Flower in the River: A Family Tale Finally Told

The Teen Deckhand and the Pastor: Two Restored Eastland Accounts

• Natalie Zett • Season 4 • Episode 158

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Uneven historiography (the history of history) rarely announces itself. It arrives as a confident paragraph with no citation, a quote stripped of its author, or a tidy summary that cannot be traced to the original record. What looks like settled history is often the residue of choices: what to compress, what to omit, whose account gets carried forward, and whose gets left behind. The record itself is not the issue. The problem is the hand that shapes it — the shortcut taken, the attribution dropped, the community written out in the name of a compressed story. And once those choices harden into repeated summaries, they stop looking like choices at all. They just look like facts.

I call these plausible mashups “Franken records” (inspired by Crista Cowan’s “Franken-people” reference) because they stitch together real fragments into something new, persuasive, and often wrong. To honor victims, survivors, and rescuers, we have to rebuild the evidence chain, not just repeat what a platform page says.

Speaking of Crista Cowan, I also share a lesson from her recent video: even experienced researchers miss details right in front of them. And sometimes new tools, like transcription features, reveal the blunders years later. That honesty models the mindset that keeps our research credible: question everything, re-read the document, and correct your tree or your narrative when the facts come calling.

Next, I revisit a misleading impression about the churches affected by the Eastland disaster: that only two congregations lost members.  I name a much wider set of religious organizations that lost members at that time. I also explain how “narrative compression” can erase whole communities from the story. Then I walk through a real “de-franken” moment, using PERSI through the Allen County Public Library to find the original 1965 Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly article by Rev. Gothold G. Elbert and restore proper attribution. 

I also share the gripping account of Jack Billow, a 15-year-old deckhand whose courage on that river was real—and whose story nearly wasn't.

Resources:

Franken People And Franken Records

Crista Cowan And Genealogy Course Correction

The Two Churches Myth Debunked

Hunting The Original Grace Lutheran Article

Restoring Credit To Rev Albert

Jack Billow The Forgotten Rescuer

What Research Misses And Why

Subscribe Book And Dedication

Natalie Zett

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. We'll explore the intertwining narratives of others impacted by this tragedy as well. And we'll 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 welcome to episode 158 of Flower in the River Podcast. And I hope you're doing okay. This week I want to continue the discussion that I started last week. And if you haven't heard the episode, I talked about the ongoing problem with the Eastland historiography, the history of the history, and that would be source citations or lack thereof. But there is another thing, and I credit Krista Cowen, the barefoot genealogist, with this term. A lot of times in genealogy, we unintentionally create Franken people. That's a nod to Frankenstein. Different parts of the records of living people that are merged in such a way that creates an entirely different person. And I also extended that metaphor to the Eastland disaster historiography because what I have seen, and I will continue to point out, are Franken records. Records without source citations that might include quotes and then some paraphrasing that creates a history that is not verifiable. This is one thing that I never expected when I embarked on this podcast journey that listeners would be interested in what goes on under the hood or behind the curtain as I follow the evidence and work to restore a biography. Rebuilding the evidence chain behind the Eastland story is so critical because so much of it has been broken. And the secret sauce for restoring this history? Source citations, actual evidence. Yes, it's that simple. So whether researching something like the Eastland disaster or your own family history, as you get into it, the best guidance I can give based on my own experience here is to question everything. And it's not just me, it apparently is something that's in the air right now. As mentioned when I attended Roots Tech 2026, the overarching theme was just that. Question everything, learn to do the deeper research. Speaking of Krista Cowen, I've been catching up on her videos. I always learn so much from her. Not only is she good at what she does, she really is. One of the things that I admire about Krista Cowen is, well, her expertise for sure, but also she is willing to talk freely about the mistakes she's made in her own genealogical research. She shows them to us on the screen. And that kind of openness is so important and it builds trust. It reminds all of us that this work is a process. I think of it as ongoing course correction. And I think most of us can identify with those errors as well. I want to recap a recent YouTube presentation that Krista gave. Krista told a story. She said, I've had this document in my family tree since 2015. It's 2026 now. But she said it wasn't until Ancestry, which is her employer, she is the corporate genealogist for Ancestry.com, added this transcription feature. And even though the information about this particular document, the nature of this document was right there, for whatever reason, she missed it. That is until this transcription feature brought it to her attention. She said, Tell me I'm not the only one who doesn't read every little piece of every single record that you find. Please tell me I'm not the only one who missed something at some point. Please tell me I'm not the only one who has created my own brick wall. I mean, after I heard that story, I was relieved. And I thought, thank God I'm not the only one who does stuff like this. And I will put a link to Krista's presentation in the show notes. Actually, if the ancestry thing ever doesn't work out for her, I think she could do stand-up. She's that funny. Well, moving on to this week. I wanted to revisit a previous podcast, something that I had done early on. And I want to take a look at it again because I know more now than I did two years ago when I originally did this episode. And my outlook has also changed. I've seen enough of a pattern of how this history has been handled to be very concerned about certain things and to make sure that everything is covered, that all the bases are covered. But this particular story also involves another Franken record, and I'll tell you all about that. I initially discovered the story of Grace Lutheran Church along with the story of another church, a Roman Catholic church called St. Mary's of Chech Jehovah in Cicero. And I discovered them years ago on a platform that listed them under the religious organizations categories. The way it was presented, it was as if these were the only two churches who lost members during the Eastland disaster. And I read the article about these two churches way back. I actually forget how long ago it was, but even back then something didn't seem quite right about it. I was at the beginning of my research, and honestly, you only know what you know at the start of a research adventure. But then I started circling back and looking at this information closely, and I realized that none of this made any sense. There couldn't have been just two churches affected. Number one, I know of one other church that was affected, and that was my family's church, St. Mark's Lutheran Church in Little Village. Besides my Aunt Martha, there were several other people who died on the Eastland. And of course, I began to wonder how many other religious organizations were affected by the Eastland disaster. As I continued researching each week for the podcast, it didn't take long to find them. So, here's a partial list of the various churches that I have discussed in the last almost three years of my podcast. We'll start with the Roman Catholic churches, Saint Stanislas Kostka, Saint Mary's of Chech Jehovah, Church of the Annunciation, Saint Hedwig, Saint Anthony, Saint George, Saint Bernardine's, Saint Angela, and Saint Mel's, Orthodox Church, Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox, Congregational Churches, Fourth Congregational Church, and the People's Congregational Church of Chicago. Now we have Lutheran churches starting with Grace Lutheran Church, then St. Mark's Lutheran Church, Saint John Lutheran Church, Saint Paul's Lutheran Church, Norwegian Lutheran Memorial Church, Hulkus Lutheran Church, and Saint Matthew's Lutheran Church. Those are just a handful of religious organizations that were affected by the Eastland disaster. My reason for mentioning them is that I want to go on the record to dispel that article that implies that only two churches were affected by the Eastland disaster. And also the impression is that only quote unquote Christian organizations were affected. And that simply is not true. But I want to return to the article that featured Grace Lutheran Church, and let's take a look at that. Now, this article seemed to include portions of an actual article, and then also seemed to be the paraphrase of an actual article. These portions were put together somehow and created what I have been calling a Franken record. Finding the original article was not that easy. So I copied the quotes and conducted an online search, figuring it would be easy to find the document. That usually does the trick, but not this time. After several attempts, I put this to one side, but I had the confidence that I'd be able to find the original source someday. Much later, I attended a presentation hosted by the Allen County Public Library, and that's located in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This presentation was all about accessing Percy. Percy is the periodical source index, and you can access it online through the Allen County Public Library or at the library itself. And it's the world's largest free searchable subject index for genealogy and local history periodicals. It gives you a list of these periodicals that match your search criteria. You have to take one more step and you have to order the actual publication from either the Allen County Public Library or from the source. After the presentation, I did a search on Percy for the Eastland Disaster. And guess what popped up? There was a document with this title Grace Lutheran Church and the Eastland Disaster. Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, July 1965. As soon as I got that information, I called the Concordia Historical Institute. My own backstory is that I was raised Missouri Synod and actually went to one of the Concordias at one point in my life. And as I suspected, the people that I spoke to at Concordia Historical Institute, we all had somebody in common. That's what I love about this kind of connection. And they were able to get me the original article, and now I have it, and it was time for compare and contrast. So the original article was called The Eastland Disaster. It was written in 1965 by the Reverend Gothold G. Albert. At that time, Reverend Albert was retired and living in Glenville, Illinois. But between 1933 and 1960, he was the pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, and although the Reverend Elbert wasn't at Grace Lutheran Church in 1915, when he became pastor just thirteen years later, the Eastland disaster was not distant history. It was something that so many of his own parishioners had lived through and remembered and shared with him. And he understood what that meant. He was a careful chronicler, a historian in his own right. And in nineteen sixty five, he wrote this article to make sure those stories didn't slip away, and that his parishioner's place in history was documented. I want to make sure that Reverend Elbert is restored to his rightful place in Eastland history. Now you're probably wondering what my compare and contrast exercise yielded. I went into detail about that in the earlier podcast, so make sure you listen to that. But let's summarize it. Basically, that article that I saw on that platform without attribution to Reverend Elbert did indeed appear to borrow huge sections from this original article. So that's what happened. And what I'm here to do is make sure that the original attribution, the original article and attribution stay together. So we're going to defranken this Franken record and say this is where it originated. Now it's time to share a basically unknown story about another Eastland disaster rescuer. He was all of 15 years old when he became a hero. And why his name and why his story are basically forgotten, I don't know. But it's time to tell that story. And the path to finding this story also has a very unusual trajectory. I'm going to read an obituary from the Chicago Tribune, may twenty eighth, nineteen ninety three. I am not going to read the names of people who may still be alive for privacy's sake. Jack J. Billow ninety three. As I was spending time in the Internet Archive looking up Grace Lutheran Church, on that same platform were various profiles and biographies of people associated with the Eastland disaster, most of whom I had already noticed or had profiled myself. However, there was one who stood out, Jack Billow. There was a photograph, no biographical information, no information about where the photograph came from, no surprise, so I just kept moving. When I located a later list of people associated with the Eastland disaster on the same platform, Jack Billow's name was nowhere to be found. This is yet another twist and turn in this strange historiography of the Eastland disaster people. Now Jack Billow does have very brief mentions in a couple of Eastland disaster books that I was able to locate. He very well may be elsewhere, but none of these books have his story. So here's a high-level biography for Jack Billow. He was born around 1900, probably in Chicago. However, according to the 1910 census, Jack and his parents and siblings were all homesteading in North Dakota. At some point they returned to Chicago. Both of Jack's parents were Russian Jewish immigrants, not sure when they came over. And now I want you to hear Jack's account of what happened on the day of the Eastland disaster, July 24th, 1915. This is a tremendous article, but it is also very graphic in the details of what happened during the Eastland disaster. So I want you to be aware of that in case that is triggering. Although the morning was gloomy and the rain had just let up, the faces in the crowd of people waiting to board the steamship Theodore Roosevelt showed only happy anticipation. They were members of the Hawthorne Club of the Western Electric Company, which had chartered the Roosevelt and three other excursion boats, including the steamer Eastland, for a day-long cruise to Michigan City, Indiana. I was feeling good that day, July 24, 1915, because I loved my work as a deck hand on the Roosevelt. I was fifteen then, and the thought of a long day scrubbing decks, polishing brass, and doing sundry other work couldn't dim the promise of a Gala Lake cruise. We were docked at the southeast end of the Clark Street Bridge at the Chicago River as the four ships were loaded. It seemed as if all of Chicago was filing aboard, although the total schedule to occupy the four ships was 9,000 passengers. From my vantage point on the third deck, I could see that the eastland to the west was nearly loaded and about to cast off. It was 723. Suddenly, my heart seemed to jump into my mouth. My God, I whispered to myself, the eastland is lurching. I felt rooted to the spot as I watched the ship keel over on her port side and come to rest on the bottom. Amid the confusion, I regained my senses and ran to the lifeboat deck, where I leaped into a boat with two other deck hands. The scene was horrible. People were leaping from the eastland, screaming and crying, waving their arms. Acting quickly, we rowed to the capsized ship where we helped people from the water and saw them safely to shore. Then we decided we could give more help in the water. Donning life jackets, we leaped in and formed a human chain from the starboard side of the eastland, the decks of which were still above water, to the docks. We passed people down the line to safety. Warehouse employees, meanwhile, were throwing barrels, boxes, crates, anything that would float, to others standing nearer the shore to be thrown into the water for the victims to cling to. Police, fireboats, tugs, private yachts, coast guard boats, waterfront factory workers, and passerby soon crowded the scene to help in the rescue operation. However, we were unable to help hundreds of victims. Many were trapped inside the Eastland. And others in the water panicked. Their instincts for self-preservation overrode all other feelings. I saw many a drowning person push someone else under in his struggle to stay above water. Mothers and fathers ranged the shore, screaming the names of their children. The bodies of the dead floated past, ignored by the rescuers who were trying their best to save the living. As for me, I kept working with the others of the human chain. After two hours we were exhausted to the point where we might have gone under ourselves. Our life jackets were saturated to the danger point. With all the boats operating by then, we weren't needed any longer in the water. But on shore there was plenty of work to do, unloading the eastland of its dead, and trying to rescue the survivors trapped inside. An emergency gang plank had been erected, and we could walk to the eastland from the dock. I joined some others who were bringing bodies up from the partially flooded hull were picnic hampers, derby hats, and vacuum bottles bobbed alongside the bodies. Standing against a wall was a piano, and from it we heard a moan. We moved it inside and found a woman pinned there, still alive, but her baby was crushed to death. The dazed woman clutched the child tightly to her, and it took all of our wiles to induce her to let us hold him. Tying a rope around her waist, we signaled the others outside to raise her to the deck. We turned the body of the child over to others who were caring for the dead. Many hours passed. What had started as a gay holiday on Saturday melded into a bleak Sunday dawning. With all that I was doing, I forgot about notifying my mother of my whereabouts and safety. Upon hearing of the disaster, she rushed to the scene to look for me. When a reporter asked who she was looking for, she said, My son, Jack Billow, and he must have understood her for the next morning. My name was listed among the dead and missing in a special newspaper edition. Robbers, meanwhile, had begun looting jewelry and wallets from the clothing of dead and living victims. Some of them were arrested, and others were caught and beaten by outraged onlookers. I kept working, catching only a few hours of sleep fully clothed on the dock. On Monday night the rescue work was declared officially over, and I couldn't wait to get home to eat, see my family, and most of all, to sleep. Imagine my surprise to find when I entered the living room, my weeping mother giving my description to two policemen with notebooks in hand. She had read that I was dead in the newspaper. Never mind, you can put those notebooks away, I said to them. Then I turned to my mother and said, Look, mom, it's me, you're Jack. I'm really here. We collapsed, crying joyfully in each other's arms. The sinking had its tragic aftermath. Temporary morgues were established in warehouses along the river and in the 2nd Illinois Regiment Armory at Washington and Curtis. For five or six days, long lines of people moved through the makeshift morgue, trying to identify the bodies. Some of the victims' bodies were never found, and others were discovered sometime later miles down the river. Officially, eight hundred and twelve lives were lost, including twenty-two entire families. Unofficially, there were 1,100 dead. One reason for the discrepancy was that while the Eastland was certified to carry 2,500 passengers, some records give that figure as 2570. My friends in the crew told me that it was actually 2,800 aboard. None of the victims were crewmen. President Wilson sent William G. Redfield, the Secretary of Commerce to Chicago to conduct a presidential inquiry. Grand juries were sworn by the state, Cook County, and the federal government, and the city, the county, and the coroner all appointed committees, commissions, or hearing boards. Everyone blamed someone else. The ship's master, Captain Harry Peterson, was arrested because it was charged he had refused to let workers use a settling torches to cut holes in the side of the ship to expedite rescue operations. The U.S. Steamboat Inspection Service, now the Coast Guard Marine Inspection Branch, was accused of permitting the ship to sail when it was top heavy and unsafe. The investigators frequently clashed. Some blamed the ship's crewmen and charged that they didn't know their duties or how to operate the Eastland's mechanical equipment. The crew later was found to be blameless and no negligence was ever proven on anyone's part, although all of the crewmen were under arrest for a time. For years the hearing and trials dragged on until the U.S. Court of Appeals finally closed the case by throwing out all of the lawsuits on August 7, 1935. No damages were ever paid to any of the survivors or the victims' families, and no one was convicted of criminal charges. The victim's families' only compensation was from the$100,000 that was raised by a public fund drive. The only good that came out of the tragedy was many helpful recommendations for marine safety measures. Three days after the sinking, I became a crewman on the tug favorite, then the world's largest wrecking tug. The following day, Wednesday, we started to raise the ship by putting pontoons on one side of the ship and then pumping them with air. The ship was floated within three weeks. When it was righted, bodies tumbled from the wreckage. The site was ghastly, and we did our jobs with heavy hearts. After the Eastland was razed, it was towed to a shipyard. Its life was far from over. Rebuilt for the Navy, it was renamed the USS Wilmet and was used to train young seamen in two world wars. In 1950, it was sold to a shipwrecker for junk. He recently retired as a stationary engineer. End of article. This seems to be the only time that this entire account was published and shared. It might have been picked up elsewhere, but I've not seen it. However, of course I've seen Jack's name mentioned in three books so far, but these books don't include the story, and it is an incredible story. So this is just another piece of Eastland disaster history, stories of the people of the Eastland that I wanted to restore, and I wanted you to get to know him. Again, he was a 15-year-old deckhand who rose to the occasion. So next week I will share some more stories with you, but as you requested, I will also tell you about what goes on behind the scenes as I'm researching, discovering, and putting these stories together for you. Besides the challenge of locating the original sources for so many of these biographies and these stories, the other challenge is narrative compression. I don't know what else to call that, but it's where just a handful of stories stand in for the hundreds of people who were affected by the Eastland disaster. Another example is the one that I shared with you. The article that talked about religious institutions, religious organizations whose members died on the Eastland. Only two were listed in that article, and we know there were a lot more than two. So that's part of the challenge as well. And we'll just keep doing the research, finding the evidence, making sure it's recorded, and share it with you. So, in the meantime, take care of yourselves. Please take care of each other. Stay safe, and I will talk to you next week. Hey, that's it for this episode, and thanks for coming along for the ride. Please subscribe or follow so you can keep up with all the episodes. And for more information, please go to my website. That's www.flowerinthher.com. I hope you'll consider buying my book available as audiobook, ebook, paperback, and hardcover because I still owe people money, and that's my running joke. But the one thing I'm serious about is that this podcast and my book are dedicated to the memory of all who experienced the Eastland disaster of nineteen fifteen. Goodbye for now.

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Natalie Zett

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