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Thirty-five year old Susie Alice Welton (b.1866) was born in Ohio
but grew up in Detroit, Michigan. One newspaper said she had relocated to Chicago around 1893; another reported that she'd spent September in
Detroit with her parents then gone to Chicago. She may have spent a portion of the summer break in Detroit but was living in Chicago in
1902, boarding at 892 72d St. In 1995 she still lived in Detroit with her parents. Susie was named after her maternal grandmother, Susannah Farifield Judd Taylor.
In 1903 she was teaching kindergarten
at the Scanlan elementary school in Chicago, on Perry Avenue near 117th
street. She had taught school in Detroit prior to moving to Chicago,
in1896.
She was the only daughter of Charlotte Taylor Welton and Harlan Page
Welton, a Presbyterian minister relocated to Toronto from Detroit.
In Detroit he had been pastor at the Hope church at Woodward and
Hendrie avenues. Her father received a telegram from friends that
Susie had gone to the theater and that her body had
not been found. She had been seated in the second-floor balcony.
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While Harlan and Charlotte traveled by train to Chicago, her friends continued to search for her body. She was located shortly
before her father reached Chicago, identified by F. D. Campbell. Once in Chicago Harlan stayed with George L. Sampson.
Harlan told the Detroit newspaper that she had attended the theater with family members of the house where she
lived — at 6241 Kimbark Avenue in Chicago. (This was
Frances and Amy Owens, both of whom were also Iroquois Theater fire victims.) He spoke hotly about conditions of the exits at the Theater,
revealing that his daughter had been trampled to death.
The Weltons brought their daughter home to Detroit via a Michigan Central train, arriving around 7:00 pm on on Tuesday after the fire.
The funeral was held the next day at 2:00 pm. She was buried at the Woodmere Cemetery following services conducted by Rev. George Steadman
Bennett of the North Baptist Church on Grand and Woodward.
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Discrepancies and addendum
Susie often went by her middle name, Alice, and used the initial S. as a middle name.
The Scanlan school was named after the man who donated
the land — Thomas Scanlan (b. 1861–1912). An Irish
immigrant, Scanlan is remembered for having mastered
a wide variety of careers in his lifetime, including
shop keeper, banker, school principal, lawyer,
bookkeeper, realtor and organist. One of his many
projects was the village of Gano south of Chicago.
The original eight-room Scanlan school was built in 1888. A
twelve-room addition went up in 1898 and in 1914 a new
school was constructed, including a gymnasium and
swimming pools.
Note to self: this story and the Owens story need to be combined.
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