Olive Carruthers: Chain-Smoking, Gravel-Voiced Chronicler of the Eastland

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Sometimes, a single newspaper article can pull lives back from the shadows. Today, I want to share the story behind one of my most treasured discoveries: writer and journalist Olive Carruthers. Her 1952 Evanston Review piece, “How Evanstonians Assisted in the Eastland Disaster,” brings the 1915 Eastland tragedy in Chicago into sharp, unforgettable focus. Long after the Eastland rolled into the Chicago River during the Western Electric picnic, Olive sought out Evanston residents, collected their memories, and wove them into a gripping narrative that saves names other histories have let slip away.

We step into the raw moments Olive refused to soften: the frantic surge of rescuers, the dread that someone you love might be lost, and diver Enoch Moberg plunging into a world turned upside down, filled with ladders, darkness, wreckage, and the unthinkable. We trace the aftermath through Catherine O’Reilly’s desperate search for her brother Patrick, the jolt of grief and hardship that struck survivors’ families, and the wave of community relief that rose up in the days that followed.

Then Olive steps out from behind the byline and into the spotlight. We follow her journey from Wisconsin to Chicago and Kentucky, exploring her life as a novelist and book critic. Gerald McMurtry offers heartfelt thanks for Olive saving his manuscript and for their partnership on Lincoln’s Other Mary. He also leaves us with a description for the ages: Olive as a “chain-smoking, gravel-voiced time bomb.” Some writers are memorable. Olive apparently came with a warning label.

I close with Olive’s own words on why Chicago held her and what it meant to write with real freedom.

If you love uncovering the hidden stories of the Eastland disaster, or if Chicago history, genealogy, and archival sleuthing spark your curiosity, this episode is made for you. Subscribe or follow, share it with a fellow history enthusiast, and leave a review to help others discover these long-lost tales.

Resources:

R. Gerald McMurtry, My Lifelong Pursuit of Lincoln (Fort Wayne, IN: Louis A. Warren Lincoln Library and Museum, 1981).

Olive Carruthers and R. Gerald McMurtry, Lincoln’s Other Mary: The Courtship of Mary Owens (Chicago: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1946).

Olive Carruthers, We’ll Sing One Song (Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1947).

Olive Carruthers, “How Evanstonians Assisted in the Eastland Disaster,” The Evanston Review (Evanston, Illinois), October 23, 1952, 37–38.

She Took the Call. He Dove for the Lost. She Wrote Their Story.

The Round Table, Vol. LXXIII, №7, October 15, 1927, p. 3. Accessed via Beloit College Digital Collections

Mrs. Donald L. Collins, “Mrs. Carruthers Is Co-author of Novel Concerning Lincoln,” Monroe Evening Times (Monroe, Wisconsin), June 25, 1946.

“Olive Carruthers Given Scholarship,” Glencoe News (Glencoe, Illinois), August 6, 1953, 18.

“Local Author Dead at 63.” Janesville Weekly Gazette (Janesville, Wisconsin), September 18, 1969, 2.

Carruthers, Olive. “Among Our Kind of People.” Chicago Sunday Tribune, December 6, 1953, part 4, 10.

Originally published at https://www.flowerintheriver.com on July 2, 2026.