THE people

Roger Griswold Higginson

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

DATE OF BIRTH:
February 2, 1894
DATE OF DEATH:
December 30, 1903
GENDER:
M
OTHER KNOWN NAMES:
Roger G. Higgins*, Roger Higginson
ETHNICITY:
KNOWN ADDRESS:
419 East Huron Street 
 Chicago 
 IL
RELATED TO:

George Higginson jr., father
Jeanette Higginson, aunt
Mable Gerow

AT THE TIME OF the fire

AGE:
9
MARITAL STATUS:
Single
ROLE:
Audience Member
ORGANIZATIONAL AFFILIATION:
ORGANIZATIONAL ROLE:

other information

CEMETERY:
Church on the Hill Cemetery, Lenox MA
MORGUE:
Rolston
IDENTIFIED BY:
OTHER NOTES:

Roger went to the theater with his aunt, Jeanette Higginson and her friend Miss Mable Gerow.  They all perished in the fire.  Both Higginson victims were transported to Lennox, Massachusetts for burial in the family plot at Church on the Hill Cemetery.

Roger's father,  George Higginson Jr., was from a Boston family with roots tracing back to America's colonial settlers. He left his father's farm in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts to graduate from Harvard in 1887. Over the next seventeen years, as the nation electrified its homes, cities, and factories, he made a small fortune as an expert in power plant financing and brokering. By age forty-six, he was the largest landowner in Winnetka, IL, enjoying life as a gentleman farmer at his "Meadow Farm."  From 1896 to 1903, however, sorrow and loss ran concurrently with success for George. His first wife and second child died in childbirth in 1897, his mother two years later, and in September 1903, his three-year-old namesake, George Higginson III.  Then in December came the Iroquois fire, where he lost his sister, Jeanette Barker Higginson, and nine-year-old son, Roger Higginson.

CITATION:

Find a Grave https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/17673481/roger-griswold-higginson
McCurdy, p 339
Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Illinois) · 1 Jan 1904, Fri · Page 2
The Inter Ocean (Chicago, Illinois)  Page 29
The Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts)  Page 8

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: Karl Sup, Iroquois Theatre Fire Historical Society, Judy Cooke

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