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Amelia and Jessie Sands traveled from their home in the village of Tolono in
east central Illinois to spend the holidays with Tressie and her husband, James Danson. On
December 30, 1903 the three women went to the Mr.
Bluebeard pageant at Chicago's newest playhouse, the Iroquois Theater on Randolph St.
Twenty-five-year-old Tressie, her forty-eight-year-old mother, Amelia, and her
twelve-year-old sister Jessie perished that afternoon when a stage fire spread to the auditorium and killed nearly
six hundred theater goers. The Sands party had been sitting in the first row of the second-floor
balcony where hundreds were trapped.
Many hours later James Danson and two of Amelia's sons, Richard Ebert Sands and
Henry Clarence Sands, finally found the badly burned bodies at three different morgues, Amelia at Rolstons, the
daughters at Jordan's and Gavin's. It was reported that all three women were burned beyond recognition.
Amelia was identified by two false teeth and the girls by their rings.
All three were shipped to Olney, IL for burial on a private Pullman car. Funeral services were held at a relative's
home in Olney, Illinois, conducted by reverends Frank W. Loy of the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Olney and Carl A.
Eberhardt thought to have been a pastor at the St. Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Arenzville, Illinois.
The victims
Amelia T. Hoover Sands (b. 1854) was a dressmaker.
According to the 1900 U.S. census she was married but had actually been divorced from attorney Henry Clay Sands since 1892.*
In 1900 Amelia lived with five of her seven
surviving children (there had been eight in
all): Tressie, Jessie, Clarence, Helen and Louie.
Richard had married and lived with his family.
The other child was Henry Clarence but that
doesn't explain Katherine. I wonder
if Katherine Sands was married to one of the
Sands boys — Henry, Richard or Louis.
Jessie Sands (b. 1891). Inquest reports referred to her as Jessie, and according to the 1900 U.S.
census a girl by that name was Amelia's daughter, but some newspaper reports identified the third Iroquois
victim in the family as Katherine, nicknamed "Kitty."
Theresa Mae "Tressie" Sands Danson
(b. 1879), a milliner until marrying English immigrant, James P. Danson
(1876–1947) who identified her body.
(James was born on July 4, 1876.)
By 1920 James remarried, a girl
from North Dakota, and they had a son. The
family lived in Great Falls, Montana where James
was president of Consolidated Coal Co. In
Chicago he had been associated with George G.
Pope & Co. as well as Interstate Coal & Coke
Co., C. M. Moderwell & Co., and Nelson Coal Co.
Discrepancies and addendum
In one newspaper another of Amelia's daughter's, Kittie, was incorrectly reported as having
been the one who died with her mother and sister at the Iroquois.
Helen Sands, another of Amelia's daughter, resigned from
her teaching position in Mahomet (near Tolono) two weeks after the fire.
* Henry Sands (1848–) was an attorney and raised Hambletonian and Mambrino trotting
harness racing horses at his Meadow Brook farm in Olney, IL.
That much seems reliable but other things are iffy.
Some period genealogy sources have made a mish-mash
of the man's life with discrepancies like his
retiring three years before he was born. If
the dates are thrown out and just activities are
included, he was also a realtor, a circus acrobat and tightrope
walker for 20 years, was in the U.S. Secret Service
for a few months, and the first bareback rider in
America.
Teenagers Irma
Weiskopf and Lilly Doerr died at Iroquois Theater
Josie Munholland of Cedar
Rapids Iowa
Second unidentified woman
Other discussions you might find interesting
Story 2652
A note about sourcing. When this
project began, I failed to anticipate the day might come when a
more scholarly approach would be called for. When my
mistake was recognized I faced a decision: go back and spend years creating source lists for every page, or go
forward and try to cover more of the people and circumstances
involved in the disaster. Were I twenty years younger, I'd
have gone back, but in recognition that this project will end when I do, I chose to go forward.
These pages will provide enough information, it is hoped, to
provide subsequent researchers with additional information.
I would like to
hear from you if you have additional info about an Iroquois victim, or find an error,
and you're invited to visit the
comments page to share stories and observations about the Iroquois Theater fire.
