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Mary HermanFrom The Peopling of New York CityMary Herman was the oldest woman out of the victims I had to find in the historical records. I began my research in the same place as my other victims in David Von Drehle’s book Triangle The Fire that Changed America. I found in his book that Mary Herman was forty year old. She died from asphyxiation and she was burned and she lived at 511 East 5 Street. Her brother, Dr. M. Herman, identified her body. Von Drehle notes, “Her death was the specific subject of the coroner’s jury. Which found responsibility on the part of Blanck and Harris.” She was also reported in multiple newspapers on March 28 and April 17. In Von Drehle’s story he says that Mary Herman body was on East Fifth Street.[1] When looking through the 1910 Census records I could not tell which of the approximately twenty names I found was hers. This was a problem that I faced a lot of times with Mary Herman. Since people very commonly use Mary and Herman as their first and last name. There were so many names in the records that I was unable to tell which one was her information.[2] On Mary Herman death certificate number 10338, I found that she was forty years old who was divorced and worked as a finisher at the Triangle shirtwaist factory. She was born in Austria. This information was shocking because she was the first Austrian woman that I saw who worked at the factory and the only Austrian women that the Triangle group students had as one of the victims in the fire. Mary Herman’s father’s name was Maurice Herman and her mother’s name was Mollie Brillinus. They were both from Austria. She lived in the United States and New York City for six months. She was buried in Mt. Cherea Cemetery on March 27, 1911 her undertaker’s name was Mathew Felio who lived at 99 Suffolk Street.[3] As I was searching through the Report of the Red Cross Emergency Relief Committee of the Charity organization society of the City of N.Y. book I found information on Mary Herman. She was one of the easiest to find because of her nationality. There were very few Austrians working at the factory. In the book it said, "No. 33 (Austrian) A divorced woman, 40 years old, in this country only six months, was killed. She lived with her brother and was partially dependent on him, making no contribution towards the support of any one. $150.00 was given to reimburse the brother for expenses of the burial."[4] In the March 28, 1911 “New York Times” article “27 More Identified in Morgue Search” I found the same thing as in Von Drehle’s book.[5] She was forty and she lived at 511 Fifth Street. From “Heritage Quest online” I found Mary Herman 1910 census record.[6] The new information that I found was that she was thirty-six years old, which did not make sense because it was only a year before the 1911 fire and all of her other records after the fire said that she was forty years old. She had two children they were both boys. I was able to read one of her sons’ names, which was Solomon the other name was very poorly written. Solomon was nine years old and her other son was twelve years old. All three of them were Yiddish and her two sons were going to school. But she did not have an education. Something different that I found from her death certificate was her occupation. The census had her as a button sewer. After finding the name of her son I decided to look in the 1920 Census and find what had happen to him. In the New York 1920 census records I found nothing. So then I tried the New Jersey census and I found that he was in the military as a private. He was eighteen years old (he should have been nineteen years old), he was born in New York and he was located at 2W, Jersey City U.S. Gov Tran. In John F. McClymer book The Triangle Strike and Fire there was an magazine article[7], “Fire and the Skyscraper: the problem of protecting the workers in New York’s tower factories” by Arthur E. McFarlane had Natie Weiner a survivor from the fire from the ninth floor saying, “It was locked and there was no key there…. I tried to break it open, and I couldn’t…. there was a woman forty years old there who was burned-Mary Herman.”[8] At the Castle Garden website I was once again given the same message that “your search criteria have resulted in no result.” Leon Stein’s The Triangle Fire also had no information about Mary Herman.[9] During one of my visit to the New York Public Library I decided to find The “Report of the Joint Relief Committee, Ladies waist and dress makers Union, Local 25 on The Triangle Fire Disaster” written by the International Ladies’ Garment workers’ Union. I spent about an hour trying to find the book or what ever it was at the end I got nothing. When I saw it in the catalog it had no call number so I went to the librarian and asked him where could I find this book. It took him like twenty minutes to find that it was a microfilm. So he sends me to the microfilm room. There I asked the people the same question. The man took a while to find the call number in a book. Then I went to the front desk to give them my ticket so they can bring the microfilm from the back. I waited another twenty minutes before they called my number and told me that it was missing. The lady tried one more time and she still did not find the microfilm.
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