Last month, I took a late flight from the Providence, Rhode Island airport to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My layover this trip was in Atlanta, instead of the usual Detroit, so we approached Milwaukee from the south. Watching our progress on the seat monitor, I could see that our flight route was along the west shore of Lake Michigan. The path that the steamer The Lady Elgin took as it left Chicago,165 years ago, September 8, 1860.
What is the Lady Elgin? Why is she important? I have written about the Lady Elgin before; you may find my collection of stories here: https://www.outagamieandbeyond.com/the-lady-elgin/, but here is a quick summary taken directly from the post “The Lady Elgin Disaster, Part 1”1
“The Cook money in Canada was due in August, 1860. It was planned that Mrs. [Jane McGarvy] Cook, one of the boys [Jacob] and a girl, [Elizabeth Ann] should go to their old home on a visit and bring the wealth back to the new home, where it would soon be needed in meeting payments on the farms.” The farms were purchased in 1856, as “Mr. Cook bought one large farm for immediate use, making a considerable payment, and bargained for six others, a farm for each of the boys.. A payment was made on each of the additional farms.” And so plans were made that Jane would travel home to Canada, where she “received it [the money] in gold–$12,000. It was a cumbersome package, but they preferred it that way to taking drafts.”2 Family history tells us that she had sewn the coins into the hem of her dress in preparation for the journey home…
[In Jacob’s words]…the family “took passage on a propeller from Collingwood, Ontario, Canada to Milwaukee. We arrived near Milwaukee in the night, and it was so cloudy and dark that the captain thought it would not be safe to attempt to land so we continued to Chicago, where we transferred to the first boat leaving for Milwaukee.” That boat was the steamer, the Lady Elgin, which began its return trip to Milwaukee, around 11:00 p.m.
Leaving Chicago, the steamer headed north and had reached Winnetka, approximately 30 miles north of Chicago, traveling about nine miles from shore, when shortly after 1:00 a.m., it was hit by the schooner Augusta with such a great force that Jacob’s first thought was that the boat must have been struck by lightning. The Augusta had rammed bow first into the Lady Elgin’s side, sheering off one of her two 30-foot paddle wheels, then punched through the hull. Getting no signal of distress from the Lady Elgin, the Captain of the Augusta sailed on for Chicago…”3
That night, our family lost Jane McGarvy Cook and her daughter, Elizabeth Ann. Her son, Jacob, miraculously survived.
And so we fast forward almost 165 years, to the night of August 14, 2025, as I flew above the shoreline at 11:00 p.m., following the path that my family had taken all those years ago. While the landscape beyond the lake looks vastly different – and much brighter than it did in 1860, looking down into the darkness of the lake felt much the same as it might have that night in September, as the lights of the Augusta faded into the distance and The Lady Elgin quickly sank into the cold, dark water
Sources:
- https://www.outagamieandbeyond.com/2020/09/05/the-lady-elgin-disaster-part-1/ ↩︎
- “A Memorable Time ~ Old Day-Events Are Recalled ~ Lieut. Col. J. A. Watrous of Milwaukee Writes for The Times of the Coming of the Cook Family to Stockbridge,” (Chilton) The Chilton Times, 19 Mar 1910, Saturday, p. 1, col. 2-3. ↩︎
- “An Appleton Man’s Escape. His Mother and Sister Were Both Lost—The Former’s Body Never Recovered,” Milwaukee Sentinel, 4 Sep 1892. ↩︎
