Remington Hewitt Thomas

Remington was a student at the James R. Doolittle elementary school on 35th street in Chicago, probably in the third grade.  (Two other Iroquois Theater fire victims who attended the Doolittle school were Frances Irene Swartz and Hazel Regensburg.)

Born in 1895 to a pair of Maine natives — thirty-nine-year-old Frank Henry Thomas (1861–1928) and thirty-five-year-old Sarah Hewett Thomas (1865–1959), Remington descended from revolutionary and civil war soldiers. He had one sibling, a younger brother, five-year-old Kenneth H. Thomas (1898–1973).

Remington's family lived at 62 Woodland Park in Chicago (changed in 1908 to 658 Woodland Park).

The family attended the St. Mark's Episcopal Church and Frank Thomas worked for his uncle at a successful and historically significant Chicago advertising agency named Lord & Thomas.** The agency's headquarters was in the Trude Building just two blocks away from the Iroquois Theater but it is not known if Frank was in the office that afternoon.  If so he may have been among the hundreds who raced to the theater upon hearing of the disaster, frantic to find loved ones.  Barred by police from entering the structure they huddled in bitterly cold temperatures watching streams of first responders carry out smoldering bodies.

Millie Overlock

Amelia Overlock (1879–1965), nicknamed Millie, in some newspapers mistakenly called "Minnie," was born in Thomaston, Maine.  She was the daughter of Katherine "Kate" Rose Hewett Overlock Kellam (1856–1945) and Anson Overlock (1853–1882).  In 1899, widowed, Kate married a Virginia pharmacist, Dr. Stewart Kellam (1845–1907).  Kate was the sister of Remington's mother, Sarah Hewett Thomas.

Triage was simple

The living were taken to hospitals in carriages or wagons, anything that rolled.  Those maybe living were taken into Thompson's diner adjacent to the theater where physicians attempted to revive or add to the piles of dead.  Obviously deceased, were laid in rows on the sidewalk awaiting wagon transport to whichever funeral home around the city was not yet overly full.  If first responders were mistaken, death from exposure while lying on the sidewalk in temperatures below zero was a real possibility.  One such fellow regained consciousness to find himself in a wagon, surrounded by corpses, on route to a morgue.

Remington's burial location is not yet known but might have been Mt. Hope cemetery in Worth township of Cook County, Illinois, southwest of Chicago, where his father was interred twenty-five years later, as well as a few other of the Thomas family.

In the years after the fire

Frank and Sarah had a third child five years after Remington's death — Elizabeth Hewett Thomas (1908–1960).   Remington's younger brother, Kenneth, served in the army during World War I, married,  went into advertising for a while, then insurance, moved to Florida and seems to have escaped horrific tragedy.  His son, Dr. Kenneth Eastman Thomas (1934–2002), earned a bronze star for three years of service in the military.

Millie moved in with her mother, who by 1920 was widowed and working as an upholstery tailor for a furniture store.  (Kate may also have done contract work for her uncle, Abner Crossman who, in addition to being a gifted illustrator, operated a decorating company in Chicago that would have involved drapery and upholstered furniture.)

By 1930 and until 1940, both Millie and Kate lived with Abner and Marietta Crossman next to the late Remington's widowed mother, Sarah Thomas, and unmarried sister, Elizabeth Thomas, on Woodland Park.  Millie then described herself as a widow but her ex husband outlived her by two years and eventually remarried.

By 1950 both Kate and Millie were deceased. 

Remington's mother, Sarah Thomas, outlived her husband, all four siblings, and two of her children.

Frank Thomas endured many sorrows in his life but left behind a legacy.

Remington's father, Frank H. Thomas, might have cited his hallmark non-business achievement as dearer to his heart than advertising.  He earned a place in Chicago history by committing to building a fledgling community organization named Juniors, begun in 1898 by "Brother" John McMurray, into a neighborhood youth center. The Off the Street Club is still in operation today, serving 3,000 kids in a tough neighborhood.  Initially involved to please his aunt Marietta Thomas Crossman, Frank went on to serve for many years as president and primary fund raiser, muscling his contacts in the Chicago advertising community to put OTSC on the top of their philanthropic list.  (Description of Off the Street Club's 1910 events.)

After his son's death, Frank Thomas funded the club's Remington Thomas Library at its Van Buren Street location.  The club has since moved a couple of times and found a home in the West Garfield Park area.  The books from the Remington library are surely long gone and it's likely few in today's OTSC family know the role played by a man who was himself orphaned and who lost his boy to a tragic death.

On Thanksgiving Day two years after the fire, Millie Overlock married a divorcee, sign painter James Manson Batchelder (1883–1967) of Baltimore, but left him two years later when he was arrested for mail order fraud. 

Discrepancies and addendum

* According to a Thomaston, Maine history and other military records, James H. Thomas (1836–1862) was a private in the Union Army, 14th Maine volunteer infantry, 4th regiment of Company E., and died in a Virginia hospital.  Twelve years after his father's wartime death, Frank's mother, Adelaide Jackson Thomas (c.1840–1874), committed suicide, reportedly slashing her throat three times with a pocket knife while suffering from delirium.

† Lord & Thomas was the foundation for one of the world's largest and best known advertising agencies, Foote, Cone & Belding (FCB). The company was founded by David Lord and reorganized in 1881 when Ambrose Leach Thomas (1851–1906) became a partner. Remington's father, Frank Henry Thomas, began working in the agency's bookkeeping department at age nineteen. Frank was Ambrose Thomas's nephew, adopted when orphaned by the early deaths of his parents.

During his first decade at Lord & Thomas, Frank worked in finance under David Lord and in 1889–1890 spent a year managing the New York office. In 1903 he was back in the Chicago office but it is not known whether he continued working in accounting or if that is when he shifted to sales. Whatever department he was in, Frank may have been outshined by a shooting star: legendary copywriter, Albert D. Lasker (1880–1952).  Lasker won client loyalty and agency billings by going beyond the limited role of brokering space in newspapers and magazines to also producing sales-generating ad copy for his clients. It was a revolutionary concept at the time and helped transform the ad agency business into one of marketing.

It is not known whether Frank Thomas, twenty years older than Lasker, was ever a contender for a top spot at Lord & Thomas.  His return to Chicago after only a year in New York suggests he was not.  Though he would eventually work in sales, he was then an accounting guy.  Still, as Ambrose Thomas's adoptive son, he may have had a shot. If so, he lost it two months after the Iroquois fire. While Frank and Sarah Thomas coped with the death of their son, Ambrose Thomas persuaded his partner, David Lord, agency founder, to retire, then gave Lasker a partnership.  For nephew Frank the timing was poor but Ambrose didn't have much choice.  Lasker threatened to set up his own shop — taking with him the firm's largest clients.  Whatever Ambrose had in mind for Frank, he may have taken it to the grave. In 1906 he died of heart failure while shopping at the Carsen Pirie Scott department store.  By 1912 Lasker owned 100 percent of the firm and Frank Thomas had left the agency to work as the head of west coast advertising for Comfort Magazine, based out of Chicago.   He would later add Lane's List publications to his offerings, including Golden Moments, Illustrated Family Herald, National Farmer, People's Literary Companion and Sunshine for Youth.

‡ For 110+ years many Iroquois victim lists propagated incorrect information that Remington Hewitt Thomas (in some records reported as Hewitt Remington Thomas) was a teenager when he died at the Iroquois Theater.  An inaccurate AP story told of his having heroically carried his adult female cousin to an exit.  An eight-year-old child didn't carry a twenty-four-year-old woman.

† Ambrose Thomas and his brother-in-law, Abner Crossman (married to Marietta Thomas Crossman) owned adjacent properties on Woodland Park in Chicago, and Frank and his family rented a home there as well.

Thomas Thomas Thomas

 The victim's last name was Thomas, his father's employer/uncle was named Thomas, his mother's middle name was Thomas, his grandfather's first name was Thomas, his grandmother's last name was Thomas, his grandparents lived for many years in Thomaston, Maine and his cousin's middle name was Thomas. If you're not Thomased out, read about Remington's great grandfather, William Hewett, who fought in the American Revolutionary war, or about Remington's father and great uncle, Frank and Ambrose Thomas.

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