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The body of sixty-five-year-old
Louisa Timpel Rubly was found at Rolston's funeral home and identified by her son,
thirty-three-year-old George H. Rubly.
Louisa was a native of Germany,
as were her parents. At the
time of her death she lived with George and five
others of her children.
Thirty-eight year old Anna Marie "Mattie" Rubly
Fieser lived at 793 N. Springfield Avenue in Chicago. Her
husband, forty-three-year-old Tennesee native, Henry
"Harry" A Feiser (1859–1943), found her body at
Jordan's funeral home and identified it by her
garments. Harry was a Chicago police officer
in the 39th precinct at the corner of Larrabee and
North Avenue. His younger brother, George
Fieser, was also a police officer.
Harry and Mattie had married in
1890 and were childless but in 1900 were rearing a
nine year old niece of Harry's, Jennie Fieser
(1891–). They owned their home on
Springfield Ave. They also rented rooms
to two boarders.
Forty-two-year-old Ida Weimer lived at 1970 Kimball
Avenue in Chicago. Her body was found at Rolston's
funeral home and identified by
her brother, George H. Rubly
and/or her husband, Thomas Weimer (1858–1908).
In the years after the fire
At George's death in 1932,
six of his siblings survived. The last of
Louisa and Theobald's children, Alma Rubly, passed
in 1962.
Thomas Weimers remarried two
years after Ida's death, to Elizabeth Hageman. He and his second
wife had one child, a daughter they named Ruth Ida Weimers. He died a year after her birth.
Four years after the Iroquois
Theater fire Harry Fieser remarried, to Iva Beck.
Following retirement from the police department he worked as
a watchman. He and Iva did not have
children.
Four of the Rubly children,
Alfred, Alma, Rose and Louise, moved to California
where Alma worked as a stenographer in the motion
picture industry.
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German immigrants Louise and Theobold Rubly
(1830–1912) had married in 1858 and made their home in
Port Washington, Wisconsin. They raised eleven
children there. With a population then of
around 1,500, the town was a small pond for such a
large family but whatever footprint they made there
has yet to make it online. In their early
years Theo was a saloon keeper, then a grocer on Franklin Street.
Around 1888 they moved to Chicago where he and one
of his sons opened a grocery at 414 Clybourn (in 1906 changed to 1801 Clybourn).
Based on published information, the half-dozen
years leading up to the Iroquois Theater fire were not good for the Rublys. A
series of unhappy events including death, illness, divorce, and lawsuits between family
members began in 1896 and culminated in the 1903 deaths of Louisa and Mattie at the
Iroquois Theater.
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Emma,
oldest daughter of Louise and Theobold, married James Edge in
1896. Their only
child, a son, was four years old in 1901 when Emma, then forty-one, died in an Elgin, IL insane asylum.
James remarried two months later. (So-called insane asylums then also served as
hospitals for victims of a variety of illnesses, including tuberculosis, so there may
have been nothing mentally amiss with Emma.)
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In 1896 George Rubly sued his father, Theobold Rubly, for $2,400 (inflation adjustment:
$89,700) and in 1897 Theobold sued his son for $1,300 (inflation adjustment $49,200).
An accountant, George had worked for his father in the grocery in the 1880s.▼2
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In September 1899 son Thedore Rubly's first wife died. He'd married Coelestina
"Amanda" Martin in 1891 and the pair had two children, the daughter only six months old
at the time of her mother's death.
He remarried the following year.
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Louisa and Theobold's long marriage had broken up sometime
after 1880. By 1900 Louisa was living with
six of her children at 838 Wilson Avenue in a
house owned by George Rubly (the son who sued
his father) while Theobald lived with their
oldest son, Theodore, with whom he'd partnered
in Rubly & Son. In the 1900 U.S. Census
Louisa described herself as still married but
Theobald declared himself widowed. That isn't uncommon; I've found many divorcees of the era,
both men and women, who chose to
describe themselves as widowed rather than divorced.
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In March, 1903 came the unexpected death of Frank Rubly's wife,
thirty-one year old Bertha Slivinsky Rubly
(1872–1903), leaving him with three young sons.
William Frank Rubly (1867–1952) was the
second-born of Louise and Theobald's five sons.
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On December 30, 1903 came the Iroquois Theater fire
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