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When the Meyers family of
Wisconsin had not heard from thirty-five-year-old Ida for over three
years, they became convinced she was the
unidentified woman who died at the Iroquois Theater
on December 30, 1903, soon to be buried beneath a
disaster memorial stone. Within a month after
the story went public (see
left), Ida contacted her kin. "I'm alive!" She
had been ill so hadn't written. The closest she came to the
fateful Mr. Bluebeard performance was the
purchase of two tickets, one of which, hers, was
unused, the other of which was used by an unnamed
child who escaped the conflagration.
Fourteen months later, Ida was
buried in a Wisconsin cemetery.
Ida Meyers Ammons / Ammmanos was the daughter of
German immigrant William B.F. Meyers (1843–1907) and,
possibly, Anna King Meyers (1845–1874). William worked as a
pattern maker for the railroad. When Anna
died, William must have been unable to care for their six
children. One son, John Meyers Hood
(1874-1931),* was adopted as a toddler by Dora Stein
Hood (1833–1919) and Alexander Hood (1827–1915), a
Racine couple who had lost their eleven-year-old
daughter Emma two years prior. Ida, the next
youngest after John, was not living with her father
and siblings in 1880, leading me to wonder if she
too was raised elsewhere.
At Ida's death in
1908, her brother John reported that in a letter he received
shortly before her death, Ida said she'd been granted
a divorce from her husband, who had abandoned her
nine years earlier. Chicago city records confirm she
was divorced. Nonetheless, her gravestone was
inscribed, "Ida Meyer Ammonos." The inscription on
the stone is very weather-worn, and one Find A Grave
volunteer deciphered it as Ammahos. I
failed to find record of Ida's marriage, but in city
directories, she reported her name as Ammons, leading
me to suspect the inscription on her gravestone is Ammonos
rather than Ammahos. Neither name is
common. Have contacted F.A.G. sponsor in hopes
of learning more.
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Discrepancies and addendum
* At John Hood's death, his adoptive mother's Stein
nephews fought for and won his $15,000 estate of
valuable Racine real estate (roughly a quarter-million
today), beating out his birth siblings, Daniel and Mamie
Meyers. A 1929 change in adoption law negated blood relatives'
inheritance rights in favor of adoptive relatives. Judge Simpson in Racine
ruled that since the adoption had taken place many
years prior to that law, the Meyers siblings were
the proper heirs, but the Wisconsin supreme court overturned
Simpson's ruling. The Hood case was the first
instance in which the new adoption statute was used
and is considered an important step in a more
practical "treatment of the relationship between
intestate succession and adoption." A will
purportedly drafted by John turned up,
naming his Meyers siblings as heirs, but the witnesses to
the will could not be located for verification, and his estate
eventually passed into control by the Steins.
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