Jeanette Barker Higginson

Jeanette was Aunt to Roger Griswold Higginson, son of her brother, and also a victim.  Both Higginson victims were transported to Lennox, Massachusetts for burial in the family plot at Church on the Hill Cemetery.

Jeanette left in July 1902 to spend the year traveling in Europe with a hired companion, Mabel Gerow. The women returned to the states in October 1903 to spend a month with Jeanette's father at The Corners in Stockbridge, MA, then headed west to visit her brother George and his rapidly growing family, as well as Jeanette and George's brother Augustus Higginson who lived a few doors away from George in Winnetka.

Jeanette's body was identified by her brother, George. Upon hearing the news about his daughter and grandson, Jeanette's father, George Higginson Sr., age seventy, and his brother, Henry L. Higginson, immediately boarded a train for Chicago. At the depot in Lenox, George spoke with a reporter, expressing his shock. He said that Jeanette had been the head of his household and cared for him in his senior years. She suffered from obesity, and her year in Europe was spent at a bath resort in Germany where she lost sixty pounds and studied the German language and history.

Newspapers aren't always correct:  Jeanette's mother (Mrs. George Higginson of Winnetka) was reported as having lost her life in the theater fire, but was not at the performance.  (Tribune)