"Flower in the River" 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.
Being a few minutes late can change an entire life. Yet being thoroughly documented doesn’t guarantee anyone will keep researching.
This week, we follow two strikingly different threads from the 1915 Eastland disaster and examine how unevenly this history has been documented.
First, let’s talk about Dorothy Berman.
In July 1985, seventy years after the disaster, Dorothy went back to the Chicago River and shared her story with several newspapers. At the time of the disaster, she was a 20-year-old file clerk at Western Electric who planned to board the Eastland for the company picnic but showed up late. Instead, she stood on the riverbank and watched the ship capsize “like a toy,” while people screamed and slid into the water. She survived, but the memories of that day stayed with her for the rest of her life.
When Dorothy was almost ninety, she spoke to reporters, and her story appeared in newspaper after newspaper. Still, in modern histories of the Eastland disaster, her name and eyewitness account are missing.
Next, we meet Fred Hornburg, his father, and his brothers, all Western Electric employees who survived. Today, they linger as little more than names on a list, while the lives and connections behind those names have gone largely unexplored.
Fred told the story of his Eastland survival in a 1951 newspaper article. By then, he was working as a bridge tender, looking directly over the stretch of the Chicago River where the ship capsized. His account takes us back to Fred at fourteen, trapped inside the Eastland as the water rushed in, and follows his remarkable escape.
The article also mentions the use of a Pulmotor resuscitation device, giving us another look at how Chicago responded to emergencies and connecting this story to the city’s earlier experience with the Iroquois Theater fire.
Dorothy Berman’s eyewitness account was recorded in newspaper after newspaper, then disappeared from modern histories. Fred Hornburg and his family remained, but mostly as names on a page.
In this episode, we put the people back behind those names.
Resources:
“Recalls Eastland Loss from Job Vantage Point.” Chicago Sun-Times, July 25, 1951, p. 49.
“Eyewitness Recalls Chicago River Tragedy 70 Years Ago.” Alton Telegraph (Alton, IL), July 29, 1985, p. 3.
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 183 of Flower in the River. And I hope you're doing well. Before we get into today's stories, I want to welcome brand new listeners as well as brand new Eastland Disaster family members. Just this week I heard from a couple of members of the family of Frederick E. Coyne. If you remember, I covered Frederick's story and his connection to the Eastland disaster on August 12th, 2026. The podcast title was A Pitiable Sight. A postmaster remembers the Eastland. What I love about what's happening is that pretty much every week I hear from someone whose family had some connection to the Eastland disaster. And that has always been something that I hoped this podcast could do. When I saw how many stories had not been covered, how many biographies had not been written for people who were very much part of the Eastland disaster, I wanted to make sure to share those stories, not just for history's sake, even though that is very important, but I want each one of their descendants, their relatives, to know that their family member was involved with the Eastland disaster. Much of the time they don't. And that's because this history, unfortunately, in the 21st century, has been covered in an uneven fashion. I began to see just how many people were missing entirely from the modern telling of this story. So far, I have found more than 300. I've shared many of their biographies on the podcast, but there are still plenty more waiting to be told.
So as the result of hearing from so many new people, I realized that many of you don't know that I also produce each week 90-second videos to go along with each week's podcast. I started doing them for a simple reason. I want you to get to know the Eastland people. And I also know that not everybody has the time or interest to sit down and listen to a full podcast episode. So each week I make a little 90-second companion video and think of it as a very short introduction to the people and the history I'm covering that week. You can access these videos from pretty much every place. My website, Substack, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook. In other words, I think I'm on most of the socials, with the exception of TikTok. So you can take a look at the videos from any one of those platforms.
Today I want to introduce you to Dorothy Berman. And this is an article that I've had for quite a while. It is from the Alton ALTON Telegraph. Date Monday, July 29th, 1985. Not that long ago. She stood on the opposite bank of the Chicago River facing the Reed Murdoch building. The photo's caption reads, Dorothy Berman, 89. That's 89, revisits the Chicago River site of the 1915 Eastland disaster. More than 812 people died when the ship sank. Pause for a second. 812 is the number from the Cook County Coroner's report. That number is incorrect. The number that is bandied about now, 844, is also incorrect. There's no source-cited peer-reviewed list to back that up. And also in a case of a mass tragedy that happened over 100 years ago, the most responsible thing to say is approximately before any number is quoted. Let's go on to the
story. Eyewitness recalls Chicago River tragedy seventy years ago. Chicago AP. More than 70 years have passed, but Dorothy Berman retains a vivid memory of the terror aboard an excursion boat as it capsized on the Chicago River, killing hundreds of people in one of the worst ship disasters of the century. She remembers too that she might have been one of the eight hundred and twelve killed had she not arrived a few minutes late to board the vessel. Quote, it was so terrible. The boat simply went over on its side like a toy, Mrs. Berman 89 recalled in a recent interview. Quote, there was bedlam. There was so much screaming, pushing, and crowding, those poor people. The tragedy happened just after 7 30 AM on a warm overcast July 24, 1915. Miss Berman was among hundreds of Western Electric Company employees standing on a pier on the south bank of the Chicago River as the steamer Eastland pulled away from the dock. The company had chartered the Eastland and four other steamers for its annual picnic across the lake in Michigan City, Indiana. Mrs. Berman was a file clerk for Western Electric back then. The boat, carrying 2,500 passengers, had just left the dock when it capsized. The Eastland tipped over when hundreds of passengers rushed to one side of the top heavy steamer to get a better look at an oddly shaped freighter passing alongside. The ship started to tip over as it left the dock, then righted itself, then suddenly went over on its side, according to news reports of the time. Most of the victims were trapped below deck and either drowned or were crushed in the rush to escape. Miss Berman, who had planned to travel on the Eastland to the picnic, arrived a few minutes late, and was waiting for another boat as she watched the Eastland leave the dock. I was about to get on, and I was told the boat was filled. It was the only thing that saved my life, she recalled last week, while visiting Chicago from her present home in Florida. We were running to another boat for latecomers, and I saw everyone rush to one side of the eastland, and then it simply turned right over. Like a piece of paper, she said. Everyone just slid into the water. It was one of those horrible things you can never forget.
Charges were later filed against the crew and owners of the vessel, but there were no convictions. Similar content, but a little more condensed. The next article is from the Daily Times, July 29th, 1985. The headline is 1915 Boat Tragedy in Chicago Recalled. Next one is in the Rockford Register Star, July 29th, 1985. A much shorter article with a different photograph of Dorothy. Headline is Woman Remembers Tragedy. And then from the journal Star, July 29th, 1985, Eyewitness recalls Chicago's worst disaster. Now these are just five newspapers that I was able to locate online. I have the feeling this story was reprinted elsewhere, but other than those five articles, I've never seen any mention of Dorothy Berman's involvement with the Eastland disaster in the 21st century. Dorothy was definitely part of the Eastland disaster history, and she needs to be acknowledged. So Dorothy Berman remains something of a mystery in terms of the rest of her life, what happened to her after the Eastland disaster. We know she was a file clerk, we know she was living in Chicago, and we know she eventually moved to Florida. However, I hit brick wall after brick wall. In fact, I went down the wrong rabbit hole for a while, too, and I found another Dorothy Berman who was fascinating and I wish it were the same person. However, I wanted to share this information and I wanted to say that this is part of the ongoing research of the people of the Eastland disaster. We will go on to the next person, but as time passes, if I get more information about this Dorothy Berman, for sure I will update all of us.
Headline Recalls Eastland Loss from Job Vantage Point. Fred Hornberg 50 of 2235 South Costner observed an anniversary Tuesday. Thirty six years ago, at the age of fourteen, he was a passenger aboard the steamship Eastland when it capsized at its Chicago River dock on the morning of july twenty fourth, nineteen fifteen. Hornburg was in a good spot Tuesday to be reminded of the disaster. As a tender of the La Salle Street Bridge, he could look right down at the site on the south side of the river between La Salle and Clark. The riverfront has changed, he said. There was a boardwalk then. Hornberg, who had just gone to work as an office clerk, was among the two thousand five hundred Western Electric employees who went aboard the excursion ship for a lake trip to the company picnic at Michigan City, Indiana. He credits Prayer with keeping him from being among the eight hundred and twelve who were drowned. The steamer rolled over. I went into a room. When it began to fill up with water, I said a prayer. Right after that I saw light through a window. I broke the window and got out. Rescuers in a boat picked me up, used a pull motor on me, and took me to Iroquois Hospital, where eight stitches were taken in my left arm. I had cut it on the window glass. Hornberg showed the scar on his forearm. He said his father and two brothers were also rescued from the vessel. They are Fred Hornburg Sr. eighty seven of two three two five Costner and William of Palatine and Albert of Pittsfield, Illinois. End of article. Within that very short newspaper article, we have an astonishing amount of information. We have enough information, in fact, to begin creating biographies for every one of these family members who were connected to the Eastland disaster. What I did was build a rudimentary tree on Ancestry. And I also did some searching on family search.org to see if other family members had also created family trees for the Hornbergs. This is a huge family, by the way, so I found all kinds of family trees for them. None of them, at least the ones that I was looking at, had any mention of the family's connection to the Eastland disaster. So I'm willing to bet that the later descendants may not know about this. All the more reason to get this information out. The Hornberg family members are mentioned, but they're only mentioned in list form on certain Eastland platforms. That's it. There's no explanation about how they are related to one another, there's no indication as to where this information came from, and there are no biographies.
So let's get to know a few members of this family anyway, and we'll begin with the man at the center of this nineteen fifty one newspaper article, Fred Hornberg. Fred was only fourteen years old when he was working for Western Electric and when he boarded the Eastland. According to the article, when the passengers came aboard, nearly everyone moved toward the side of the ship facing the river. And Fred, as well as Dorothy Berman, remembered that the weight became too much for the Eastland and it rolled over. And then he remembered that he went into a room and when it began to fill up with water, he said a prayer. Then he saw a light through a window. He broke the window, he got out, and was picked up by rescuers in a boat. Fred was taken to Iroquois Memorial Hospital, where he received stitches in his left arm for a cut from the window glass, and the article also says that a pull motor was used on him. And this is where Fred's story opens yet another door. Iroquois Memorial Hospital should not be confused with the Iroquois Theater, but the hospital's history was directly connected to the terrible Iroquois theater fire of 1903. And if you've been following this podcast for a while, you know that the Iroquois Theater Fire keeps wandering into the Eastland story. There were people connected to the Iroquois fire who later became connected to the Eastland disaster. I also want to point out that this connection was not discovered recently. The old Eastland Memorial Society, which disbanded years ago, was writing about the Iroquois Theater connection to the Eastland disaster way back in the 1990s. After the Eastland capsized, Iroquois Memorial Hospital became one of the places receiving survivors. The Chicago Department of Health sent physicians and nurses there, and its account reported that hundreds of patients were treated, survivors received dry blankets and hot coffee, and health officials were also concerned about exposure to the polluted Chicago River. So Fred's mention of the hospital isn't just an interesting detail, it puts him inside a much larger piece of Chicago history. So does that pole motor. That's P-U-L-M-O-T-O-R. This was an early mechanical resuscitation device. It was portable and oxygen powered and was used in emergencies involving drowning, smoke, gas, and other situations in which someone had stopped breathing. Pull motor began as a brand name and eventually became a more generic term for this kind of resuscitation equipment. These devices had their limitations, and so did the training of some of the people using them, but Fred survived. Fred's father and two of his brothers were also aboard the Eastland that morning. All four men from this family came home alive. Now we have something considerably more interesting than four names sitting on a list.
Who were these people? Fred Hornberg Sr. was born january twenty ninth, eighteen sixty five in Mecklenburg, Germany, and immigrated to the United States in eighteen eighty one. He married Johanna, known as Anna Stubi in Chicago, and they had at least thirteen children. Fred Sr. was working for Western Electric in nineteen fifteen, and once I started following the children through the records, something became very clear. This was a Western Electric family. Nearly everybody seemed to have passed through Western Electric at one time or another, and this is not that unusual. One of the sons mentioned in the newspaper article was Albert. In the nineteen ten census, Albert was nineteen and working for a telephone company. I've learned from researching these families that people often moved between related companies and occupations, so I can't say from that record alone that he was working for Western Electric in 1910. As a side note, there was also a daughter, Lillian, who was 18 and working for Western Electric in 1910, but I don't have evidence that she was aboard the Eastland. William was working for Western Electric as well, another brother, and Fred Jr., of course, was still a kid in 1910. By the time of his World War I draft registration, he was twenty years old and working as a clerk for Western Electric, which he apparently started doing by the age of 14. So the Hornberg connection to the company didn't end with the excursion in 1915. Western Electric was woven into the family's everyday life. And then I found the baseball connection. The Hornberg boys, at least one or two of them, were also part of the baseball teams. That were part of Western Electric Hawthorne Works. So Western Electric had an extensive network of activities for employees, including company athletic teams. In the company publications, I found accounts of the Hawthorne Works baseball competition. And in one 1916 account, a player named Hornberg appears. Unfortunately, they gave the surname and not the first name. But the article tells us that Hornberg was playing left field, and at one point, as the wonderfully enthusiastic sports writer put it, Hornberg then wanged one to center for a double. Wanged, we have to bring that word back. Based on the date and photographs, I suspect this was one of Fred's older brothers, possibly Albert or William, rather than Fred, who would have been quite young. But without a first name, we can't tell for sure. Still, we have some lovely photos of these Western electric ball teams, and we know a Hornburg was out there playing. And then Hornburg's name turns up again in connection with company athletics in the Chicago Commerce magazine published by the Chicago Association of Commerce in 1922. Unfortunately, no first name again. So the Hornburgs weren't just employees whose names appeared in company records, they were living inside that enormous social world that surrounded Western Electric and the Hawthorne Works. The company sponsored sports, clubs, educational programs, and other activities for its workers. Western Electric published its own employee magazine. Hawthorne Works became almost a community unto itself, and this was the environment in which the Hornburg family worked and lived. By the 1920 census, that connection is still there. William Hornburg was married to Cora and living on the same street as his parents, he was working as a designer for Western Electric. Fred was now twenty two and still doing office work for Western Electric. And their sister, Clara, age twenty, was working as a bench worker for Western Electric. And my grandmother, too, was a bench worker for Western Electric during that time. I wonder if those two knew each other.
But look how far we traveled. If we had started with just names on a list, we probably would have ignored this whole family. But we didn't start there. We started with this 1951 newspaper clipping, which gave us a fourteen year old boy trapped inside the Eastland. We heard his memory of the ship rolling over. We followed him into the water, through a broken window, into the rescue boat, and onto the Iroquois Memorial Hospital. We learned that his father and two brothers survived too. And we also saw that he was there again in nineteen fifty one, overlooking the same place where the thing happened. This article gives us what amounts to a family reconstruction kit if there is such a thing. And there's something else about the Hornberg story that I find particularly puzzling. So many of the Eastland family accounts understandably center on death and loss. But here's the thing. Survival is part of that history too. Here we have four men from one household who boarded the Eastland and came home again. What did that do to a family? We get at least part of the answer because in nineteen fifty-one Fred Hornberg was interviewed. Fred lived until nineteen seventy, by the way. Some of the older Hornburg children were baptized at St. Matthew's Lutheran Church in Chicago, I'm not sure which St. Matthew's, by the way. And other Hornburg children were baptized at St. Mark's Lutheran Church, my family's home church in South Lawndale, otherwise known as Little Village.
These two articles let us experience the Eastland disaster through the eyes of Dorothy Berman, through the eyes of Fred Hornberg. There's more to research for both of these people and for so many other people who were involved with the Eastland disaster. So I hope you will come back next week, and I promise I'll have more stories for you. In the meantime, take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Stay safe. And I'll 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.
