photographer Thomas Blondin. Cecilia Holms lived with Eva in her later
years.
A newspaper a month after the fire reported that
Anna Hanson's mother, Annetta, soldiered on during
the immediate time of the fire but then lost her
mind with grief and was being treated by a
physician. The family may have moved to Michigan for
a few years but returned to Gibson. At the end of
her life, Annetta lived in Kankakee, IL. Brother
Oscar worked for the railroad, served in World War
I, and never married. Esther married a fellow named
Indra and had three daughters, including May Elsie,
pictured at left.
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