Mary Dorothea Gartz

Daughter of A.F. Gartz, treasurer of the Crane company; attended theater with sister, Barbara, maid and nurse; all perished.

Among the victims was a party made up of children and adults from the Gartz, Guthardt, Theni and Fahey families. Of six, only one survived.
Fatality — four-year-old Barbara Jane Gartz (b.1899)
Fatality — twelve-year-old Mary Dorthea Gartz (b.1891)
Fatality — forty-one-year-old Adelheid Kertscher Guthardt (b.1862), a governess
Fatality — sixteen-year-old Elise Guthardt (b.1888), Adelheid's daughter
Fatality — sixteen-year-old Emma Clara Theni (b.1886), nursemaid
Fatality — twenty-five-year-old Mary Fahey (b.1878), waitress
Survivor — thirty-seven-year-old Maud Parcells (b. c1866–), nursemaid

Gartz Family
Barbara and Mary were the daughters of Katherine Elizabeth "Kate" Crane Gartz (1865–1949) and Adolph F. Gartz (1862–1930). Kate was the sister of Charles S. (1826–1839) and Richard Teller Crane Jr. (1873–1931), a pair of wealthy Adolph F. Gartz, Chicago industrialists, all three siblings heirs to the Richard Teller fortune. Her husband, Adolph, was treasurer at the Crane Brothers Elevator company.

Barbara (Bobsie) and Mary had two brothers who did not attend the matinee — Frederick and Richard. In Chicago, the Gartz family lived at 4860 Kimbark Ave. in the Kenwood area. They also owned one of four homes at the Crane summer Jerseyhurst compound on the north shore of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, the Glen Mary. Had Barbara and Mary survived, they might have gone to college or been married at Jerseyhurst, as was Gloria in later years.

The body of Mary Gartz was found trampled and suffocated on the stairwell in the lobby that became a death trap for an estimated one hundred victims. She was identified at Rolston's Funeral Parlor.

The Gartz girls were buried in Oak Hill Cemetery at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin in the Crane family plot.  The last belongings of the theater party, a small purse found in the theater with content described as "valueless," was tracked to the Gartz family and turned over to Adolph Gartz on December 28, 1904, days short of a year after the fire. Nothing more was reported about the contents so it cannot with certainty be said that the purse belonged to Barbara or Mary Gartz.

Around 1905 Kate and Adolph moved to California for Adolph's health, and two years later had a fifth child, Gloria. Adolph died in 1930, and Kate eventually remarried. She became an outspoken social activist, making her Altadena, California home, The Cloister, a salon for 1930s intellectuals including Upton Sinclair, Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein.  She was an activist and influencer before the category existed, using the power of her name and financial means to fight for causes she believed in.  Kate came to consider herself a Socialist and gave a large portion of her considerable wealth to charity when she died.