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Canadian-born Margaret Jane "Mattie" De Vine Evan (b.1860)
Mattie, who sometimes went by Mary, was forty-two
years old. She had married John "Jack" Norton Evans,
an Ohio native, in 1879. In their early married
years, they lived in Ohio, where their only child
was born, and in Keokuk, Iowa. By 1903 they had
moved to Quincy, Illinois, where John worked as a
railroad conductor for the St. Louis, Keokuk &
Northwestern Railroad that in 1901 became part of
the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railway. He spent
his workdays riding between Quincy and St. Louis.
Railroading was a lifelong association for John. He
spent his last years in a retirement home for
railroad workers. It was reported that he planned to
bring suit against Iroquois Theater management for
Margaret's death.
In Quincy, the Evans family lived at 1417 N. 8th
St near today's Washington Elementary school.
Clara Adelaide De Vine (b. 1867)
Clara was Margaret's thirty-year-old
sister, born after their parents moved the
family to the United States. She worked as a
dressmaker in Chicago, in 1903 living at 259 LaSalle
Avenue. In 1903 Chicago papers spelled the name as
"De Vine," but Iowa newspapers and the cemetery
spelled it without the space, as "Devine."
They were the daughters of John H. DeVine
(1818–1870), a New Yorker, and Catherine J. Campbell
De Vine (1827–1890) of Canada. Though both parents
were deceased, Margaret and Clara had at least three
sisters.
The bodies of both De Vine sisters were identified
by A. J. Reese, relationship unknown. Clara's body
was found at Boydston's Mortuary and Mattie's at
Buffum's Funeral Home.
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Funeral services were held in Quincy, Illinois, then the bodies were shipped to
Keokuck, Iowa, for burial in the Oakland Cemetery.
Picture of Margaret's gravestone. According to a
Keokuck historical group, Clara is also buried at
Oakland, but I was unable to find a listing for her
online in Oakland. Perhaps she and Margaret were
buried in a common grave.
Mabel M. Evans (1880–1957)
Also in their theater party, injured but surviving,
was Margaret's twenty-three-year-old daughter,
Mable. She and her husband, Kentuckian Thomas Cardwell,
lived in Sedalia, MO, and did not have children. She
was his third wife.
Mabel's story is curious. It makes no mention of the
death of her aunt Clara Devine. Seems sad. I found
no 1903 or 1904 newspaper reports of Mabel's death;
however, I did not find the Quincy Herald online,
and perhaps that was the only newspaper in which the
inaccuracy was reported.
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