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Death at the Iroquois Theater
At sixty-seven and fifty-nine, William
"Willie" Marshall Reid▼1
(b. 1836) and
his wife, Clara Ella Marr / Mars Reid
(b.1844), were among the oldest victims
of America's worst theater fire.
Life expectency then was fifty-one so
both qualified as senior citizens.
It was not reported where in the theater
they were seated but in almost every
area during the fire at Chicago's
Iroquois Theater, age would have been a
handicap to escape.
nearly six hundred died on December 30, 1903,
most of them occupants of the two
balconies. A backdraft transformed
heat from a stage fire into a roiling
ball of flame and a ventilation shaft on
the east wall pulled it into the
auditorium and up into the balconies,
instantly killing those not already
deceased from trampling or smoke
inhalation.
Body identifications
Clara Reid's body was located forty-eight hours after
the fire by Waukegan residents, Calvin J. Kucker and
dentist,
Dr. Charles H. Albrecht, and Chicago resident,
William's nephew, Thomas E. Loveday. It is possible
that William and Clara were visiting the Lovedays as part of
their Chicago excursion. Thomas was the son of William's
widowed sister, Fanny M. Reid Loveday, and her late husband,
Julius L. Loveday, who had been with William in Company D
of the 146th during the last year of the civil war.
William's body was found at Sheldon's funeral home
and identified by a fellow civil war vet, George R.
Lyon (1846–) of Waukegan and George Larson, relationship unknown but possibly
a relative.
Ghoul
In the days immediately after the fire it was discovered
that William's Dopp kit had dropped to the ground
outside the theater during the hectic hours after the fire, when
his body was laying on the sidewalk out front or carried to a
wagon for transport to a morgue.
Inside the kit was $66 in cash
($2,200 today) and a
$1,000 note ($33,000 today) to William from a William Hutchison.
(May have been William T. Hutchison of
Waukegan, a stationary engineer who
owned his home at 114 Jefferson, shared
by his father, T.B. Hutchison, a civil
war veteran and likely friend of William
Reid's. Perhaps Reid had financed
the mortgage.)
The man who found the kit was caught out after
cashing in the $66.
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Married in 1864, the Reids were the parents
of one son, Clarence Marr Reid (1876–1958).
The family lived in Waukegan,
Illinois about forty miles north of Chicago on the west
shores of Lake Michigan.†
As early as 1870 seven trains a day ran between
Waukegan and Chicago. By 1903 there were
many more so an hour-long trip into the city
was an easy excursion.
From Rhode Island to Illinois and college
William was the son of Thomas and Mary Cook Reid.
Thomas was a Scottish immigrant who relocated the family
from Providence Rhode Island, where William was born, to a farm in
Illinois. Following two years at the
University of Michigan 1857–1859 William returned to
Waukegan to work in the
Douglas evergreen and ornamental tree seedling
nurseries there.
Abraham Lincoln in Waukegan
On April 2, 1860 while campaigning for the Republican
presidential nomination, Abraham Lincoln came to the little town
of Waukegan, population then around 4,000,† to
make an abolitionist speech at Dickinson's Hall.
Twenty-five minutes into
Lincoln's speech a fire broke out at the Case
warehouse on the North Pier, bringing an end to the
speech as all involved, including Lincoln, went to
fight the fire. The following month at the
convention in Chicago Lincoln won the republican
nomination on the third ballet. That November,
with the Democratic party split over slavery,
electoral college votes put Lincoln in the White
House. It is not known whether William Reid
attended Lincoln's speech in Waukegan but by May 24,
1861, five weeks after war broke out, he was in the
fight.
Union soldier
William served from 1861 to 1865 in the 15th Illinois Volunteers in
the Illinois Union infantry and in Company D of the
146th Illinois Volunteers, achieving the rank of
Lieutenant Colonel.▼3 His mother, Mary, died while
he was a soldier.
Marriage to Clara Ella Marr
William married Clara in July, 1864, a year before
he left the military. She was the daughter of
Waukegan residents, Dennis Marr and Philena Bailey Marr.
Both were natives of Maine and Clara was born there
before they headed west to Illinois. She had
two siblings, one of whom, Emma Marr Farr, died in
1920 from injuries suffered in an
accidental explosion of an alcohol lamp.
Son Clarence
Clarence Marr Reid was William and Clara's only
child. He married two months after the Iroquois
Theater fire. He and his wife Effie moved to
Wisconsin then to Sioux City, Iowa where he worked in a
variety of jobs including a travel agent, salesman,
time keeper in a packing plant and operated a
chicken hatchery. They raised two daughters,
naming one of them after Clara.
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Twenty years of undertaking
Carpentry skill in the hands of a entrepreneur in
the mid 1800s could lead to various specialties.
For William it led to furniture making and undertaking. Upon his
return from the war he went into partnership with
his father-in-law, Dennis Marr, operating a
combination furniture store and undertaking business
on Genesse St. in Waukegan, named named Marr, Reid &
Co. In 1874 they left furniture behind and
concentrated on undertaking, with a name revision to
reflect the new focus: Marr & Reid.▼2
In the 1870 US Census Dennis
described his occupation as "sexton," which means
the 4,500 citizens of Waukegan could go to Marr and
Reid to buy a dining room table or a coffin and hire
them to prepare, transport or bury the body.
Roofing and politics
In later years William worked as a roofing
contractor, including some contracts for the 1893 Worlds
Fair Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He also
served from 1883 to 1884 as an Republican alderman from the
third ward on Waukegan's common council and as an
assessor.
Iroquois Theater fire Funerals
in Waukegan
Four days after the Iroquois Theater fire, January
3, 1904, was an emotionally charged day for the
Christ Episcopal Church.▼4 At 1:30 pm
reverend William E. Toll conducted services for
another Iroquois Theater victim,
Belle Pinney, and at 3:00 for William and Clara
Reid. The Reids were regular attendees at
Toll's sermans; their home at 420 Grand Avenue was
located next to the rectory, in the area that today
is Christ Episcopal's parking lot. There were hundreds in attendance,
from Chicago, Cleveland and Kansas. Many
veterans came to pay respects to
William for his military service. G.A.R. adjutant general and
Congregational minister Charles A. Partridge
(one-time publisher of Waukegan Gazette
newspaper), read military rites for William.
Burial was at Oakwood Cemetery
The church rectory was new, having been completed
the year of the Iroquois fire. Pastor Toll had
emigrated from England to America in 1866. In
addition to serving the Waukegan parish he traveled
around the area in horse and buggy to smaller
communities. The church where William and
Clara's funeral was held, constructed in 1889, still
stands at the corner of Grand and Utica/Martin
Luther King Jr Ave.
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