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The Ludwig family of four died at the Iroquois Theater fire in
Chicago in 1903. Included:
Forty-four-year-old Herman Harry
Ludwig (b. 1859)
Forty-one-year-old Sarah A. Sadie Burns Ludwig
(b. 1862)
Eighteen-year-old Eugenia M. Gina Ludwig (b.
1885)
Fourteen-year-old Carolina A. Lina Ludwig (b.
1889)
Mr. Ludwig managed the Hallwood Cash Register company at
41
Dearborn St. The family lived at 113 Circle Ave. in
Norwood Park. He and Sarah had married in 1881.
Relatives found Harry, Sadie's, and Eugenie's bodies
a few days after the fire, at two different morgues, but Carolina's body was
still missing two weeks later. Relatives described
her as having been large for her age, wearing woolen
underclothing, a child's corset cover, black
stockings with two-tone blue and grey shoes, a
flannel petticoat with two tucks and lace, a pink
and white striped skirt with five tucks, a white top
skirt, a brown accordion-pleated dress, a long red
coat, a brown hat.
Weeks after the fire, in March, 1904, something led
Louis Wilinski, Herman's half brother, to a victim of a
similar age and size who had been buried in Madison,
Wisconsin. The body was exhumed and determined to be
Lina. See accompanying clipping.▼1
Herman's watch
An Elgin watch engraved with an L on the back was found
at the theater after the fire.
Dewitt Creiger
wrote to the Elgin company to ask for help in locating
the owner of the timepiece. Elgin responded with
the name of the wholesale distributor who, in turn,
supplied the name of a retailer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa,
Boyson Drug and Jewelry, who reported the watch had been
purchashed by Herman Ludwig in 1901. (See
story.)
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Hallwood Cash Register
Hallwood was based in
Columbus, Ohio. During the Iroquois Theater
disaster, its Chicago office opened its doors to
fifty victims. Employees L.A. Weismann, salesman
Harry Snow, Harry Dewitt, and Clyde J. Burnett did
what they could to make people comfortable. All the
while, they wondered if their boss and his family had
survived, growing more fearful by the hour.
Two victims helped at the Hallwood store were
sisters from Aurora, IL, Helena, and Ottlie Berrien.
They were taken to a train station and returned to
Aurora, probably arriving home before their parents
knew about the fire. Soon after that, someone ran in
the door at Hallwood, looking for the girls. The
third member of their theater party, Marie Johnson,
had found shelter at Hallwood's competitor, the
National Cash Register company, at 50 State St.
National and Hallwood headquarters had been in a
decade-long war.
In the years after the fire
Mrs. John A. Rose, Sadie Ludwig's sister, treasured
a few pieces of Sadie's jewelry as keepsakes. In
January 1910, seven years after the fire, a burglar
named William Pennington broke into the Rose home
and took the jewelry. Mrs. Rose surprised him in the
act, and police officer Waldo Phelps chased the
burglar down to retrieve the jewelry.
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