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On December 30, 1903, Millie Lowitz and her sister-in-law, Rae
Lowitz, attended an afternoon matinee of Klaw & Erlanger's
Mr. Bluebeard pantomime at Chicago's newest luxury playhouse, the Iroquois Theater. It
is not known where in the theater they were seated, but it was
almost certainly in the second- or third-floor balcony. When a fire
broke out on stage and spread to the audience, Millie would be
among the nearly six hundred deaths in America's worst theater fire. Rae was
thought to be missing or dead, and her name appeared on early
death lists, but she survived.
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Nat to Minnie
Twenty-two-year-old Mildred Millie Heinemann
Hennemann Lowitz (b. 1881), sometimes called Minna
and Minnie, lived in Keokuk, Iowa. She was in
Chicago visiting her parents and siblings over the
1903 holidays.
Her body was identified by her husband, Nathan S.
Lowitz (1877–1959), by the engraving on her ring,
"Nat to Minnie." The pair had married eighteen
months earlier. Nathan had followed in his father's
footsteps into retail and operated a department
store in Keokuk. (In 1922, it was converted to sell
garments exclusively.)
Millie was a Chicago girl, one of four children
born to German immigrants Nathan Heinemann
(1850–1923) and Johanna Pfaelzer Heinemann
(1851–1920). Her funeral was held the morning of
Monday, Jan 4, 1904, at her parent's home in Chicago
at 274 Sheffield Ave. She was buried in the German
Waldheim Cemetery, known today as Forest Home
Cemetery, in Forest Park, IL. The service may have
been performed by Dr. Hirschberg of Chicago, who had
married the couple. He was the rabbi of the North
Chicago Hebrew Congregation on Clark and Wells
streets, around 1909, renamed
Temple Sholom.
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Rachel Rae Lowitz
(1880–1977), sister of Millie's husband, Nathan S.
Lowitz, grew up in Keokuk, Iowa, with eight siblings
and remained there until at least 1900 but some time
after that moved to Chicago, possibly before the
fire. Rae never married. She lived with her sisters
most of her life. Rachel and Nathan were the
children of Samuel Lowitz (1845–1910) and Malvina
Gehr Lowitz (1853–1937). Samuel Lowitz had in 1877
succeeded his brother Nathan (namesake of son Nathan
S. Lowitz) in a clothing store in Keokuk. He spent
the next forty years building it into what was
reported to have been the largest clothing store in
Iowa. The population of Keokuk in 1903 was around
14,000, a bit more than it is today. The city is
located in the far southeastern tip of Iowa, about
three hours northwest of St. Louis, two hours from
Davenport Peoria.
In the years after the fire
In November 1905, Nathan remarried Lucile F. Aaron (1881–1933) of
Alexandria, Louisiana, with whom he had three
children. After Lucile's death, he married Maude
Kohn (1891–1980).
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Discrepancies and addendum
There are three men named Nathan in this story.
Nathan Lowitz, husband of Iroquois fatality Millie
Heinemann Lowitz, his uncle and namesake, Nathan
Lowitz, and Nathan Heinemann, Millie's father. There
was also another man named Nathan Heinemann living
in Chicago, the wealthy founder of Wausau Wisconsin
Telephone Company. The Nathan Heinemann of this
story, Millie's father, was a picture framer who in
later years became a life insurance salesman.
Other Iroquois victims from Keokuk were
Clara De Vine and Mattie Evans.
* One 1st-day death list included the name of a
Rae/Roe/Ray and R. A. Lowitz. There were several
spelling variations of Heinemann, including Hememann.
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