Flower in the River: A Family Tale Finally Told

SPECIAL DELIVERY - A Messenger Boy’s Path to the Eastland

• Natalie Zett • Season 4 • Episode 167

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This week, we’re continuing the biography of Eastland disaster survivor, Charles Borovansky. He has a lot more to say!

When I wrapped up my research on Charles for a previous episode, I felt that his story wasn’t finished. Tracking him backward through Chicago’s industrial labyrinth led to records hiding in plain sight. Long before the Eastland ever listed in the river, Charles’s life was a guided tour of American industrial ambition. We follow him from his Bohemian immigrant roots to his early days as a bicycle messenger and a stint at the Pullman Company. It’s here we detour into the corporate utopia of George Pullman’s company town—an experiment in total worker control that went perfectly until the workers inconveniently demanded rights during the seismic 1894 strike.

But the real find was Denní Hlasatel  (Daily Herald), a Czech-language Chicago newspaper from July 25, 1915—exactly one day after the disaster. There, in print, was Charles: Western Electric chief clerk, excursion organizer, and immediate eyewitness. He gave a vivid, raw account of the ship’s sudden tilt, his leap into the river, and his rescue of a young girl whose name is lost to time.

Charles didn't just survive; he was an active hero. He even repeated his story in at least three newspapers across 25 years. Yet, somehow, as the years passed, his story disappeared.

If you’re drawn to history sleuthing, this episode is for you. Subscribe, share it with a fellow history enthusiast and leave a review. Thanks for listening!

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Additional Music:

  • Additional music by Kevin MacLeod ( Incompetech), licensed under  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
  • Additional audio from  Pixabay

Welcome And What We’re Chasing

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 167 of Flower in the River. And I hope you are doing well. This week we will continue discussing the biography of Charles Borovansky. And I hope you had a chance to listen to last week's episode. And the title of that episode is One Survivor, Two Surnames, a 1940 Eastland Time Capsule. I dropped that on May 14th, 2026. Even as I was finishing last week's episode, I had this feeling that there was more to Charles' story than what I was able to locate. And before we go further, I want you to know that Charles Borovansky's name does not appear in any modern Eastland disaster retellings. And this is despite the fact that he was interviewed at least three times. But let me tell you what I found and where I found it last week just as I was finishing up the podcast episode about Charles. Well, I found something for sure. And at the moment I thought, well, I'll just add it as an addendum to last week's podcast. But once I realized what this was, I thought, no, this needs its own episode. And so here

The Missing Name In Eastland History

Natalie Zett

we are. And as I was researching my new discoveries about Charles, that led me to a long-lost 1915 interview with him. Let's start at the beginning. So I was searching for additional information about Charles Borovansky with multiple spellings of his surname, by the way, on Family Searches, full text search. I've discussed that in the past, and I would encourage you to take a look at it, especially if you're looking for obscure material. You will find fascinating things there. I got two search results for Charles Boravonsky. These items were two employment records or partial employment records. And these two records were prior to his employment with Western Electric. Both of these records had to do with Charles' pre-employment and employment with the Pullman Company. Does that ring a bell at all? Did that help? I bet it did. So you probably know that the Pullman Company had something to do with railroads, quite a bit of something to do with railroads, in fact. When you think of Pullman, or at least when I think of Pullman, I think of those fancy railroad cars that I would see in movies from the nineteen twenties, maybe through the nineteen fifties. Well, those Pullman railroad cars, they are luxurious, and nothing says gilded age like a Pullman railroad car. Never in a thousand years did I think that there would be any type of Eastland disaster connection to the Pullman Company. But of course there is via Charles Borovansky. And I'll explain what I found on Family Search for Charles. Neither of the documents had a title, but they were connected to his employment at the Pullman Company. The first document is from September 11th, 1905. His full name is Charles Robert Borovansky, so we have the Borovansky spelling as opposed to Borvansky, and he states that he was from the country of Bohemia. At that point, he had been in the United States for 16 years. We also learned that he was 17 years old and that he was single. And we find out that he

FamilySearch Finds Pullman Work Records

Natalie Zett

was boarding, not renting, and did not own a home at that point. It doesn't appear that he was living with his mother or siblings. We also find out that at that time he was not yet a citizen of the United States. Prior to applying to work at Pullman, he had worked at the Chicago Post Office in Pullman, Illinois. We'll talk about that. He was a special delivery messenger. His foreman was Ernst or Mr. Ernst, and he had to leave employment because at the ripe old age of 17, he aged out of the job at the Chicago Post Office. And given the dates on this card, Charles probably started his Chicago post office career at age 14 or 15. Special delivery at that time was a premium U.S. mail service and it was launched in 1885. So for an extra fee, urgent mail got hand delivered by a dedicated messenger the moment it reached the destination post office rather than waiting for the regular route. Starting in 1902, those messengers were equipped with bicycles. So picture teenage Charles Borovansky tearing around Pullman, Illinois on a post office bicycle with a messenger's badge delivering urgent letters door to door. Here's some information about the age limit departure. Messenger work in this era was explicitly a very young boy's job. Both the post office and the parallel telegraph messenger services hired boys and then pushed them out when they aged into adult wage rackets. So Charles aged out of one job and had to apply for another job very quickly. Fortunately, he got that job at Pullman. He started off in the tinner's department, working as a helper. That would be a sheet metal worker who fabricated and installed the metal components inside Pullman sleeping cars, such as water tanks, ice boxes, lamp fittings, vents, lavoratory fixtures, and decorative metal trim. As a helper, he was the apprentice or grunt of a tinner's crew while he worked his way up and learned the trade. And very soon he was promoted. We learn from the second employment record that by February 1909 he was working as a time clerk in the accounting department, so Charles is no longer in the shop. He's moving on up as an accounting department time clerk, and he's living at 734 Ericsson Avenue. At this point, Charles is 22 years old. These two small employment records from the Pullman provide additional insight into who Charles Boravansky was. My first question was where was Ericsson Avenue? I couldn't locate it initially. Then after some digging, I found out that Ericsson Avenue was in Pullman, Illinois, and is the original name of what is now known as South Maryland Avenue. It's located within the Pullman National Historic Park on Chicago's South Side. So that's where Charles was living.

Immigration Clues And A 14 Child Census

Natalie Zett

In tandem with this discovery, I was able to track down a transcription of his immigration record. His immigration record gives us an idea of who the family was when they arrived in the United States. Marie Borovanska, that's Charles' mother, immigrated with three children on september fifteenth, eighteen ninety two. They departed from Bohemia, they traveled on the ship Weimar, and they arrived in Baltimore. There's no mention of a husband or father here, but we have the mother Maria, age fifty, and three children. Yindrich, later known as Henry, was age twelve, Maria, age ten, and Carl, otherwise known as Charles, age four. Their destination was Illinois. Most likely they had family and perhaps friends already settled in Illinois. So let's take a look at the 1900 census for this family. They are living in Chicago. Marie by that time is 56 years old. She reports that she was born in 1844, in Bohemia, as were all the children. It's not clear where she was working either, but she was working. Yindrich, the oldest boy, was age 22, and he was working as a printer. There's no mention of the daughter Maria, by the way. But we do have Charles, our Charles Borovansky. He was age 11, and at that point he was still at school. So they were living at 18th Street in Chicago. And now here's one of the most startling discoveries I made on this census record. Marie Borovanska reports that she had 14 children. That's right, one four. And out of those fourteen, eight were still living. Now, I'm not sure if this includes Maria or not, but that's the information we have. I have actually seen this sort of pattern in my own family tree. For example, my great-great-grandparents, those would be the Pfeiffer line of my family. Between them, they had 14 children. Maybe 14 was some kind of a lucky number. I don't know.

The Pullman Company Town Explained

Natalie Zett

Oh, but before we go any deeper into Charles Borovansky's life, we need to talk about the Pullman factor, I'm calling it. George Pullman, The Town of Pullman, The Company Pullman. I'm going to try to keep this brief, but it's going to be challenging. There's all sorts of information about Pullman and the company. As you can imagine, there's no shortage of documentaries and books about Pullman. But the one that I just watched and found super interesting was Pullman and the Railroad Rebellion, a Chicago Stories documentary, and it was produced by WTTW. I'll put a link to that in the show notes for you. But the history of George Pullman and the town of Pullman, Illinois, represents this intersection of 19th century industrial capitalism, innovative urban planning, labor economics, and civil rights milestones. George Mortimer Pullman was born in 1831, and he began his career as a cabinet maker and engineer in New York before relocating to Chicago in the late 1850s. He made his initial fortune by engineering solutions to Chicago's severe draining and flooding issues, utilizing jackscrew systems to elevate entire brick buildings and hotels to match newly raised street grades. In other words, at one point, much of Chicago was actually a swamp, and Pullman figured out a way to work around the swamp. In 1864, Pullman turned his attention to the discomforts of long distance rail travel, designing a luxury sleeping car named The Pioneer. Costing an unprecedented $18,000 to manufacture, the car gained national prominence in 1865 when it was incorporated into Abraham Lincoln's funeral train from Washington, D.C. to Springfield, Illinois. Pullman established the Pullman Palace Car Company in 1867 under a unique and highly profitable business model. Instead of selling cars to railroad lines, Pullman leased them and provided his own trained staff to operate them. The Pullman Porters. Pullman exclusively hired recently emancipated African American men as porters, waiters, and valets while subjecting them to systemic underpayment, long hours, and reliance on tips. These workers formed a distinct class of black labor that later drove foundational shifts in the American civil rights and labor movements. Now we'll talk about the conception of Pullman, Illinois. By 1880, booming production required a massive new manufacturing footprint. So Pullman purchased 4,000 acres of land near Lake Calamut, which is 14 miles south of Chicago along the Illinois Central Line. Seeking to eliminate industrial labor unrest, combat urban vice, and maximize efficiency, he constructed a fully planned, self-contained company town. He commissioned architect Solon Spencer Beaman and landscape architect Nathan F. Barrett to design the town, which broke ground in 1880 and was largely completed by 1884. The town featured brick row houses, paved streets, parks, a central sewage system that piped waste to an agricultural farm, gas lighting, and indoor plumbing. These were luxuries that were rare for the working class at that time. There were public buildings such as Hotel Florence, named after Pullman's daughter, the Greenstone Church, a market square, a school, and the arcade which housed a library, a bank, and a theater. The housing layout reflected corporate structure. Executives occupied expansive residences with twelve foot ceilings. Foremen lived in slightly smaller accommodations with ten foot ceilings, and unskilled laborers inhabited multifamily tenements or dense row houses. The town operated under absolute corporate authority designed to generate a targeted six percent return on the company's investment. Private property ownership was banned. All residents rented from the company. Independent newspapers, public forums, and unapproved public speakers were forbidden. Alcohol was prohibited within town limits, except for wealthy guests at the Hotel Florence. Company inspectors routinely entered homes to enforce strict cleanliness and maintenance standards, and leases could be terminated at will. What could go wrong, you might ask? Enter the 1894 Pullman Strike. The structural vulnerability of the company town model became apparent during the Panic of 1893, which was a severe economic depression that sharply reduced demand for new rail cars. To maintain shareholders' dividends, George Pullman implemented aggressive corporate cost cutting measures starting in late 1893. That included wage reductions, so factory wages were slashed by an average of 25% to 40%, static fixed costs, rent, utility charges, and food prices inside the company town remained entirely unchanged. And because rent was automatically deducted from worker paychecks, many employees were left with bi-weekly net pay totaling only a few cents to a few dollars, insufficient to feed their families. In May 1894, a worker grievance committee petitioned Pullman for rent relief. Pullman refused to negotiate and dismiss the committee members. On May 11, 1894, the factory workforce walked out, initiating the Pullman Strike. The strikers aligned with the newly formed American Railway Union, ARU, led by Eugene V. Debs. In June 1894, the ARU launched a nationwide boycott. ARU switchmen across the country refused to handle any train carrying a Pullman car. Within days, rail traffic across twenty-seven states was paralyzed, effectively halting commerce between Chicago and the Pacific Coast. The boycott disrupted the delivery of U.S. mail, providing a legal pretext for federal intervention. Over the objections of Illinois Governor John Peter Altgelt, President Grover Cleveland deployed federal troops to Chicago in early July to enforce an omnibus injunction against the strikers. The arrival of troops triggered widespread rioting, sabotage, and violence, resulting in the deaths of approximately 30 strikers, and the arrest of Eugene V. Debs for contempt of court. By early July, the strike was broken. In a direct effort to appease organized labor and repair political damage immediately following the bloody suppression of the strike, President Cleveland and Congress rushed through legislation designating Labor Day as a federal holiday, signing it into law six days after the strike ended. The strike permanently dismantled George Pullman's reputation and exposed the liabilities of corporate owned municipalities. Subsequent national Commission investigating the strike heavily criticized Pullman's paternalistic practices. In 1898, there was a forced divestment. So following George Pullman's death in 1897, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled in 1898 that the Pullman Company's charter authorized manufacturing only, rendering its ownership of a residential town illegal. The company was ordered to divest itself of all non-industrial real estate, and the town was fully annexed into the city of Chicago. The legacy of the Pullman workforce continued into the 20th century. In 1925, Pullman porters successfully organized into the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters under the Leadership Act of A. Philip Randolph, securing the first major labor agreement between a black union and a major American corporation. Pullman's manufacturing complex and residential quarters survived urban renewal efforts due to aggressive community preservation campaigns. In 2015, the site was designated a national monument and was elevated to the Pullman National Historical Park in 2022, managed by the National Park Service. What I have found in the last few years of engaging with this history of the Eastland disaster, when you truly engage, you find so much interconnective tissue. Sometimes it really all does seem to be interconnected, much like a railroad when you think about it. And so that is what is so intriguing and compelling about all of this. So we learned today that there is an Eastland disaster connection to the Pullman Railroad, George Pullman, the town of Pullman, and that, of course, is thanks to Charles Borovansky. So we will return to Charles' story. I haven't forgotten about him. The arc for Charles' life so far is child immigrant from Bohemia, bicycle riding teenagers, special delivery messenger boy at the Pullman Post Office, aged out at 17, Tinnor's helper at the Pullman Company, Time Clerk at Pullman's Accounting in his early twenties. After working for Pullman, he went on to Western Electric, although I'm not sure of the date that he started working there.

A Czech Newspaper provides a new clue.

Natalie Zett

But we're not done yet. When I was hitting some brick walls with Charles biography, I decided to start searching on Yindrich, or Henry, Charles' brother. And when I was looking at Henry's records, I found something significant. I saw that Henry was working for the Czech language newspaper in Chicago, and that newspaper was called Denis Plastitel. In English, it means Daily Herald. Since this population, meaning the Bohemian community in Chicago, was heavily affected by the Eastland disaster, there's all sorts of articles and other documentation about the Eastland disaster, and I figured with his brother being a connection at the newspaper, that they just might feature Charles and his story in Denis La Cital. And sure enough, there was a piece about him. It's actually an incredible newspaper, and I'm kind of surprised that more of it has not been translated into English simply because it gives so many accounts about the Eastland disaster. So I suspect I might be doing a little bit more of that, so I'll be brushing up on my Czech real soon. And although I have a working knowledge of Czech language reading-wise, I had to rely on Google Translate as well as a couple of other tools, and these tools are getting better, by the way. Here's some background on this newspaper, and this is courtesy of the Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International, of which I am a member. The Genie Klostitel was a Czech language daily newspaper published in Chicago from 1891 to 2006, making it the longest-running Czech serial in the world. Its pages offer a rich chronicle of the Czech immigrant experience in the United States, featuring community news, cultural events, and an estimated 100,000 obituaries invaluable to genealogists and historians.

The 1915 Interview And A Rescue

Natalie Zett

So without further ado, I'm going to read this article from Jennie La Catel. It features Charles Borovansky and another person that we featured in a couple of episodes, and that would be Frank Terdina. He was the guy who didn't want to jump into the water because he was afraid of damaging his new suit. That Frank. The date of this article is July 25th, 1915, so that's just one day after the Eastland disaster. Headline. The excursion we have already mentioned was organized by the Hawthorne Club, whose members are exclusively employees of the Western Electric Company plant. One of the organizers was our 28-year-old countryman, Carl Borovansky of No. 982 West 18th Place. He is married and is employed at the said plant as chief clerk in Office Department No. 2305. He is the brother of our employee, Mr. Yindrich Borovansky, and he shared with us some very interesting details. The excursion, which was to have taken place yesterday, is organized by the management of Western Electric Company for its employees every year. They organize it partly for their people so they may get to know one another better, and partly for promotional reasons. The employees are, not all of them, members of the said club, so the club acts as the formal organizer of such excursions. The trip is strongly promoted among the employees. Each employee must purchase his ticket himself, and together they must also cover all the additional expenses. Non-members of the club and non-employees of the said plant may also participate, with the only difference that the ticket is somewhat more expensive for them. A total of 6,600 tickets were sold. The plant itself employs at Hawthorne some 16,000 workers and other personnel, including clerks. According to Mr. Borovansky, more than 3,000 countrymen, Czechs, are employed at the company's plants. Department No. 2305, in which he himself works, and in which the foreman is countryman Frank Terdina of Berwin, Illinois, employs 140 people, of whom 90 are of Czech origin. The same is true in other departments. Czechs hold some positions of responsibility as clerks and officials. As already said, employees are strongly encouraged to participate in the excursion if at all possible. However, no one is forced to take part. He himself, Borovansky, intended to go with the aforementioned foreman Terdina, with whom he met up on board the ship Eastland shortly after the morning hour. He left his wife and family at home. Mr. Borovansky, however, is convinced that more people were let onto the ship than ought to have been there. He estimates the number at 3,000. Shortly after 7 30 in the morning, he noticed, together with Mr. Terdina, that the ship was somewhat tilted, listing. When then the signal was given for departure and the ropes by which the ship was moored were released, the ship began to lean even more to that side. When then the people on deck could no longer keep themselves upright, only then was the supreme danger recognized. A whole row of people, not waiting to see what would happen next, jumped into the water ahead of time and tried to save themselves. Among these were Mr. Borovansky and Mr. Terdina. They swam out into the middle of the river, where, struggling with the waves, they were already greatly weakened. When they looked back, they saw that the steamer was already lying on its side, and that on its other side a whole roll of persons was already standing who had saved themselves in this way. They therefore swam back and grabbed hold of a rigging beam, by which they got onto the hull, which was protruding above the surface. Mr Boravansky succeeded in saving the life of an approximately ten year old girl whose name is unknown to him. Further, he shared with us that on deck there was also a countryman, Frank Piedal, from his department, who in the disaster had his leg broken. The management of Western Electric Company had hired for the excursion participant a total of four ships, and the steamer Eastland was supposed to depart first. All the other ships had not yet even been boarded. Naturally, under the circumstances brought about by the catastrophe, the excursion was called off entirely. That's the end of that portion of the article. So

Why Charles Vanished Plus Next Steps

Natalie Zett

that's Charles Borovansky, or as he was known in his native language, Carl Borovansky. The article tells us that he didn't just survive the disaster, and he wasn't only a witness who got interviewed the day after, he was a hero. He saved at least one little girl, and later accounts have him saving more people. And yet I've never seen his name in conjunction with any of the retellings of the Eastland disaster history. And here's the other head scratcher. Charles told his story at least three times, maybe more. First, he told his story the day after the disaster, july twenty fifth, nineteen fifteen. He told his story again in nineteen thirty-five. And he told his story a third time in nineteen forty. Three accounts in three different publications, twenty five years on the record. And somehow none of it was carried forward. But I've shared his story several times now, and now he's a part of the permanent record of the history of the people of the Eastland disaster. Hopefully, he won't get lost again. And in the meantime, I will be making my way through the backlog of stories that I have for you, and also be brushing up on my Czech language skills. Please remember to take care of yourselves and take care of each other. Stay safe, and I will talk to you next week. Goodbye for now. 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.flowerinther.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 1915. Goodbye for now.

Head Shot

Natalie Zett

Host