MIHOUGHT-L Archives

Archiver > MIHOUGHT > 2001-02 > 0981918012


From: "Mary Davis" <>
Subject: Re: [MIHOUGHT-L] Italian Hall Fire 1913
Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 13:00:12 -0600
References: <200102111755.f1BHtxc27898@cgi.rootsweb.com>


I've been working on my Houghton County Rudios, some of whom were miners and
I had heard this story from their relatives in Montana. Thanks for sharing
with everybody. Does anyone have access to this newspaper and can they
check for obituaries?

I would appreciate help and would be happy to send you names and dates. Let
me know cost.



----- Original Message -----
From: "Michele" <>
To: <>
Sent: Sunday, February 11, 2001 11:55 AM
Subject: [MIHOUGHT-L] Italian Hall Fire 1913


> Posted on: Houghton Co. Mi Query Forum
> Reply Here: http://genconnect.rootsweb.com/gc/USA/Mi/Houghton/1020
>
> Surname: Moyer, Saari
> -------------------------
>
> Calumet, Houghton County, Michigan, 1913
> Source: The L'Anse Sentinel, Saturday, December 27, 1913
>
> CALUMET DISASTER MOST SHOCKING IN THE STATE. Lives of Seventy-One Persons
> Sacrificed When Panic is Started Through False Alarm of Fire.
> NOT A VESTIGE OF FLAME, EVEN FROM CANDLE
> Italian Hall, Calumet, the Scene of Christmas Entertainment, is Converted
> Into a Charnel House.
> --L'Anse Extends Sympathy.
>
> Seventy-one persons, children, women and men, were crushed and smothered
> to death Wednesday afternoon in the Italian hall, Red Jacket, Calumet,
> as the result of a panic precipitated by a cry of "Fire." Never before
> was a disaster attended with such shocking loss of life enacted in
Michigan.
>
> The tragedy has plunged into gloom a copper country harried and stricken
> for the past five months by a strike that brought with it death and
destruction.
> This crowning act of calamity cost the lives of thirty-four girls, and
> twenty boys, the majority of whom were young children; twelve women and
> five men.
>
> The disaster occurred during a Christmas tree celebration given by Woman's
> auxilliary to the Western Federation of Miners to the children of the
strikers.
> It took place while pitiful presents were being distributed to mere
babies,
> already suffering from the horrors of an industrial conflict that has
riven
> a once contented region. The hall was crowded principally with women and
> children, the men being few comparatively.
>
> Charles H. Moyer, president of the Western Federation of Miners, came out
> with a statement that the man who gave the false and fatal alarm had
climbed
> the stairs and stood in the hallway when he uttered the cry, that he wore
> a Citizens' Alliance button and that many witnesses would testify to this.
> Matti Saari, a member of the Western Federation of Miners, says that this
> is not so, that no man came up the stair. He stood at the head of the
stairs
> and says positively that the alarm came from within the hall.
>
> The Italian hall is a large room of the familiar type of assembly room
> for lodges and societies of various sorts. It is reached by a narrow
stairway
> from the street and this stairway ends at a small landing, with double
> doors opening into the landing. When the panic started the awful tide of
> seven hundred people flowed down till there was a causeway of quivering
> bodies over which many managed to escape by trampling and crawling and
> falling down into the street, heedless of everything except safety. It
> was impossible to release the jam from below and the work of clearing the
> fatal incline had to be done from above.
>
>
>
>
> ==== MIHOUGHT Mailing List ====
> Houghton County Queries
> http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/Mi/Houghton
>
>
> ==============================
> Ancestry.com Genealogical Databases
> http://www.ancestry.com/rd/rwlist2.asp
> Search over 2500 databases with one easy query!
>
>

This thread: