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Seventeen-year-old Josephine M. Gahan (b.1887)*
lived at the corner of Wentworth and Garfield or at
129 25th Place. Both addresses were given. Her body
was discovered at Perrigo's funeral home and
identified by her guardian, James Clark.
Josephine and Alice were the daughters of the Irish immigrants,
the late John Gahan (1840–1896), a retired fireman,
and Josephine Kerwin Gahan (1851–1894). Two
brothers, James and Richard, were adults when their
father died. As orphans, Josephine and her sister,
Alice L. Gahan (1889–1978), attended the Notre Dame
Academy in Bourbonnais, IL, Kankakee County. James
and Richard boarded with James Clark and his wife,
Margaret Mullins Clark.
Josephine's funeral was held All Saints Episcopal Church on
Hermitage and Wilson†, and burial was at Calvary
Cemetery in Evanston alongside her parents in the
Mullens family plot but without a headstone.
Josephine's guardian, James Clark (1851–), was a
stonecutter who had emigrated from Ireland in 1868.
He owned his home on 25th street, where he lived
with his wife, Margaret Jane Mullins Clark, and
their two children.
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Josephine is recorded as being buried in the Mullins
plot. Since her mother, Josephine Kerwin Mahan, was
the first Mahan to be buried in the plot, it is
likely that she was the one related to a Mullins.
Josephine and Alice's brothers lived with the
Clark's in 1900, making me even more certain that
the Gahan's are related to the Mullins, but I failed
to find the connection.
Alice Gahan Burns joined one hundred and fifty
people at an Iroquois Theater memorial service
thirty-nine years after the fire. Also in attendance
was
Annabelle Whitford Buchan and former coroner
John Traeger.
In the years after the fire
Alice lived in California for a time then married and
divorced billboard artist George Burns and worked as
a stenographer in a hospital. Her only child, daughter, Virginia Catherine Burns,
is pictured above. Probably the closest we'll get to knowing what
Josephine Gahan looked like.
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