Lola B. Kuebler (b. 1887)

Lola was the daughter of George J. Kuebler (1862–1921) and Effie Ford Kuebler (1866–1939), married in 1886, and sister of Georgie Kuebler Jr.  Before moving to Chicago and taking up law, George owned the Golden Eagle clothing store in Oshkosh.  In Chicago the family lived at 724 E. Fiftieth Street.

It was reported that Lola was not burned and showed so little evidence of injury that doctors worked over her for some time in hopes of reviving her but her respiratory injuries were too severe.

Lola's funeral was held on January 2, 1904.  She was reportedly buried at Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago.

Helen "Nellie" Burdick

Helen was the daughter of William S. Burdick and Maria L. Beveridge Burdick.  As an adult she married, divorced and remarried her ex-husband and became a teacher in Detroit.  Her parents and oldest sibling moved to Idaho around 1910.

Ruth Green

Nothing is known about Ruth.  It is possible she was a domestic servant in the Kuebler household.  They had  had a Swedish servant in 1900.  According to the 1900 U.S. Census there were females in Chicago named Ruth Green.  Of them, most were either much younger than Helen Burdick or Lola Kuebler and one was of grandmotherly age.

In the years after the fire

In 1909 the Kuebler family received one of thirty-five $750 settlements  from the Fuller Corporation, the company who built the Iroquois Theater.

Mementos stolen and returned

In 1911 a robber broke into the Kuebler home and stole an inexpensive ring that had belonged to Lola and that she'd been wearing when she died.

When the thief read in the newspaper about the ring belonging to the dead girl he mailed it back to Mrs. Kuebler.

Divorce and George's suicide

Effie eventually divorced Lola's father, attorney George J. Kuebler, citing extreme and repeated cruelty.  In March of 1921 he fell, was pushed, or jumped, from the tenth floor window of his office on LaSalle Street.  He had a pistol in his pocket when he died, with an empty shell but the condition of the body made it impossible with 1920s forensics to determine if he'd been shot.
Said to be wealthy, George was involved in several companies, of which at least two were in fiscal disarray, and his girlfriend said people were hounding him.  Friends and relatives, including Effie and their son, said he was happy and would not have killed himself but others said he had been suicidal in the past. Other people in his building reported that they heard no gunshots. There were scratches on the window sill that the police thought may have been his as he desperately tried to stop his fall.  The coroner eventually ruled the death as accidental.

George Kuebler Jr., lived with his mother until World War I when he left to serve as a lieutenant in a field artillery regiment with the American expeditionary forces.  Upon his return he became engaged to Della Crowder-Miller, a musician and author of renown in the Cautauqua circuit.

Effie moved back to Oshkosh and lived with her sister.  Illiness claimed the last year of her life.

Discrepancies and addendum

It was reported that Lola was a student at the Willard School but her age suggests that was a reporting error.

* A Wisconsin newspaper referred to Lola as Margaret and some Chicago newspapers referred to her as Leola.  Her name may actually have been Luella, after her aunt Luella Ford.  Sisters Effie Kuebler and Luella Ford lived together in the 1930s, suggesting they were close.

The 1910 U.S. Census incorrectly reports that Effie had had only one child, who survived.

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