Saloons, Scandals, and Survival: The Biehl Family and the Eastland

This week, we’re heading back to Waukegan, Illinois, where the newspapers once again lead us into a much bigger Eastland story than expected.

At the center is Frederick Biehl, a 26-year-old former Waukegan resident who died in the disaster. But as I began reconstructing his family, the story quickly expanded into a complicated network of relatives, survivors, conflicting newspaper accounts, and identities that needed a closer look.

And then there is Frederick’s mother, Annie Biehl.

Years before the Eastland disaster, Annie operated a saloon on South Genesee Street in Waukegan and repeatedly came into conflict with city authorities. The surviving coverage is dramatic and sometimes sensational—but the records leave plenty of unanswered questions.

We’ll also look at what happens when repetition begins to replace research in Eastland history—and why the Genealogical Proof Standard requires “complete and accurate citations” as Element Two. Those citations are not a formality. They are a safeguard: without them, history can be separated from its evidence, repeated claims can harden into “fact,” and the people themselves can disappear behind a marketable narrative.

But at the heart of this episode is Annie: a complicated woman whose home became a gathering place not only for her own family, but for two young men from other families as well.

And Waukegan still has more stories to tell.

Resources:

• Buried by Omission: The Eastland Victim Who Disappeared (PROMO Video)
• Waukegan Daily Sun (Waukegan, Illinois), July 26, 1915, pp. 1, 4–5, 8.
• Waukegan Daily Sun (Waukegan, Illinois), July 28, 1915

• Book website: https://www.flowerintheriver.com/
• Substack: https://nataliezett.substack.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-z-87092b15/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zettnatalie/
• YouTube: Flower in the River - A Family Tale Finally Told - YouTube
• Medium: Natalie Zett – Medium
• The opening/closing song is Twilight by 8opus
• Other music. Artlist

Transcript

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Welcome To Flower In The River

Natalie Zett 0:07

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. Welcome to episode 186 of Flower in the River. I hope all is well with you, and we're going to jump right in.

How The “844” Death Toll Spreads

Natalie Zett 0:59

Before we get to this week's story, a quick note because a familiar number has returned. Another Eastland family member brought to my attention that the incorrect death toll is circulating again. Yes, indeed. 844 is rearing its head, and this time it's in a magazine article and in a handful of AI-generated YouTube videos. They all lead with that number, so they all more or less look the same, which is a bit odd in and of itself. I want to be really gentle about this, and here's why. Early on, I repeated that incorrect number in my book, which I'm now correcting, and in the early podcast episodes I did the same thing, and of course I've corrected that as well. I was told without a shadow of a doubt that that number was true. I sort of believed it, but not really, because something about it always felt a little bit off to me. But at the time when I felt that I did not have enough experience doing this type of work to know how to go about researching it. I never believed that anyone would state a number like that with such certainty without researching it first.

Thomas Marren And The Missing Count

Natalie Zett 2:30

But one day, just over a year ago, while doing a general research about the Eastland disaster, I found something, well, earth shattering, really. I found the records for a man called Thomas Marin in the National Archives online. Why is Thomas significant and why do I keep talking about him? Because he breaks the spell of 844. He died aboard the Eastland on July 24, 1915, the day of the Eastland disaster. His death is documented in these insurance records. His obituary was in the Chicago Tribune on july 31, 1915. And furthermore, he has a profile on Find a Grave that documents all of this information. But he was not counted. And because there's no real transparency about how 844 came to take hold as the definitive number, here's my hypothesis. Respected scholar George Hilton and the author of the definitive Eastland book, Eastland Legacy of the Titanic, tallied up his research and arrived at 844. This is in his appendix D, by the way, of the book. But Hilton always said it was an estimate, and he wanted people to keep researching. In early September 2025, I reported in my podcast the story of finding Thomas Marin. And at that point, I made one of my short promo videos, but for reasons I can't tell you, I did not post it to YouTube. It's posted on my website as well as on Instagram, but if you don't follow me in either place, you would never see it. So I just posted it on YouTube, and I will give you a link to that so you can see it in a nutshell. And I show in that short video the process that I went through, how I made the discovery, how I went back to Hilton's work, and how I speculated, conjectured that this is where this started. Until that point, I don't think I had any idea where that number was coming from. But all of a sudden it was repeated everywhere. And another Eastland family member showed me a photo of a product that had this number on it. But back to George Hilton. This is what I think happened. As he was doing that estimate, Thomas Marin's

How Estimates Become Marketing “Facts”

Natalie Zett 5:17

name slipped through. That kind of thing happens all the time in genealogy and in historical work. But what I don't know is how in the heck Hilton's estimate became a fixed brand. What follows is only my theory. I suspect someone took Hilton's estimate without crediting him and treated that number as settled. What Hilton meant as an invitation to keep looking was turned into a marketing brand. One of the consequences of that choice was that it also seemed to imply that all of the research was done and that there was nothing more to learn. Not true, by the way. How do I know? Well, three plus years of doing this podcast and the research for it, I have found over 300 people who were part of the Eastland disaster who are not mentioned or listed anywhere other than on this podcast. Okay, I want to pause here and explain something. So I did not find 300 additional Eastland disaster victims. Not at all. I did find one additional person who died on the day of the Eastland disaster, but who was overlooked. When I talk about 300 people, I'm talking about those who were completely overlooked, but who were part of the Eastland disaster. I'm talking about family members, survivors, witnesses, journalists, cartoonists, authors, and playwrights. And I have covered all of these so far in my podcast, but I have a lot more to go. When I say 300, I am not talking 300 additional victims. But we do need to continue researching to see if anyone else died on the day of the Eastland disaster. I realized that this was just a symptom of a greater problem in terms of the unevenness of the documentation. And because so much disinformation has been flourishing for so long, it's going to take a while for the evidence to overshadow the myth. When a magazine writer, a journalist, or a YouTube creator does something about the Eastland and leaves with 844, they're only passing along what they've been handed. And 844 is prevalent everywhere. It's really hard to get rid of it. Taking responsibility for that inaccurate number belongs to those who turned it into a brand and let the research and historical accuracy take the backseat.

The Waukegan Daily Sun Revisited

Natalie Zett 8:17

This week we are returning to the Waukegan Daily Sun newspaper from July 26, 1915, and also July 28, 1915. We have so many stories in both of these issues. The challenge is making sure that all of these stories are together because they got divided up and separated from their source story when this newspaper was compiled. And remember, it was compiled in a very chaotic situation. And our job as researchers is to try to put it back together. So this week I'll focus on one story, although it involves a number of people. I wanted to stick to this one family because the family alone is very complex. Headline Walkegan Boy is Eastland Victim. Developments following tragedy reveal sorrow in many local homes. Frederick Beal, born and raised in Waukegan, is victim of disaster, was nephew of Mrs. Joe Bacon of Williams Street and Mrs. Albert Herman of 117 Mill Court. More homes in Waukegan mourning today than ever before any single calamity. Many interesting details of local concern over Eastland tragedy. The shifting of a cargo of human freight on the steamer Eastland entrapped one Waukegan boy in a watery grave, and the names of nine relatives of Waukegan families have been added to the death toll, which is three times greater than the Iroquois roster, which makes Chicago a charnel house again.

Frederick Biehl And A House Of Grief

Natalie Zett 10:37

And now I'm only going to focus on Frederick Beale, although there are others and we'll get back to them. Walkegan's death list. Frederick Beal, born and raised in Walkegan, lived the past few years with mother at 1800 South Hamlin Avenue, Chicago. During the past few years of residence in Walkegan, was employed in the Fine Wire Department of the American Steel and Wire Company, lived on South Genesee Street. Headline. Three hours later, the bride of one year was informed that her husband was one of the victims of chance-taking, commercial greed, and that a score or more divers were risking their lives to take his corpse from the hull of the steamship, which promised to prove the morgue of more than 1,000 souls. The young wife was prostrated, the aged mother distracted. Quote, Oh, I didn't want Fred to go. I knew something would happen, shrieked the young woman. She did not weep or speak intelligently to those who would gladly have helped her, as on bended knee, she hugged the form of cold clay to her breast at seven o'clock Sunday night when her husband's body was returned to her. Strong men and women fell back and wept without shame as the young bride begged that she also be united with her husband in death as they had been in life. Mrs. Albert Herman of Joaquegan was at the Beale residence in Chicago when the body of Frederick Beale was carried into the house from the armory where the body had been identified but an hour before. Three streamers of crepe hung from the door at the Beale residence. The son and husband had gone to meet his maker, as had two boarders of the home, and another young lady, the sweetheart of one of Mrs. Beale's boarders. Mrs. Herman left the Beale residence after seeing all that would tend to relieve the sufferings of the death stricken family, had been done, then returned to her home in Walkegan. The funeral, or rather three funerals, will be held from the Beale Residence in Chicago at two o'clock Wednesday afternoon. The dead of the worst calamity that has befallen a city of wealth, refinement, and pleasure will be buried at Eton Cemetery. While Keegan relatives will attend.

Building A Family Tree To Verify

Natalie Zett 14:13

So I will tell you about some of the people whom we've met. Let's start with the parents of Fred Beal, the young man who was killed. Fred was 26 when he died. Born in 1888 in Chicago, Nat Walkegan. Fred worked as a foreman at Western Electric. Fred's father was Fred Beal, B-I-E-H-L, or sometimes spelled B-E-H-L. Born in Germany, died in Chicago in 1898. His mother, Anna Helmig, was born in Germany. However, the year of her birth, well, there's some conflicting information. We have 1869, 1870, and 1872. And she died in 1959 in Chicago. Fred Beale Jr. had a younger brother called George, who identified him at the morgue. Fred Beale married Emily Beckman just a year before the Eastland disaster. She was 16 years old when they married, and Fred was 25. And we will circle back to Emily and give you more information about her. As mentioned, there were two young men also living in the Beale household. They worked with Fred at Western Electric, and they were Edward Gaiton's, G-A-T-E-N-S, and he died with his girlfriend, his sweetheart, Anna Quinn. Then we have William Rupp, he also died, and I will spend time on their bios in another episode. Then we have mention of two other relatives, Mrs. Jo Bacon and Mrs. Albert Herman. In those early newspapers, the women's first name was not mentioned if they were married. In a bit I will let you know what I discovered and didn't discover about the identities of these women. We'll continue. Now as you can hear, there's a lot of emotion. Why wouldn't there be? And did everything happen the way that they said it happened in this article? We don't know, but this is something that we need to look at. I had to scan a bit to find the rest of the article that pertained to Fred Beale, and this gives us some additional clues. It's about Mrs. Joe Bacon, whose name was given early on in the article on page one, and she is the sister of Frederick's mother, Anna. How did I figure that out? Well, I created a family tree. The family tree helped me corroborate what I was reading in the Waukegan newspaper. I'll continue to read the part of the article that refers to Mrs. Joe Bacon. Headline One nephew lost, two saved. Mrs. Joe Bacon of William Street Waukegan lost one nephew in the Eastland disaster, but two were saved. Her nephew, Fred Beale, married, was drowned, and his two cousins and her nephews, George and Walter Brennan, were rescued. They had an exciting escape, but managed to get out without serious injury or serious effects. The body of Beale was recovered. So here is where the good old family tree stepped in and helped again. Mrs. Joe Bacon was Bertha Helmig Bacon, sister of Anna, who was the mother of Fred. Got that? Okay. Now, the other nephews who are mentioned, there's a typo in the surname. They weren't Brennan. They were both Berner, B E R N E R. George Berner and Walter Berner, brothers. When I located George Berner's death certificate, I saw that his mother was Henrietta Helmig, same surname as Bertha and Anna. I located her birth record, and she was the sister of Anna and Bertha Helmig. So Fred, George, and Walter were cousins.

Online Bios Without Sources Mislead

Natalie Zett 18:57

Now I want to pause again and tell you something else. When I did broad research on an online platform, I did indeed find something. However, the information that was available on this site had no source citations for one thing. And for another thing, there was a photo of a woman that was supposedly Frederick's wife, but the provenance for that photo is not listed, so it could be anyone. And then there is a further problem in that this site mistakenly identified George and Walter Brenner as Frederick's friends. They might have been friends, but they were cousins. So this is another inaccuracy, and because none of these bios have any source citations, you cannot cross-check the information. This is fairly typical in terms of what you find online about the history of the people of the Eastland disaster, not every site, but certainly in enough of them where it is concerning because it's not accurate.

Funeral Coverage And What It Gets Wrong

Natalie Zett 20:12

Good news, I found a follow-up article. So I've been reading from the July twenty sixth, Waukegan Daily Sun, and now I'm going to read from the same newspaper, the Joaquegan Daily Sun, july twenty eighth, nineteen fifteen. Headline Waukegan dead occupy graves side by side. Funeral of Frederick Beale, a victim of great tragedy, held this afternoon. Local relatives attend. Ten Waukeganites were present at funeral services. More funerals Thursday. Under lowering skies, while hundreds stood bareheaded along the crape hung street, the black draped Beale home at eighteen hundred South Hamlin Avenue, Chicago yielded its quota of bodies of the Eastland disaster at two o'clock Wednesday afternoon, while Keegan relatives of Frederick Beale, whose body was one of the first taken from the murky waters of the Chicago River who attended funeral services were Mr. and Mrs. Albert Herman and Family 117 Mill Court, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Bacon of William Street. Mrs. Beale buried three men from her own home. The four young victims of the disaster will occupy graves side by side in Cicero. This is Chicago's day of exceeding sorrow. The whole city, if not the entire state, mourns with the bereaved of the thousand odd Eastland dead. Official business was halted out of respect for the victims of the greatest local tragedy. While thousands filed slowly to the cemeteries, two hundred of those lost when the big steamship rolled over on its dock were laid at rest yesterday with the heartrending scene. Most of the remainder of the identified bodies were buried today. There were not the facilities to properly handle the funerals. Funeral services over as many as thirty bodies were held simultaneously in one church. End of article Before we go on, I want to correct a few things that were mentioned in the article. First of all, they stated that the four victims, and that would be Frederick Beale, Edward Gaitons, William Rupp, and Anna Quinn were buried together. That's not the case. Frederick Beale is buried in Eden Memorial Park, Schiller Park, Cook County. Edward Gaitens is buried someplace in New York. Anna Quinn buried in Mount Carmel Cemetery, and William Rupp was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Hillside, Union County, New Jersey. And while family trees definitely provide a lot of clarity, this one has left me with more questions than answers.

The Mystery Of Mrs Albert Herman

Natalie Zett 23:48

So I'm going to discuss the highlights in this family tree. This one is really convoluted, and that's an understatement. And as Krista Cowen would say, all families are messy. And before we go on, you've heard Mrs. Albert Herman mentioned a couple times. I've tried, but I cannot figure out who she is. I speculate that she is another sister of Frederick's mother, Annie, but I don't have proof positive of that yet, so we'll leave her as our mystery woman. The Walkegan connection seems to come from Annie's side of the family. She seemed to go back and forth from Chicago to Waukegan, in fact. Her brother and some of her other siblings were living in Walkegan at various junctures. So Annie and Fred Sr. married in 1886. Fred was twenty three. Annie's age is harder to pin down, but she may have been a teenager. There is considerably more mystery surrounding Annie than some of the other people in this family tree. So Fred Beale Sr. died in 1898. That same year, their only daughter also died. She appears to have been about five or six years old. I don't have much information about her other than the fact that she was born in 1893 in Chicago and died in 1898. And her name was Violet. At that point, I'm not sure if Fred and Annie were living together. I don't know what happened between them. But by 1900, Annie was living in Waukegan with her second husband, Eric Swanson. She reported her age as twenty eight. Her two sons, Frederick and George, were living with them. I'm not sure how long that marriage lasted. At some point Annie married a third time to Christopher Boutel, an immigrant from Switzerland. Boutel is one of those surnames that Annie

Annie Biehl's Saloon And City Conflict

Natalie Zett 26:05

continued to use later in her life. But I want to stop here and go back to Annie's years in Joaquegan, particularly around 1904 and 1905, because this is one of those places where we have to be so careful about what the surviving records show us. After her marriage to Eric Swanson, Annie was operating a saloon in Johegan in her own name, or so it seems. Annie also appears to have been taking in borders, and she repeatedly came into conflict with city authorities. We don't know why. One of the articles is from the Joaquegan News Sun, as it's called back then, from April 4th, 1905. The headline is pretty salacious, but keep in mind that this was also the newspaper reporting style of the period. According to the article, police went to Annie's property around midnight and arrested two young women on the charge of being, quote, inmates of a disorderly house. Each woman was fined five dollars plus costs, and according to the newspaper, they paid the fines and agreed to leave town. Later that morning, Annie was arrested on the charge of keeping a disorderly house. According to the newspaper, she pleaded guilty and was fined $20 plus costs. But here's the thing, the article also reported something that raised a few red flags. The city had previously revoked Annie's saloon license. According to the newspaper, the city council subsequently ordered that the $125 she had lost through that action be returned to her. So there was already some history between Annie and the city. Keep that in mind. Other Waukegan newspaper coverage indicates that Annie challenged the city's treatment of her and believed that she was being set up and treated unfairly. Now let that introduction serve as the preface. I will read the article in its entirety. This is from the Joquegan News Sun, April fourth, nineteen oh five. Headline Arrest and Fine Three Women. Police made raid on misses Beale's saloon at midnight last night. Two fined five dollars and costs. Mrs. Beal pays twenty dollars and costs. Last night at midnight the police arrested two young women on a charge of being inmates of a disorderly house, and Justice Edwards this morning fined each five dollars and costs. They have paid the fines and promised to leave town never again to return. The women were arrested at the home of misses Beale at 210 South Genesee Street, a place which the officers have long looked at with suspicion. The arrest took place at twelve o'clock last night. The women gave the names of Mary Defrize and Flora La Belle. Headline Keeper also fined. Later this morning, misses Beale was arrested on the charge of keeping a disorderly house, and she pled guilty, being fined twenty dollars and costs. She maintained that the girls lied when they admitted what they did to the police. Headline May now revoke license. The action of the Beal woman in pleading guilty to the serious charge will likely result in the mayor or the council again taking action against the woman in the manner of revoking her license. She is the woman whom the mayor once recently revoked her license and later the council ordered the one hundred twenty five dollars she lost through the action returned to her. As an officer said, with the action today it is now up to the city to do something definite with her. End of article. This is where we have to stop for a second to try to figure out what was going on here. We know there was a police raid, that was for sure. There were arrests. We know Annie pleaded guilty to a charge. We know she had previous disputes with the city officials over her saloon license. What we don't know is Annie's side of the story. We don't know the circumstances behind the charges, and we don't have enough evidence to reconstruct exactly what was going on at 210 South Genesee Street. And that's super important. As a former newspaper reporter

Context Matters More Than Clean Stories

Natalie Zett 31:16

myself, I began scanning the Joaquin newspapers from that era to see the types of cases Justice Edwards was involved in. Indeed, he did seem to have issues with saloon keepers, not just Annie, but there were a number of them that he went after. There was another saloon keeper who frequently made the news. His surname was Kubaleski, and you might not recognize that name, but perhaps if you're a fan of old time radio and TV, you know the name Jack Benny? Well, Jack Benny was Benjamin Kubaleski, the son of Meyer Kubalewski, and Jack spent his early years in Joaquin, Illinois. This is the first time I've encountered something like this among the people I've researched in connection with the Eastland disaster. Believe it or not, I do have similar situations in my own family history, though. Back in the 1930s, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, my grandfather and his brother, both ethnic German immigrants from Poland, owned a series of bars and restaurants. And they were frequently targeted, fined, harassed, and maligned. My grandfather, being the man he was, simply didn't accept it. He fought back. He took people to court. And I don't remember the outcomes of these cases, but I certainly remember my grandfather as someone who did not back down. And I find myself wondering about Annie Beale. Maybe she had some of that same fight in her. Systems don't generally respond well to people who push back, whether it's Annie and Waukegan in 1905 or my grandfather in Johnstown 30 years later. With Annie, we simply don't have enough information to know what was going on. Don't forget, families, mine and the Beals, were messy. But that's what provides the interest. So much of the retellings of the people of the Eastland disaster, besides being inaccurate and lacking source citations, they also lack context. And it's the context that invites us into the story. It's the context sometimes where we see ourselves in the story. And that's powerful.

Emily’s Future And Closing Reflections

Natalie Zett 33:52

If you're wondering what happened to Frederick's widow, Emily Beckman Beale, she married Frederick's cousin, George Berner, and they moved to Mayfield Heights, Ohio. They had some children, and that's where they live the rest of their days. The one thing about this Waukegan paper is that of all of the coverage I've researched regarding the Eastland disaster, this one may be the most reflective of what was going on. Not because it's accurate, because you know it's not. It's all over the place. It looks like it was pasted together in a haste because all of the pieces don't go together. But yet to me this freneticness, the misspellings, the confused identities, and everything else really reflect what the Eastland disaster did to a community. They didn't have time to clean everything up or make it look tidy. It looks very raw and it feels very real. When I think about this family, and especially when I think about Annie Beale, I keep coming back to that house at 1800 South Hamlin Avenue in Chicago. After the Eastland disaster, the bodies of three young men were there, her son Frederick, and the two young boarders who had made their home with the Beale family. What was that like? What did that do to Annie? What did that do to the rest of the family, such as her son George, such as her daughter-in-law, Emily? Those two young men weren't her sons, but they were living in Chicago. Annie had given them a home, and after they died, they came back to that home one last time, before their bodies were returned to their families. There is so much about Annie Beale that I don't know. I don't really know what happened in that courtroom in Joaquegan in 1905, or furthermore, 1904 and 1903. I don't know how much of the woman we meet in those newspaper stories is Annie. And how much is the newspaper trying to, you know, sell newspapers. But I do know this, and I keep going back to this. She opened her home to those young men while they were alive, and when I picture Annie Beale, that's where I picture her. Not in Justice Edwards' courtroom, not in some sensational newspaper headline, but at eighteen hundred South Hamlin Avenue, in the house where those three young men who left that morning for a picnic came home for the last time.

Subscribe Follow And Website Link

Natalie Zett 36:41

Well, make sure you come back next week because the Waukegan paper does not disappoint. There are more stories. But in the meantime, take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and stay safe. 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 1915. Goodbye for now.