Flower in the River: A Family Tale Finally Told

The "Elephant," the Eastland, and the Catholic Columbian Discovery

• Natalie Zett • Season 4 • Episode 165

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Just one missing name can change how people understand the Eastland disaster—a reminder that the story’s true impact lies in the details we can recover and connect. And we’ll get to that…

After two descendants reached out to me searching for relatives lost in the 1915 Chicago River tragedy, I saw an opportunity to highlight a core problem: when people search for an Eastland person and find only a name on a list, the significance and humanity of the loss are diminished twice—first by the disaster and again by incomplete research. This is why I keep my work independent and push beyond the lists to piece together the full story.

As a researcher, I continually confront the same issues: biographies lacking citations, photos out of context, and simplified retellings that ignore vital voices—from victims to witnesses. These gaps don’t just limit our understanding; they perpetuate inaccuracies like the death toll number. The discovery of Thomas Marren (Eastland Disaster Victim #845) exemplifies why challenging the repeated narrative is essential.

You’ll hear how I traced Marren through unexpected sources, including U.S. District Court legal claims connected to the steamship company’s attempt to limit liability, and how a tip from Lisa Louise Cooke led me to Elephind, a search engine for digitized historic newspapers. That path uncovered an obscure 1915 article from the Catholic Columbian that not only mentioned Marren but also pointed to overlooked clergy who assisted at the scene, community grief, and young rescuers whose names all but vanished once a narrow, controlled version of the story took hold. 

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  • Additional music provided by Pixabay creators via Pixabay Music.
  • Title Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Welcome To Flower In The River

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 165 of Flower in the River. How are you doing? I hope you're doing okay. This past week, two people reached out to me. Both of them had lost relatives in the Eastland disaster. And to be clear, I don't get flooded with messages. But every now and then a small wave arrives, often in twos or threes, as if the universe is sinking our stories. I'm not sure what that's about, but I just go with it. Both of these people, strangers to each other, were searching online for their Eastland relatives, and the first person told me about the brick wall that they ran into, and they found a site that had their relative's name but no story. Then they found my website. Not my podcast, but my website. And since I'd done all the research and created the family tree, I gave them that information as well. So they could have a more detailed life story. I gave them birth records, work history, and now photos that they've never seen. And they were very appreciative, and it is an honor to be able to do that. But in the case of the second person who contacted me, they too didn't seem to be aware of the podcast, but they found my website. And maybe two or three years ago, I made a tribute page to their relative. I don't remember why I felt compelled to do this, but I've never even featured this Eastland person in a podcast. And the relative who reached out was so happy to have the restored photo and brief biography for their Eastland relative. The thing that we three Eastland family members have in common, each of us lost a teenage great aunt or great uncle. And in a conversation with the first person, they asked if I was affiliated with any Eastland type of organization. And I replied rather emphatically, no. I'm a totally independent journalist, author, genealogist, but first and foremost, I'm a family member. I explained that I expanded my podcast beyond my family story because number one, I had already written the book, and number two, I wanted everyone affected by the Eastland disaster to be treated with the same respect and acknowledgement I gave to my own family. After all, we are all part of an extended family bound together one way or the other or many ways by this tragedy. But that conversation was my cue to share my annual disclaimer and to say publicly that I consult with a number of wonderful organizations from time to time, such as the Newberry, the Chicago History Museum, the Chicago Public Library, Minnesota Historical Society, and the University of Illinois, to name a few off the top of my head. But I'm not affiliated with any organization, and I intend to keep it that way. I'm engaging in this solo project in order to recover, repair, and restore the biographies of so many people who were involved in the Eastland disaster. What I found during the last three years is that there are some astonishing gaps between who was involved and who was actually recorded. The pattern is pretty much the same. There's a lack of bona fide source citations when there's an article about a person or a biography. Then there's the provenance of the photos. Provenance or provenance is simply the documented history of something. In this case, it's the documented history of the image, where it came from, who created it, and how has it been passed down or reproduced over time? Without the provenance, the photo becomes detached from its history, which leads to the misidentification of people, wrong dates, wrong locations. In the case of the Eastland disaster, so many of the photos do not have provenance, so it's very difficult, if not impossible, to determine the original source of a photo. And then we have lists of names, but very little biographical information, so you get no sense of who a person was while they were alive. And then what has surprised me or shocked me most are the numbers of people who are missing from the retellings of the Eastland disaster. And if you've been listening, you know that some of these folks are notable people like Hyman Rickover and Luella Parsons. And there were so many other people, victims, rescuers, journalists, authors, witnesses, and survivors who have been completely left out of these retellings, but who were very much a part of the Eastland disaster story, and their stories are at the most risk of being lost for a long, long time, if not forever. I know I say that a lot, but please remember that I have all of these new listeners showing up each week, maybe for just this one time, and I want them to understand what happened. But for this week's tally, and I'm talking the first week in May 2026, I have found 195 people who were associated with the Eastland disaster, but are not mentioned in any modern retellings, with the exception of this podcast. 195? I'm sure I'll have a lot more before I'm done with all this, if I ever am done with this. Just this morning I got access to some old newspapers, and I found that there are even more names and stories that have not been shared. But there's more to be found, I'm sure. And then there's the unsubstantiated death toll of this mass casualty that's been repeated for years. The problem is it's incorrect. I've learned to question everything, too, by the way, since I've been doing this work. In a situation like this, you always hope that the truth will eventually prevail. I don't know, but in the meantime, I'll continue doing the research, finding the evidence, and reporting on it. Remember, this incorrect number took hold through repetition, not through evidence. And this dovetails into today's episode because I found additional information about the omitted victim, Thomas Marren. If Thomas had been counted, the original estimate, not final death toll, but estimate would have been 845. Simply stated, the discovery of Thomas Marren, otherwise known as Victim 845, disrupts what has become a branded death toll. Actually, what's interesting about this is that his obituary and his inclusion in the early lists that appeared in the newspapers after the Eastland capsized was not just in the Chicago Tribune, but it was printed all over the country. I found publications in Colorado and in Utah, but for whatever reason, and probably the main reason, is that there was no internet back when George Hilton was tallying his estimations of the victim count for his book Eastland Legacy of the Titanic, Thomas Marren.'s name was not included. And Hilton was an excellent and conscientious researcher. It's just that omissions and oversights, they happen when trying to reconstruct and recreate history, especially a history like this one. And when the now disbanded Eastland Memorial Society put Hilton's Eastland victims list online, Thomas Marren, of course, was not there either. But here's the thing Hilton never wanted to freeze or market that number. In fact, he said in his book that the research must continue. And as any historian, researcher, or genealogist knows, we are in a constant state of course correction because new information is being found literally every second or so it seems, and you have to stay on top of the research. But what happened in the early 2000s after Hilton died and the Eastland Memorial Society disbanded? Hilton's death toll estimate was treated as a hard and vast fact. And that inaccurate number has stuck. And it's not just that the number was wrong. The history of the Eastland disaster is actually solid. It's well documented, it's abundant, and so on. The historiography, how the history has been interpreted and passed down in the last few years, needs a lot of work. But let's get back to Thomas Marren because he is, after all, Eastland Disaster Victim 845. Unacknowledged, but not for much longer. Just last year I located Thomas Marren's death record, but in a somewhat unusual location. I found him via the National Archives online, and that's a place that I honestly don't frequent all that much. But I saw that they had digitized a collection of legal claims filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division, and this is case number 32231, in response to the St. Joseph Chicago Steamship Company's petition to limit its liability after the Eastland disaster. The documents contained in this collection don't appear to have been researched since they were filed. I stand corrected if that's not the case. It's interesting from a legal perspective because the company filed first and they wanted to cap what it would have to pay. Families then had to file claims within those proceedings, or they would risk losing any right to compensation at all. So the claims from these families were filed between December 1915 and January and February 1916. To be clear, it wasn't just the families of Eastland victims, but it was also Eastland survivors who had suffered injuries or personal property loss. The presiding judge was none other than Kennesaw Mountain Landis. I love saying that name. And it's worth a brief mention that he later became the first commissioner of Major League Baseball. History does have a way of overlapping, does it not? So in that collection of documents was where I located the claim that was filed by Thomas Marren's family. I searched for him amongst the usual places, and his name was not mentioned. And since I already have done two podcasts about this discovery, I'll refer you to those, but I won't go into detail here. So just last week I found an additional newspaper article that referenced him. Of course, since Thomas has been entirely omitted from the retellings of the Eastland disaster, this is a world premiere of sorts. And I want to tell you how I found this article because this resource may very well help you in your own research. Lisa's was the first genealogy podcast I ever listened to over 10 years ago now. And I was hooked immediately. Lisa Louise Cook's knowledge is vast, deep, and wide. And I continue to learn new things from her. And of course, I recommend her to anyone who's interested in not just genealogy, but history, technology. And she has a special love for maps. So I highly recommend Lisa Louise Cook Genealogy Gems. And yes, I will put a link in the show notes for you. In one of her recent episodes, Lisa Louise Cook discussed a resource called Elafind. I'll explain what that is, but when I use that resource, I was able to locate a very obscure publication. And within that very obscure publication was an article about the Eastland that I had never seen. And within that article, none other than Thomas Marren was mentioned. Here's a high-level description of Elephind . And yes, its logo is a big green elephant because, as is often said, an elephant never forgets. I'm not sure that's true, but let's go with that. And here's an overview from the Elephind website. Elephind is a specialized search engine that helps users discover digitized historic newspapers from collections all around the world, all in one place. Whether you're a family historian, member of a historical society, cultural heritage enthusiast, or simply someone passionate about the past, Elifind makes it easier to explore and discover the stories preserved in historic newspapers by searching across multiple collections at once. Elifind includes smaller, lesser-known regional, student and community newspapers as part of its search. And of course, I hope you will check them out. So far, they are available free of charge. You just have to sign up if you want to download anything. And after I learned about Elifind, of course, I wanted to see what they had on the Eastland disaster. And I found some of the usual things, nothing that I haven't seen before, just information that was published across multiple newspapers. And then I searched on Eastland tragedy, not eastland disaster, because this search term has also yielded some very delightful and unexpected results, and it did not disappoint on Elephind either. One of those results was from a newspaper called The Catholic Columbian. And this was a weekly newspaper published in Columbus, Ohio, serving much of the region as an official diocesan newspaper. So I am going to read this article from the Catholic Columbian, volume forty, number thirty one, date july thirtieth, nineteen fifteen. While my primary purpose in sharing this article is because it mentions Thomas Marren, there are others who appear in this article, all of whom have been ignored when it comes to the retellings of the Eastland disaster history. Headline Sidelights of Eastland Tragedy in Chicago Saturday, july twenty fourth will long be remembered in Chicago. The Eastland with some twenty five hundred holiday excursionists turned turtle in the Chicago River and plunged fifteen hundred people to their deaths. And the big excursion boat was tipping over, was turning on her side toward the middle of the river, tumbling its holiday deckload of passengers into the swirling water. The people, in order to see the tugboats start pulling the eastland out to the river, had rushed to the port railing. The weight of thousands of people was too much, and the top heavy boat rolled over, practically turning turtle. The air was filled with the shrieks of men and women, and the thinner, shriller screams of hundreds upon hundreds of little children. Headline Holy Name Cathedral Priests rush to rescue. Priests of Holy Name Cathedral hurried to the scene and while administering to the injured and dying aided in the rescue work. The priests who rushed to the scene in an automobile were Father Fitzsimmons, Father O'Brien, Father Phelan, Father Wolf, Father Rente, and Father Hoban. At all of the Catholic churches, requiem masses for the victims were offered up. Headline Give three hundred thousand to help survivors. Chicago opened its heart and its purse Monday for the immediate relief of the survivors of the Eastland. $300,000 were put at the disposal of the Chicago branch of the Red Cross, which will act as a distributing agent. Among the first contributors to this fund was the Catholic Order of Foresters with $500. Headline Tragedy that took boys, daughter, and grandson in the long list of grief stricken relatives which filed through the second. Infantry armory all Saturday night came an aged woman at midnight. She sought her two sons. Mary Marren, seventy-three years old, saw her boys, her daughter-in-law, and grandson leave home Saturday morning to make the trip on the eastland. She went to the corner with them and waved goodbye as they entered a streetcar. Later in the day, she heard there had been an accident to the steamer, but it was not until late in the evening that she learned of the loss of life. At midnight, when her boys had not returned, she could endure the anxiety no longer. Someone told her many bodies were being taken to the armory, and thither she made her way. Mrs. Marren had made the trip along one row of dead and part way back when she uttered a cry and fell across the form of a youth. It was that of her son, Tom, who had told his mother many times, she said, he would never marry as long as she would make her home with him. Later, after she had been revived, policemen tried to dissuade Mrs. Marren from continuing the search, but she was deaf to their arguments. Ten minutes later, she found the body of her daughter-in-law. Then, in the last row, lying on the floor side by side was her other son and his child. She again fell into a swoon. The Eastland tragedy leaves Mrs. Marren utterly alone. Not a relative survives, and she is old and poor. Headline Gold Medals for Youths Who Rescued 15 Persons. A resolution commending Percy Kerrigan, 21 years old of 5324 South Loomis Street, and Edward Finn, 19 years old, of 5330 South May Street, for the bravery they displayed in rescuing women and children after the overturning of the Eastland was adopted at the meeting of the Regan Colts Athletic Club in its clubhouse, bearing a suitable inscription to each of the youths. Kerrigan and Finn, who are chums, boarded the boat at 7.30 o'clock. When it began to list, Kerrigan dived into the water. Finn clung to a railing and pulled himself onto the upturn bottom. Kerrigan reached his side in a few minutes. Each dived into the water a number of times, and they saved about 15 persons. Both Kerrigan and Finn at first were reported drowned, as they had failed to notify their relatives of their safety. That's the end of that article. I'm going to first focus on the Marren family because here we had major inaccuracies in terms of identities of people. So let's start with Mary Marren, who was mentioned. Her name is actually Mary Bridget Haran Marren. Indeed, her maiden name, her birth name was Haran, and she married Patrick Marren. And Mary Bridget Marren was not 73 years old. She was just 47 in 1915 when the Eastland disaster happened and she lost her son, her daughter, and her grandson. Both Mary Bridget and her husband Patrick were from County Mayo, Ireland, and immigrated in the late 1800s to the United States and settled in Chicago, where Patrick, the father, was a teamster. Mary Bridget and Patrick also lost their daughter, Catherine, not daughter-in-law. Catherine married George Wood, and he was aboard with them, but he survived. And Catherine died. And Catherine's and George's three-year-old son, George Wood Jr., also died. I have a theory about why Thomas Marren disappeared from later retellings of the Eastland disaster. His sister, Catherine Marren Wood, of course, does appear on at least one platform, but only under her married name. Her birth name, otherwise known as her maiden name, was not listed. And one of the core practices that every genealogist learns is that when you list a woman, make sure to list her birth name, her maiden name. And that's where the trail goes cold. Had her birth name been included, the connection would have been right there. And to make matters even more confusing, Catherine isn't connected to her husband, George Wood, who survived, or to her son, George Wood Jr., who didn't survive. The family is scattered across the record with no thread pulling them together. And that's really the heart of the problem here. When you present this type of information linearly and you don't cross-reference the people within it, you lose the connective tissue, you lose the life, you lose the story. But let's get to know more about this family so we have a better sense of who they were. Patrick and Mary Bridget Marren had four children, Thomas and Catherine, who you just met. There was a John Marren, and I'm not sure what the circumstance was, but he died at age twelve in 1907. Then there was a younger sister called Mary Agnes. I'm still trying to track down some biographical information about her. When I was looking at different records, such as the census records, I saw that Patrick Marren, the father, was in and sometimes out of the family's life. In terms of the Western Electric connection, Mary Bridget worked at Western Electric as a matron, and I'm not sure what that entailed, but that needs more research. And Thomas Marren also worked at Western Electric. So what happened to Mary Bridget after the Eastland disaster? The good news is that she was not alone. She had family. She ended up moving in with her cousin, John Haran, who was living in Chicago, and his family. Mary Bridget continued working at Western Electric and living with the Haran family until her death in 1933. And here's her obituary. From the Chicago Tribune, June 25th, 1933. Bridget Marren, Nay Marrin, beloved mother of Mrs. Mary Trot or Tront, the late John and Thomas Marren and Catherine Wood, funeral Monday, June 26th at 1030 AM from residence 1436 North Lawler Avenue to St. Peter Kenitius Church, Burial, Mount Carmel. I'm really glad that Mary Bridget was not alone when she passed away. I'm glad that she was living with her cousin, his wife, and their children during that time. And that's as much as we know about this family for now. Remember, this is never a closed book. The research never stops. Also, I'm sure that there are descendants of the Marren and Haran families. Who knows, maybe they have no idea that their relatives were touched by the Eastland disaster, or maybe they have additional information. That's one of the reasons I do this work, to make sure that these stories don't disappear and that they're here, that they're accessible and available for anyone who goes searching for them. Again, just a couple of weeks ago, I was reminded of exactly why this is so important. When family members, descendants of people involved in the Eastland disaster go looking, I want them to have something to find at the end of that search. So if that is you, don't hesitate to reach out to me. If I can help, I will, and there's no charge for that type of assistance. After all, this history is 111 years old. There's nothing exclusive about it at this point. And now the discovery of that article from the Catholic Columbian that I read to you, that alone opens up at least two or three or maybe more episodes. There's more stories there than that short piece might suggest. And speaking of overlooked stories, I've already done a couple of episodes on cartoonist Bob Satterfield, but his name doesn't appear on any of the major existing Eastland platforms, and that's a gap worth noting. As for the priests mentioned in that article, I can't wait to dig into that one further. What strikes me is that if you look at most of the existing material on the Eastland disaster, only two churches tend to get mentioned, Our Lady of Chechova and Grace Lutheran Church. And as you know by now, there were far more churches and synagogues alike that lost members of their congregations. Those communities are part of this history, and they need to be made visible. Reclaiming what's been overlooked is part of what this podcast and my research work is all about. And finally, let's not forget our young heroes, Kerrigan and Finn. I couldn't find either of them listed on any modern Eastland platforms, but they deserve recognition and will make sure that they get it. There is more to come next week, so please take care of yourselves. Take care of each other, stay safe, and I will talk to you soon. 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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