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This party of four were all family
members from Indiana and Michigan. (See map and family tree below.)
Three came by train from La Porte County in Indiana to visit the
fourth, a former St. Joseph, Michigan woman who lived in Chicago. The
party was seated in the third row of the balcony on the second
floor. Separated by the surging crowd, three survived the 1903
Iroquois Theater fire and one did
not.
Survivors:
Eighteen-year-old Ethel Beahm of Westville in LaPorte County, Indiana
was the daughter of Emery Beahm (1862–1939)
and Lavinia Loomis Beahm (1866–1941), and sister to Susie Beahm. Emery
escorted his daughters to the city. He may also have attended the theater; references were inconsistent.
Though badly scarred, fifteen-year-old Susie Beahm Westville in LaPorte County, Indiana
survived. She was the daughter of Emery Beahm (1862–1939)
and Lavinia Loomis Beahm (1866–1941), sister to Ethel Beahm.
According to one reference, Susie was transported by her aunt and
uncle to a specialist physician. Since the aunt she was visiting in
Chicago, Myra Holmes, was of modest means, I'm curious about the
identity of the specialist.
Thirty-seven-year-old Angie Doolittle Loomis of
La Porte in LaPorte County, Indiana was the widow of Susie and
Ethel's late uncle Schuyler Loomis (1863–1894), their mother Lavinia's brother.
Fatality:
Fifty-three-year-old Myra Knight Holmes of Chicago, nicknamed Minnie,
was the wife of John Holmes and great aunt to Susie and Ethel, sister to their mother's
late aunt Catherine Knight (1835–1902), wife of the late Ralph
Loomis (1827–1896).
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Myra Knight Holmes (b. 1849)
Minnie was the nickname of Myra Knight, a
Constantine, Michigan native who married John Holmes
(1849–c.1914). They had three children: John Willis
Holmes (1875–1971), Dorothy Daisy Holmes
(1877-1937), and Earl Frank Holmes (1880–1941) — the
twenty-three-year-old who overheard sad news about
his mother's prognosis while waiting in the lobby at
the hospital for word of her condition.
In 1903, Minnie's son, Earl, worked as a day
laborer. His father, John, worked as a wagon team
driver. John and Minnie were Midwesterners, John
from Indiana and Minnie from Michigan. All their
children were born in Illinois. Prior to working as
a driver, John worked in some capacity at an ice
company, as a farmworker and a day laborer, and in
1905 as a superintendent at the Armour plant in
Chicago. Minnie grew up in Constantine, Michigan.
Her mother was a native of Canada, and her father
was from Maryland.
Minnie Holmes's body was taken to Carroll's
mortuary.
After the fire
In January 1905, Earl Holmes, age twenty-four, eloped
with seventeen-year-old Nellie M. Keller of South
Bend, Indiana. She worked at the John C. Barrett
company in Fort Wayne and was the niece of the mayor
of South Bend, Indiana. Nellie and Earl had one
child, but the marriage did not last.
Between them, Minnie's children produced a half
dozen grandchildren, only one born in time for
Minnie to know her. Daisy's daughter, Margaret Cole,
had just turned five when her grandmother died from
her Iroquois Theater injuries. In an odd
coincidence, Margaret herself would die fifty-six
years to the day after her grandmother, on December
30, 1959.
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Ethel Beahm (1885–1973)
Some newspaper stories reported that Ethel was the
Beahm sister with disfiguring scars but most cited
Susie as the victim. Six years after the Iroquois
Theater fire, Ethel married John S. Recktenwall,
with whom she would have two children. After his
death, she taught for many years in Westville, IN,
schools. At her death, she had four grandchildren
and nine great-grandchildren.
Susan Susie Beahm (1888–1971) Emery Beahm engaged an attorney to bring a $20,000
suit against Iroquois management for Susie's
disfigurement. Nothing was published about the
outcome of that suit; presumably, it was eventually
dismissed along with other Iroquois suits. At age
twenty-five, Susie met a man who didn't care about
her scars. She and Leonard E. Smith would raise a
daughter and remain together for the rest of their
lives.
Angie Doolittle Loomis (1866–1932)
Angie was the daughter of Andrew Doolittle and
Avaline Pike. She had married Schuyler Loomis in
1887. Their only child died in infancy. She worked
as a dry goods store sales clerk after her husband's
death, relocating to Seattle at the end of her life.
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