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On Wednesday, December 30, 1903 a stage fire during a Mr. Bluebeard performance at Chicago's new Iroquois Theater
spread to the auditorium. With twenty minutes nearly six hundred people were dead or dying, Of those
that escaped was a thirteen-year-old girl from Logansport, Indiana, Gertrude Elizabeth Coale▼1
(1890–1972). Her nickname was Trudy.
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I found nothing published about Trudy's experience at the Iroquois, or her theater companions, but a descendent has been active on her
family's genealogy so perhaps someone will share whatever there is in family lore. She was the only daughter of Vincent and Hannah
Devore Coale who were then living at 1401 North Street in Eel Township of
Logansport, Indiana.▼2 Her father worked as a
foreman in a railroad yard. (Logansport's population, around 16,000, was similar to that of Huntington, Indiana where she eventually
raised her family and spent most of her life.)
The absence of newspaper references to Trudy's experience at the
Iroquois might have been related to the family's Quaker heritage, specifically deference to Trudy's grandmother
Elizabeth Coale (1826–1926).
Elizabeth was an elder/near-minister in the Society of Friends, and an outspoken temperance advocate. The Quakers anti-theater
sentiments extended to imposing disciplinary action for attending plays. Elizabeth was interesting and ahead of her time when it came to
suffrage. In 1903 she authored
Autobiography of Elizabeth H. Coale; written for
her children. It's online and only ninety-nine pages so is easy to scan.
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In the years after the fire
After a year of teaching at the Mt. Prospect school in Blooomington, Illinois, she enrolled at Purdue University, graduating
in 1912. She spend 1913 teaching in Iowa then in 1914 married a distant relative▼3 with whom she had much in common: William
Paul Spencer (1887–1986), who went by his middle name. They were students together at Purdue, where Spencer was a football
star,▼4 both families were Quakers, and both grew up in small, rural Indiana communities. Trudy's father had been born in Huntington.
Trudy and Paul set up housekeeping on a farm
on State Road 114 (aka Columbia City Road) in Clear Creek township north of his hometown, Huntington, Indiana.▼5 Her
mother died eight months after Trudy's wedding, her obituary stating she'd been ill for a long while and cared for by Trudy. I
found newspaper referencers to Trudy traveling with her father as a girl but her parents did travel to family functions in
Bloomington in 1905 so both parents might have accompanied her to the theater.
Trudy and Paul's first three children died in infancy, including twin boys. Gertrude didn't have a child who survived infancy
until 1919.▼6 They had four more children who survived, all attending college.
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Discrepancies and addendum
1. Name often misspelled as Cole.
2. Today it's a two- to three-hour car ride from Logansport to Chicago;
in 1903 a train would have taken long enough that it's possible Trudy was visiting someone in Chicago. As a crossroads for the
Pennsylvania and Wabash railroads, Logansport was a busy railroad town in those days.
3. Spencer's aunt was Trudy's father's first wife.
4. In high school Spencer also played baseball and tennis.
5. Huntington, Indiana today is a town with around 17,500 people.
Paul Spencer descended from one of the area's earliest founders, Maurice L. Spencer, and a member of the Sons of the American Revolution.
Huntington is located southwest of Fort Wayne, Indiana.
6. Reports of the Spencer childrens' deaths appeared in the
Friends Intelligencer" Magazine (1844–1955)in 1915 and 1916. Gertrude's grandmother, Elizabeth Coale, kept the
magazine apprised.
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