Please join me on a profound journey as we continue to honor those who were forever changed by the Eastland Disaster of 1915.
Touching on the unexpected emotional bonds which the last episode ignited (The Lutheran Legacy of the Eastland Disaster), I share the personal significance of my own diverse heritage, which fuels my passion for going deeper into the histories that connect us all.
Frieda Kannberg died at age 39 while aboard the Eastland. Yet, her life becomes a beacon--guiding us through the social fabric of her time. Crucial to our understanding are the Western Electric Company News articles and other historical documents that bring to life the Hawthorne Club's activities and the impact of the disaster on its members. Remembering Frieda and her fellow committee members underscores the importance of preserving individual narratives within the broader context of historical events. These accounts form a bridge between the past and the emotional resonance felt in our communities today.
We also step into the lives of the Kannberg family, whose story is inextricably linked with immigration and with Chicago's industrial boom. Employing the FAN (Family (I've also heard, Friends), Associates, Neighbors) Club principle, I piece together their saga through a paper trail of newspaper clippings, census records and cemetery records, highlighting the enduring importance of community ties. And as a bonus, I've unearthed a historical gem from the Internet Archive—a Hawthorne Club document rich with details of a bygone era. Tune in for an episode that promises to be as enlightening as it is enthralling.
Music:
Link:
Please join me on a profound journey as we continue to honor those who were forever changed by the Eastland Disaster of 1915.
Touching on the unexpected emotional bonds which the last episode ignited (The Lutheran Legacy of the Eastland Disaster), I share the personal significance of my own diverse heritage, which fuels my passion for going deeper into the histories that connect us all.
Frieda Kannberg died at age 39 while aboard the Eastland. Yet, her life becomes a beacon--guiding us through the social fabric of her time. Crucial to our understanding are the Western Electric Company News articles and other historical documents that bring to life the Hawthorne Club's activities and the impact of the disaster on its members. Remembering Frieda and her fellow committee members underscores the importance of preserving individual narratives within the broader context of historical events. These accounts form a bridge between the past and the emotional resonance felt in our communities today.
We also step into the lives of the Kannberg family, whose story is inextricably linked with immigration and with Chicago's industrial boom. Employing the FAN (Family (I've also heard, Friends), Associates, Neighbors) Club principle, I piece together their saga through a paper trail of newspaper clippings, census records and cemetery records, highlighting the enduring importance of community ties. And as a bonus, I've unearthed a historical gem from the Internet Archive—a Hawthorne Club document rich with details of a bygone era. Tune in for an episode that promises to be as enlightening as it is enthralling.
Music:
Link:
Hello, I'm Natalie Zett and welcome to Flower in the River. This podcast, inspired by my book of the same name, explores the 1915 Eastland disaster in Chicago and its enduring impact, particularly on my family's history. I'll explore the intertwining narratives of others impacted by this tragedy as well, and will dive into writing and genealogy and uncover the surprising supernatural elements that surface in family history research. Come along with me on this journey of discovery. Hey, this is Natalie, and I hope you had a good week. And welcome to Episode 51 of Flower in the River podcast. This week will be a little different than usual because I am in the midst of the Roots Tech conference. However, that serves this podcast really well, because, as I'm taking these classes and learning from the best in the genealogical business, I'm always anxious to apply the procedures and techniques that I'm learning in the moment, so I don't forget about them, and so this learning is reinforced. I have to say that, as I attempt to reconstruct the lives of so many of these people who were lost in the Eastland disaster and lost through time, it is challenging, but it's not as if it can't be done. It just has to be approached in many, many different ways. The ironic thing about the acceleration of technology, and I'm not just talking about artificial intelligence, I'm talking about just overall, what the technology can do. Sometimes it feels like it changes each hour. It also provides a portal into the past in a way that no one could have envisioned years ago, and so, while it is advantageous to those of us who are working in this area, it also requires a lot of us to continue to learn, to be committed to learning, to be committed to doing course changes, course redirection, to admitting that we're wrong about something. That is the thing about being in the presence, even if it's a virtual presence, of people who really have developed quite an expertise in an area and in an approach. So often throughout this conference, I have heard statements from these people, from my genealogical heroes, where they say something that's tantamount to you know, we used to tell you to do this. However, the technology has changed, or something to that effect, where we need to tell you to redirect and try this technique. So that is what I love about this, because there's no one quote unquote expert. There are just fellow learners, and a lot of these fellow learners know a lot more than the rest of us and what I learned from them. I hope I'm able to apply to the work I'm doing, because my goal with all of this is to, as much as possible, reconstruct these lost lives.
Natalie Zett:So last week, I did this episode on the Lutheran legacy of the Eastland, and I thought I just wanted to do it because it seemed as if it has not been discussed, and I am astonished at the feedback I'm already getting. Apparently, there are more Lutherans in the world than I ever would have thought. The experience for me, because of my background in the Lutheran church, was very emotional, because this event took place so long ago and I wasn't sure how many people actually had a connection to it, so I wasn't sure if people could relate to it at all. I just feel like it's my job to get the information out there, not to anticipate how people will or won't react to it. What happens, though, is that, without intending it to happen, sometimes you make an emotional connection. It's not just here's this event that happened. It's tragic, all these people died, and that's it, but there's so much more to it than that. Some of these people who were killed were part of your community. It could be your religious community, your church community, your synagogue community, your work community, your neighborhood, your ethnicities, whatever Meaning you share that, in fact, one of my college friends from Concordia this is long ago, we were talking over the summer as we were getting reacquainted, and she said to me we were talking about cemeteries, because that's the kind of thing I talk about with people and she said do you realize that many of my relatives are also buried where your relatives are, in Bethania?
Natalie Zett:So I always liked this woman, but there was almost an immediate deepening of the bond because my people and her people were literally sharing the same ground and our relationship, I think, has been a lot closer since then. So I never underestimate the power of these connections, because I'm always learning how many ways a person can be connected to another human being with whom you might have thought you had no relationship whatsoever. And we share that common denominator, we share that common history, at least on my mother's side, thank you. Other people said to me are you going to totally focus on the Lutheran stuff? Well, the Lutheran stuff is definitely part of my background and it is an area that I have developed some expertise, I would have to say, based on my education as well as life experience.
Natalie Zett:However, within myself I carry not just that legacy. In fact, let me tell you a secret my Lutheran legacy of my mother's side of the family they're actually all mixed marriages. Yes, indeed, my great-great-grandfather was Roman Catholic. He was orphaned and then raised by monks in a monastery in Poland, and the last name was Strzyszynski. I've mentioned that before, but it's important to say that again because my family is, across the board, a lot more diverse.
Natalie Zett:I know that word is used a lot, but it's a good word and it really expresses my own family, as well as a lot of people's families in terms of ethnicities, in terms of religion. So on mother's side there are Roman Catholics and Lutherans, for the most part in that ancestral line. On my father's side, however, there are Slovaks, there are Carpatho-Rusans, there are Ashkenazi Jewish and there are Romanes. So I've got all of this, and with that are the different religions, such as Roman Catholic, such as Byzantine Christian, orthodox Christian and Jewish, and with my dad's people they also had an amalgam of different pre-Christian religions as well that they brought forward. So it truly is a mishmash of stuff. And a few years ago I met a relative who had grown up in Turkey. We're not sure how we're related, but he's Muslim, so I've got that one too. I carry all of this inside of me.
Natalie Zett:So throughout my life I have felt connections with all of these religions, with all of these ethnicities. I kind of flow in and out of them and I'm very comfortable with being in these different environments and I know that people constantly have tried to make me choose one over the other, and I just can't do that. I love them all. They're all pretty in their own way and they all have their issues as well, just like life. And I would never neglect one side of my ancestry or my heritage either, and I suppose, because I am who I am, that explains why I've taken such an eclectic approach to looking at the lives of those who were affected by the Eastland disaster. It's no issue for me to go in and out of different religions, out of different communities, out of different ethnicities, because, as my dad used to say, it's in the blood. So that's why I've been approaching this part of my podcast in such a way where I reflect all aspects of who these people were and who they continue to be.
Natalie Zett:So one of the things for people who are new to this podcast I'm researching in real time. I don't have this all buttoned up or completed. But what I'm doing and in the theme of one of the chapters of my book is I'm sketching their lives. What I like about doing word sketches is the speed. So it's just like taking a pencil and making some quick strokes here and there and working really hard to get the essence of something, but also moving quickly through the sketch and not getting bogged down in details, which happens a lot with writing and probably drawing and painting as well.
Natalie Zett:And also what I'm doing is because I have so many people to profile. There's so many people who have been on the shelf for a while not everybody, but a lot of people whose stories have not been told or, if they have been told, I don't know where they are. So I want to get through them quickly. So I make sure each week that I have at least one person that I'm profiling or one community and usually it's more and usually they share some kind of common denominator, such as my baseball players from a few weeks ago, or the Lithuanian community or the German Lutherans. So that's why I'm doing this, because it is so raw. It also is an immediate connection, I think, to the material and to the past and sketches are valuable because they provide the foundation for future more detailed work and if everything works out the way I'd like it to which it seldom does, but if it does I will return to the stories I've already done and start filling in some of the details, but right now I want to get through as many as I can because there are so many. So, as I do this weekly and it's going to be truncated for this episode just because of the conference as I research and put together my notes for each one of these episodes, I think because of my genealogy background, I'm able to do this rather quickly, at least at the sketch level, and I understand too that there are more parts to be filled in, but at least I can move fairly quickly without getting bogged down in too many details, but adding enough details to give you an idea of who this person was or who this community was and what I do.
Natalie Zett:After a podcast, I always create on my website a blog post for each individual or each community that I'm discussing and, as I find new information, post podcast, because new information is coming up daily in the various websites and databases that I spend time on, I add that information. So I'm building it up post podcast, just so you know that. So if you're really deep into this sort of thing and are interested, please visit my website regularly, because it really is. It's in motion, I'm constantly doing things with it and maybe it'll spark some ideas for you. This approach works for me. Would it work for other people? I don't know. It's simply the way my brain works and I think we all have to know ourselves how we work best and how we work most efficiently. And for me, I have this urgency. I want to move quickly on this. These people, those individuals, my family and everybody else that was affected by this thing that happened so long ago. They've waited long enough and I think they each individual, each community deserves more attention. But enough of that.
Natalie Zett:This week I want to focus on one woman. Yes, she was Lutheran. Yes, she died on the Eastland, but between her birth and her death she did a lot of stuff and she was involved with all kinds of activities and very engaged in life. So I want to introduce you to a woman called Frieda Kahnberg or Kahnberg I'm not sure how it was pronounced, but she and her family were ethnic Germans who came from an area that is now Poland. So I'll be Rocky and bond to erase hasten to you know, an image that. Let me tell you why I selected her for this podcast, episode Number one.
Natalie Zett:I always feel fortunate when I can find an article or two about a person. As opposed to trying to construct something, I prefer something that's in the voice of the person themselves, if that's at all possible, and articles that were written around the time that the person died are also tremendous sources of information about that person's life. So for Frieda , I was able to find actually several articles about her. Frieda Kanberg worked for a number of years for Western Electric. She was 39 years old when she died. She was single and Frieda had worked her way up into a supervisory position or two, according to the company records, these newspaper articles, and according to a job description on one of the census records.
Natalie Zett:The first article that I found about Frida was from the Western Electric Company News, and Frieda and so many others in Chicago at that time were working at the Hawthorne Works, which was a large factory complex of Western Electric Company in Cicero, Illinois, that's just outside of Chicago, and the company had a very active employee group, the Hawthorne Club, and they published a pretty decent newsletter, more like a newspaper, and they had all kinds of clubs and other activities. In other words, the employees had all kinds of opportunities to get to know each other and to stay engaged and feel a sense of community. I suspect they also provided a lot of educational opportunities for their employees, and at some point I want to investigate this further because I'm seeing courses in all sorts of things mathematics, improving one's English and I'm sure that they had courses on new technologies that were affecting their daily work. But I'll do a little more research on that and get back to you about that. So, as far as companies go, at that point Western Electric seemed like a self-contained unit where people didn't just go to work. It was where they built their social life around and their families were involved and there were often marriages that happened between employees. They would have announcements of marriages, babies being born, and so when the Eastland disaster happened, it affected them, of course, because it was their colleagues that were killed or hurt, but it was also their world blew up because this was their world.
Natalie Zett:So this article is a small and you could even say insignificant bit of news, except it takes on great significance when you think about what was going to happen. Just a few months later, there was this small announcement in the company newsletter about an event that took place in November 1914. And please remember that the Eastland took place in July 1915. So just a few months before the Eastland they were having this big social event. A private dancing party was enjoyed by Department 3306 at Humboldt Park Pavilion November 21, at which 200 or more were in attendance. Songs by outside talent supplemented the musical program and on-course were frequent. Anne Sworth that's initial Anne Sworth and Miss Frieda Kannberg were the committee on arrangements, assisted by Mrs Sophia Brouche. M that's the first initial Rosenbaum, l first initial Pale, and T first initial Ristau.
Natalie Zett:What's interesting about this little article? It's actually what two, three sentences is. Frieda Konberg and Sophia Brouche names were mentioned in their entirety, whereas the others were introduced to us via their first initials. Only Both Frieda Konberg and Sophia Brouche, the only ones whose full names were mentioned, died on the Eastland. It may seem odd, but in a situation like this, where so much time has passed, every little detail is worth noting. The Pavilion at Humboldt Park.
Natalie Zett:Humboldt Park is part of Chicago and it is one of those 77 designated community areas, and this particular community area is located on the west side of Chicago. The Pavilion, as far as I know, is still there, still available for rental, and if you've been with this podcast or read my book, you know what's coming right. We're headed to the Eastland Disaster. So in November 1914, this dancing party happened, and if nothing else had happened after that, it would be one of those side notes in someone's life and probably no one would have thought twice about it unless they had a remarkable experience there. This is an interesting article and remember you're hearing something that was written in 1915, the style of which is very different than the style we would employ today. There are four headings. First of all, and the story was written by Molly Morris I don't know if this was her actual name. A lot of women writers and reporters at that point went by pseudonyms, like Nellie Bly, who was born Elizabeth Cochran.
Natalie Zett:The Daily News, friday, july 30, 1915. It was fun spoiled for Hawthorne Club Leaders in preparations for summer outings and picnics among ships dead. Membership is depleted. Full extent of loss will not be known until the next regular meeting is held by Molly Morris and she has a piece of the club's social calendar posted here. This is before the Eastland happened.
Natalie Zett:Saturday, july 24th wear your club emblem at the big picnic. Tuesday, july 27th and Thursday, july 29th the famous photo play the Black Box A 15 weeks cereal to be given by the club in two nights. Remember? 20 reels, the whole story in two nights. Tuesday, august 8th the club will serve a quote. Unquote. Get together. Lecture to the girl members on the second floor of the restaurant building at 545 pm. Introductions and heart-to-heart talks will follow. Two hours of enjoyment In August. Watch the bulletin boards. The entertainment committee has a real surprise up its sleeve. I wonder if we'll ever know what that real surprise was supposed to be. So that was the club calendar before the Eastland disaster.
Natalie Zett:Now the article picks up again after the Eastland disaster. Quote many did wear the Hawthorne Club emblem at the Western Electric Company picnic last Saturday and it was found pinned on the breast of the dead men, women and young girls when they were taken out of the river the small round gold emblem with the blue circle at the edge and the Hawthorne Tree in the center. The rest of the club's calendar announcements were not carried out. The black box held another significance than the one that had been looked forward to and when. The quote unquote get together. Luncheon is held on August 3rd. If it ever is held, which is doubtful now, there will be many missing who would have been merry and carefree if they had been spared to participate in the girls luncheon. Party Company provides. Clubhouse is the next heading.
Natalie Zett:The Hawthorne Club is the one big social organization of the Western Electric Plant. A clubhouse with a large assembly hall and smaller committee rooms and a library is furnished by the company for the use of the club. Every privilege is extended to members free of charge, with the exception of the 25 cents dues which go toward defraying expenses of the social affairs given weekly. The membership includes both men and women of all departments and reaches into the hundreds of these. Many went down in the Eastland disaster. How many will not be known to a certainty until the next meeting of the club is held and reports come in. The committee meeting was held today to adopt resolutions and take steps towards noticing in a fitting way the inroads made upon the club's ranks.
Natalie Zett:Next headline popular members gone. Some of the lost ones were pretty and popular girls whose charm of manner or superiority of intellect had raised them above their fellows until they were chosen to represent whole departments in the club's work. For instance, there was fair, blue eyed Elsie Rush, whose name headed the list of women on the information committee. She left the shop Friday night, calling to her mates that she would see them early the next day. Elsie's place is vacant in the shop and in the Hawthorne Club, and with her went Frieda Conberg, also a member of the club and one of the committee on information. There was Agnes Forlop at the membership committee, whose acquaintance among the girls and general lovable character made her valuable in the social life of the club, and Sophie Brouche, whose place on the committee on development will have to be filled. Next headline is Sophie Smith is missed. Girls over at the plant look sad when the name of Sophie Smith is mentioned. Sophie had been appointed on the committee on entertainment because she was quote-unquote, full of fun and popular and knew how to make others quote-unquote have a good time. Sophie had followed her inclination for fun and had gone to the picnic, never to return. And so the list goes.
Natalie Zett:In the first confusion following the disaster it is difficult to tell the extent of the club's loss, but it is certain that the next meeting will show decimated numbers. That's the end of that article and it is such a wonderful thing to find a piece of writing like this. Whoever Molly was, she was there and she had interviewed people and she had a good feel for what was going on with the Hawthorne Club members who were once this united front and once committed to all these social activities and probably never gave anything else a second thought other than planning the next event. And then everything came to a grinding halt. So in the attempt to reconstruct Frieda Konberg's life, I had some challenges, not overwhelming ones, but I really had to make sure to search everything when trying to find out who she was and what her life was all about.
Natalie Zett:So Frieda Konberg was born on April 11th 1876 in Nurengen, mecklenburg for Palmerne, germany. This location is in modern-day Poland. Her father, friedrich, was 46 and her mother, friedricha, was 41, and Frida had three brothers and one sister. At that point. A little bit about the place that she came from.
Natalie Zett:In 1876, nurengen was primarily an agricultural community, with most villagers engaged in farming and livestock rearing. The fertile soil and favorable climate allowed for the cultivation of crops such as wheat, barley and potatoes. The village was surrounded by picturesque landscapes, including rolling hills and lush meadows, providing a serene and idyllic setting for its residents. So why would they want to leave such a beautiful place? I'm not 100% sure, but based on what I know about folks from this region, they might have worked on the land, but for the most part the possibility of ownership was nil. Not sure, though, and another reason people often would immigrate if they had young boys, boys coming of age, conscription. They didn't want to go into the army. So this is an area that, as a genealogist, I would have to mark off and say we need to spend more time here to get a history of what was going on, what led up to their leaving and what happened after they left.
Natalie Zett:And at this point it must have been a huge shock, particularly for Friedrich the dad I mean, he was a farmer and to leave that beautiful farmland that he was used to, that he probably had worked from the time he was a child to cross the ocean, to have to begin working in an unknown industrialized, laboring, manufacturing lifestyle. That had to have been challenging, to say the least. I guess they thought it was worth it, and did they have other relatives who had previously come to the United States? I'm not sure, but since that often does seem to be the pattern as well they may have. When the family immigrated on November 1st 1882, they left Hamburg, germany, and they were actually earlier immigrants than some of the folks that I've researched, including my own family, most of whom came over in the late 1800s, meaning like 1890 to 1899 to early 1900s. What I like about records from Hamburg is they're usually very detailed the shipping records, I should say. And on the ship's record they said that Friedrich was a farmer and in the 1887 City Directory for Chicago Fred or Friedrich was working as a laborer. So goodbye to farming and hello to industrialized life. It did not say in the directory where Fred was working.
Natalie Zett:I also learned that they were members of 1st St John Lutheran Church. This was one of the first Lutheran churches in Chicago and on Palm Sunday, 14th of April 1889, there were 173 confermans. That means kids, young teenagers who were confirmed in the church and Frieda was among them. And in the Lutheran tradition and of course there's always the exception to the rule, but I'll have to say in the Lutheran tradition you have two sacraments the first one is baptism and the next one is holy communion. And in order to take holy communion you have to go through confirmation instruction and become confirmed in the Lutheran church. My own instructions started when I was 12 or 13 and ended two years later, and by then I was pretty well versed in what was going on in that church. And in 1892, the dad, fred Conberg, became a naturalized citizen. I have his card from the US Department of Labor, immigration and naturalization, but unfortunately that card does not give a whole lot of detail.
Natalie Zett:In 1901, they were living at 90 North Humboldt, near Humboldt Park, and if you recall, Humboldt Pavilion, which is near Humboldt Park, was where the Hawthorne Club Dancing Party was held in 1914. The family was living around that area at that point and by then Friedrich had a new job. He was working as a tanner. What's a tanner, you may be wondering. Back in 1900s, chicago, a tanner had a pretty hands-on and, let's just say, hmm, aromatic job. That's a polite way of saying it's stunk.
Natalie Zett:They were the folks responsible for transforming raw animal hides into leather. This was no small feat and involved several steps. First of all, they had to clean the hides. Second of all, they had to remove the hair, soaking them in tanning solutions which could be made from plant tannins or other chemicals, and finally treating the leather to make it durable, flexible and ready for use in all sorts of products like shoes, belts and saddles. Chicago was the perfect place for this, when you think about it. It had the bustling stockyards and meatpacking industry, so it was a prime spot for tanners. And tanners in Chicago had to be skilled laborers familiar with both the traditional methods of tanning and the emerging chemical processes that were starting to take hold. It was tough work, often smelly and dirty and probably dangerous, but it was incredibly important for the economy and for making everyday items that people used. Plus, in a city like Chicago, which was rapidly growing and industrializing, tanners played a crucial role in the local manufacturing scene.
Natalie Zett:Now think about Fred's journey. He comes over here. He's a middle-aged, okay, in his 40s he was a farmer. So from the time he immigrated, fred had to learn an entirely new profession. I don't know how he learned probably on the job, but when you think about it, that's incredible.
Natalie Zett:Now here's where some of the mystery of this family begins. Fred died, but there's no record of his exact date of death. All I've seen are references to it, and they all say he died sometime before 1922 in a location called Buckley, illinois, and that needs a little more research to see if we can locate any more detail about his death. Meanwhile his daughter, frida she had procured a job at Western Electric and she was moving on up the ranks. She was 39 years old by the time she died and she had some kind of supervisory position. So I want to read her obituary from the Chicago Tribune Conberg, ms Frida, 39 years old, was the only daughter of Mrs Fredrica Conberg.
Natalie Zett:Mrs Fredrica Conberg, a widow who has passed her 80th year and lives at 3221 Armitage Avenue. Ms Conberg was a floor walker at the Western Electric Company and had been in its employ for a period of over 17 years. She was the sole support of her aged mother. Now, that's the end of the obituary for Frida. There's some things that are incorrect. She was not the only daughter, for one thing. There was another daughter called Carolina, and there were also brothers around. They were older and they were living close by, and I'm assuming that they helped with their mother.
Natalie Zett:Here's another mystery Frieda, from the records I have seen, did not appear to be living with her mother. I'm not sure where Frieda was living. To be honest, I looked at census records, I looked at the city directories and so far I've not found where she was living at the time she died. In 1900, frieda was living with her married sister, carolina and Carolina's family by 1910, carolina and her family are still together, still living in Chicago, but there's no Frida in the census, so it doesn't look as if Frida was living there with them any longer. So between 1900 and Frida's death in 1915, I'm not sure where she was living. And you might be wondering what about Frida's mother? Well, in 1900, she was living as a border in a house with another German person. I believe it was a man, he was 78, she was 64, and in that census record she says she's widowed. But some of this information isn't adding up, so this also needs a little more investigation to find out what happened here.
Natalie Zett:Frida and other people in her family were buried in a place called Eden Memorial Park in Schiller Park, illinois, just outside of Chicago, and there are other Eastland victims there as well. Not very many, but they are there as well and I'll do further research on them to see if I can find any common background that these folks share. Also, I found a number of newspaper articles that were about Frida and they were published shortly after her death. There's a town called Audubon, iowa, which is about 400 miles from Chicago, and Frida had some connections there from the Audubon Republican Thursday, july 29, 1915. This Frida Conberg, who lost her life on the excursion boat Eastland in the Chicago River last Saturday, will be remembered by a number of Audubonites. She, with Miss Alvina Elhurt, visited here a few years ago in the home of Mr and Mrs August Burr and other relatives. So were these relatives Frida's relatives? Were they Alvina's relatives? Are Alvina and Frida related somehow?
Natalie Zett:From this article we really can't tell, but we do have some names that we can explore. This is a great opportunity to apply the Fan Club principle. Remember, fan Club originally was family, associates and neighbors. However, I have heard, and I've also repeated, friends, associates and neighbors. So it's one of those concepts that keeps getting bigger and bigger as time goes by because people are finding it so useful. So we have these names and now what we can do is do a little deeper, digging on these folks and see how they're all connected. I repeat that this is just a high level first pass through attempt at creating a biography for Frida and for her family. And because of these census records and these articles, there are other names, a lot of other names to follow up on.
Natalie Zett:Here's an article from the Copper Era, friday August 6, 1915. This is all the way out west in Marency, arizona. It looks like it was a big mining area and the headline is Cousin Drowned on Eastland. Ej Rubin received word from Chicago this week to the effect that he lost a cousin in the Eastland disaster last week. The young lady's name was Frida Conberg and she had been in the employ of the Western Electric Company for many years and was a valued employee of the company. So I've seen the Rubin surname on several graves in the Eden Park Cemetery.
Natalie Zett:Now what happened to the family after the Eastland disaster? One story about one of Frieda's brothers is quite informative. In the Cook County Herald, which was sometimes called the Daily Herald, on March 7, 1924, this is nine years after the Eastland disaster, and I should share that the motto for the Cook County Herald or Daily Herald at that time was this this is under the masthead. Our aim is to fear God, tell the truth and make money. What an interesting meme that would make.
Natalie Zett:So this is the obituary for Mr Herman Conberg, one of Frida's brothers, mr Herman Conberg, son of Mr Friedrich Conberg, and his wife, friedrich Ne Meyer, was born near Götzkau Kreis-Kriebsfalt, germany, on January 8, 1869. He was baptized and confirmed in Germany. A week after his confirmation he moved with his parents and his younger brothers and sisters to America where they found their new home, at first in Chicago. In the year 1893, he and his mother moved to Mannheim, his father having died several years before that at Buckley, illinois. On the 5th of January 1899, he married Miss Matilda Esch.
Natalie Zett:Mr Conberg had been suffering for almost a year with stomach trouble and since the 3rd of January has been dangerously ill with lung trouble. He died Monday March 3, 1924, at 3 pm peacefully in the presence of his wife and son and a number of other relatives and friends bidding them all good-bye. His age was 55 years, one month, 24 days. He was buried Thursday March 6, at 1 pm. From St Paul's Church, mannheim. Reverend F Boszald officiating His early death is mourned by his loving wife and son, five brothers, fritz, john, carl, william, louis and one sister, mrs Carolina Messman, la Porte, indiana, six sisters-in-law, two brothers-in-law and many other relatives and friends. His mother preceded him in death one and a half years ago and his sister, miss Frida Kahnberg, died in the Eastland disaster nine years ago.
Natalie Zett:This detailed obituary is chock-full of valuable information that we can use for constructing the rest of the family's history. What's missing, though, and I've not been able to yet find, is what is the denomination of St Paul's Church in Mannheim where Hermann's service was held and the identity of reverend F Boszald. Again, as I share this research, this is pretty close to real time. In other words, I'm just sharing what I discover on a given day each week, so it's obviously not in depth and I try really hard not to make errors, but sometimes that happens and I'll find contradictory evidence, and I always put that up on my website with the bios of these different people.
Natalie Zett:And if you've been following this podcast so far, you realize, with all those people who were lost on the Eastland, there are a lot of stories that have yet to be told, and I will probably focus at least one or two episodes on the German Lutheran community in Chicago at that time, simply because of the number of people.
Natalie Zett:As you know, there are other branches of Lutheranism, and those communities in Chicago were also affected by the Eastland disaster, and I will see what I can find there as well, but right now I have a conference to get back to and thank you for joining me on this journey, and we're taking the opportunity to get to know Frida Konberg and her family, so keep exploring your own family tree and see what you come up with. Okay, please check out the show notes for a link to a document that I just found on the Internet Archive. It's from the Hawthorne Club and it's not dated, but it looks like it's about 1925 to 1930. It's got a lot of information and some old photographs and it gives you an idea of how active this club was and the variety of educational and social offerings for the employees. Okay, take care and I will talk to you next week.