Eastland Disaster

Many people have heard about the Titanic but not many have heard of the Eastland. However, if you live in Chicago or Cicero, you certainly have heard of the Eastland. The Eastland was a ship built to sail the Great Lakes. In July 1915, it was hired to transport employees of the Western Electric Company to Michigan City, IN for the annual employee picnic.

On the morning of July 24, 1915, as the Eastland was loading passengers, it began listing, first to one side and then the other, until it finally tipped over into the Chicago River. Over 840 people were killed in this disaster including Ella Schlentz, daughter of Peter and Gabriele (Meyer) Schlentz.

My grandmother Eva Ann was a young girl of 8 when her oldest sister was killed in this disaster that affected almost every family living in Cicero. What was the significance of this disaster, other than the loss of a family member to the Schlentz family? Peter became convinced that if his daughter Ella knew how to swim, she might have survived and he decided that the rest of his children would learn to swim. The family began to take vacations to various lakes so that the family could learn to swim and finally, after a number of trips to Cedar Lake, IN, Peter learned of a place in Lake Geneva, WI where he could rent tents for his family to camp on property owned by a family with access to the lake. The Schlentz's began to camp at the Campgrounds of the Van Dyke's on the south shore of Geneva Lake. Over the next few years, the oldest Van Dyke child fell in love with the youngest Schlentz child.