Tompkins Square
When you're gathered around the table with your relatives, some new stories are mixed in with the old familiars. This year, we found out that my grandmother went to high school with the daughter of a woman who was thrown from a burning ship as a baby. That story alone captures the imagination. How bad would that fire have been for a mother to throw her baby? Then I read some more about the burning ship.
The final toll of the General Slocum fire has never been fixed: 1,021 dead at least, perhaps 1,031, perhaps 30 more than that, and that number counts only those who were roasted or drowned in 30 awful minutes. Later, dozens of survivors committed suicide in their desolation; more yet were led vacant-eyed to mental wards. In the end, an entire neighborhood — a lively, laughing, gracious, prosperous, bustling lower East Side community called Weiss Garten — disappeared forever.
Other links:
New York History
Long Island History
A blog archive which linked to this NYTimes article.
A website for researchers and survivors descendants.
originally posted by Greer