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Of the thousand people who survived the
1903 Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago
was an Emma or Elizabeth▼1
Trowbridge. She suffered minor burns on
her face and body that required
treatment, resulting in her providing an
address at which she lived or was
visiting: 2601 Calumet Avenue. That is
the same address the 1900 U.S. Census
reported for Leslie J. Trowbridge
(1875–1950). I suspect, but thus far
have failed to verify to my satisfaction, that
Emma/Elizabeth Trowbridge was Leslie's
sister, Irene Emma/Elizabeth Trowbridge.
If I could find Irene's middle name, my
theory would be proved or blown to
hell. That the Trowbridge Iroquois
survivor and Leslie Trowbridge are
connected seems a safe bet; two Trowbridges
living at the same address in 1900-1903
Chicago is too coincidental.
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Leslie and Irene were the
children of Irvin Hinton Trowbridge (1849–1914)▼2
and the late Eleanor Stahl Trowbridge
(1853–1893). The family resided in La Salle County,
Illinois, in and around Ottawa where Irvin operated
a drugstore. Before marriage Irene worked as a sales
clerk in her father's store. According to the 1910
U.S. Census she married Frank Drake Buzzell
(1873–1959) in 1904 and the first of their five
children was born that September. ▼3
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Around 1896 Leslie had moved
to Chicago and worked as a chemist in a drug
manufacturing company while attending Northwestern's
pharmacy school. After his graduation in 1900
he worked in a drug store in Chicago. He
roomed in a large Chicago apartment building known
as the Beveridge Apartments, that consisted of
fifty-nine three- to seven-room flats and housed
over one-hundred people.
In 1901 Leslie filed
bankruptcy. The details were not published but
it almost certainly involved a business venture he'd
entered into with druggist John Metz, Metz and
Trowbridge. They had an
office 2110 W. 12th in Chicago. . |
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Discrepancies and addendum
1. Setting aside typographical differences and
updates in the week after the fire, and
considering only content, three variations of victim
lists appeared in period books and newspapers, all
published the day after the fire, December 31, 1903,
with the most complete and accurate appearing in the
Chicago Tribune. Two list versions, including the
Trib's, identified Ms. Trowbridge as Emma and the
third version identified her as Elizabeth. The
Elizabeth Trowbridge reference offered an additional
scrap of information. The scrap was insignificant,
just the name of the cross street of Leslie and
Emma/Elizabeth's home on Calumet, 26th St., but on the
theory that a list compiler who took the time to
add a cross-street detail might also have spent
time verifying the woman's name, I looked hard for
an Elizabeth Trowbridge. I found several, even a
couple of them named Emma Elizabeth Trowbridge, but
none with the right birth/death/location data to
have been related to the Leslie Trowbridge who lived
at 2601 Calumet where Emma/Elizabeth also
lived/visited.
2. At Eleanor Trowbridge's
death in 1893, Irvin had remarried and he and his
second wife Rebecca produced two sons. In the late 1890s,
Irvin dabbled in state-level republican politics but
something went amiss thereafter: In 1914 he
committed suicide by drowning himself in the
Illinois River and for weeks newspapers carried
updates on the search for his body. Lesie took over his father's
drugstore at 428 Main Street in Ottawa, IL until
1920 when it was sold to one of his half brothers,
Cy Trowbridge, who named it C. P. Trowbridge Drug
Store.
3. A pensioned veteran of the
Spanish-American war, Frank Buzzell was a telephone
wire chief. In his spare time he sailed Lake
Michigan and played the harp.
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