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On a cold winter day in Chicago at the end of December in 1903, America's worst theater
fire took the lives of nearly six hundred people, including many
children. Had the disaster taken place the following year,
perhaps little Dot Gould would have died with her parents.
At only three years of age, she'd been kept at
home that afternoon, too young for the theater. By days
end she was orphaned and would be raised by her paternal
grandparents.
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Toddler lost both parents
Husband and wife, Ben and Pearl Gould were seated in the
third-floor balcony. They had celebrated their ninth wedding
anniversary on Christmas day, five days before the
fire.
Benjamin Eli Gould (b. 1870) was thirty-three years
old, and Pearl Cranston Gould (b. 1871) was
thirty-two. They had married in 1896 and lived in Elgin,
Illinois where Ben worked as a circuit court clerk.
They had lived with Ben's parents when Dorothy was
an infant but by 1903 had their own home at 221
Grove Avenue in Elgin.
Pearl was one of six children born to John E.
Cranston (1839–1885) and Elizabeth D. Taylor
Cranston (c.1845–). She was born in Livingston,
Michigan. Newspapers after the fire reported that
Pearl jumped from a balcony to the floor below and
suffered a fractured skull. She can't have
expected to survive the fall so must have jumped
to escape agonizing pain from flames.
Ben's parents raised Dorothy after the fire. They
were Leander Johnson Gould Jr. (1842–1931) and
Delilah / Delila "Jane" Morgan Gould (1846–1928). In
1900 they had built a large new home at 479 Laurel,
at the corner of Laurel and Percy streets in Elgin.
(Of homes I've looked up, it is one of the few homes of Iroquois victims and
survivors still standing.)
Ben's parents were among dozens who brought a
wrongful death suit against Klaw & Erlanger.
In 1910 Delilah worked as a pastry chef, and Leander
received a military pension from his service to the
Union army with the 13th Wisconsin infantry during
the civil war.
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Leander had enlisted in Troy, Wisconsin in 1861 and
mustered out four years later as a sergeant. Gould was
active in the GAR in Elgin. Fortunately, he and
Delilah lived long enough to provide for their
granddaughter until she grew up.
After graduating from high school Dorothy worked as a milliner. In
1921, she married a former high school classmate,
Dudley Weaver Nish (1899–1970) — who also had a
sister named Dorothy. Dudley became an insurance agent. The pair
had two daughters and a son. Dorothy's grandmother
Delilah passed in 1928 and in 1930, at age
eighty-eight,
Leander lived with Dorothy and her family.
Thanks to an assist from
Elgin Area Historical Society & Museum I learned
that daughter Dorothy died in 1969, after a lengthy
illness.
It is interesting to note that Dorothy was involved
in thespians during high school. Her only knowledge of
her parents would have been through stories
and photographs. They'd been young, in love
and had adored their little Dot, but no matter how
nicely the story started, for a child growing up
with it, the hideous ending included a mother so
badly burned and injured that her body could not be
identified except by her jewelry, and a father that
was trampled to death. On a stage, Dorothy must have
thought about Ben and Pearl when she looked out at
laughing and applauding audiences. Perhaps it helped
her create a mental picture of her parents not as
they were at death but as the happy couple they'd
been an hour before.
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