|
Hewitt Persinger was a student at the Alcott School. Another
Iroquois victim,
Donald Wells, was also a student at Alcott.
Hattie may have been the former Mary H. Gale,
daughter of George F. Gale, a physician, and Vestra
R. Gale. If so, she had a sister named Clara and a
brother named Fred....or, Hattie may have been the
daughter of school teacher Nathan H. Gale and Elsa
A. Dawson Gale, with a sister named Alice Gale.
They were the wife and child of Franklin Moses
Persinger (1858–1925) of Shelby County, Ohio,
married in 1884. Franklin was a tailor doing
business as Persinger & Co. in the Phelan building
in San Francisco. The climate in San Francisco had
disagreed with Hattie, so she and their three
children, Irma E. Persinger (b.1884), Gladys Gale
Persinger (1883–1953), and Hewitt moved to Chicago
where they lived at 50 Florence Ave. Franklin's
older brother, Holland Raper Persinger (1852–1925),
and his mother, Mary Mariah Irvin Persinger
(1817–1905), lived with Hattie and her daughters, as
did Hattie's nephew and niece, John William Harrison
(b. 1861, Virginia) and Clara E. Harrison (b.1863,
Indiana).
In the 1900 census, John and Clara were identified
as Hattie's nephew and niece but as married to one
another since 1898. Clara worked in a railway
office. By 1910 John and Clara Harrison were living
in New Trier, Illinois, and had a son named Clyde
Harrison (b.1901). John worked as an insurance
adjuster for streetcar claims.
|
|
Hattie was from
Vermont, as were her parents. Her daughters, Gladys
and Irma, were born in Nebraska, and her son,
Hewitt, in San Francisco. Hattie and Frank married
in Nebraska, October 1882.
At the time of the Iroquois Theater fire, Hattie's
daughters, Gladys and Irma, were in school. By 1910,
in their mid-twenties, they were living in Brooklyn,
California, with their father. Irma worked as a
clerk at American Express, and Gladys kept house.
The girls and their father were registered
republicans, living at 1350 Pine St. Ten years
later, at age thirty-five, Irma was living on her
own.
In the years after
the fire
Thirteen years after
the fire, Frank was still in the tailoring business
in San Francisco, and his brother Holland had joined
him. Holland was working as an editor for a travel
magazine. At various times in his life, Holland
published a magazine and worked as an editor for
several newspapers and magazines in Illinois, Iowa,
and California.
At age thirty, Gladys was still keeping house for
her father, on Page St. in San Francisco, but in
1927, at age thirty-seven, she married
fifty-year-old Phillip G. May from Germany (b.1876),
a first-time marriage for both. Phillips was a
retired machinist. They rented a home in the early
years of the marriage but by the time of their
deaths had purchased property in Saratoga or Monte
Sereno, California, thereby qualifying to purchase
burial plots in the Madronia Cemetery in Saratoga,
CA. When Gladys died in 1853 she had been living in
Santa Clara, CA, and was buried as Gladys G. May.
Phillip joined her in 1955.
|
|
Discrepancies and addendum
Most of Frank Persinger's family was born in the
Xenia, Ohio area. There were seven children in
addition to Franklin and Holland: William Irvin
Persinger (1835–1927), Newton Reid Persinger
(1838–1925), Rachelle Annette "Nellie" Kious
Persinger (b.1842), Amos Clark Persinger (b. 1840),
Clarissa J. Persinger Fisher (b.1846), John Milton Persinger (b. 1849) and George Cloys Persinger (b.1855).
Their father, a Virginian, was named John
Milton Persinger (1810–1897). John and Mary are
buried in Buck Creek/Little Hollywood Cemetery in
Tippecanoe County, Indiana.
|
