Carleton C Berry

Carl Berry first testified about his escape from the Iroquois Theater four years after the fire in a deposition to prosecutor Barnes, preparatory to the final Iroquois trial.  Carl's testimony would never be presented to a jury in a criminal prosecution but was published in the Chicago Tribune.

Carl, Maggie, Otto, and Emma had seats in the third-floor balcony.  Carl became separated from his family members and briefly became unconscious. Upon awakening, he climbed over a pile of the dead and out onto a fire escape. From there, he jumped down to a fire escape on the second-floor balcony and hung from it until rescued. Though not hospitalized, he was badly burned and under medical care for several weeks, losing his left ear and deforming his hands.  He sued Iroquois for injuries.

Carl, Otto and Emma Berry were three of eight children born to Charles and Ella Walker Berry. All three were brought up in the village of Emmet, Michigan. Today's Emmet has around 87 households with many of its residents commute to larger nearby cities. Agriculture is still an important part of the economy, as it was in 1903.

He and Maggie, the former Margaretha Niebling (b. 1877), had married the summer of 1899 when Maggie was twenty-two. She was one of seven children born to the late Frank Niebling and Magdalena Keilman Niebling.  By 1903, Carl and Maggie lived at 759 Larrabee in Chicago (north of today's Montgomery Ward Park).