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THE FIRE OF 1890

The Fire of 1890

Viola also went by two other nicknames, Lulu or Lula. It was not easy to find Miss Steigmeyer in historical records because of her other two nicknames. In the U.S. Census of 1880, Miss Steigmeyer was put down as Lula (Archive 2). This name was used in other newspaper articles such as Mourning Buchtel (Archive 3). It was not until the end of my research, that we found her real name. On Ancestry.com, someone made a family tree with her father, Frederick H. Steigmeyer, and mother, Caroline Steigmeyer. They had labeled Viola Myrtle Steigmeyer as the daughter of Frederick and Caroline Steigmeyer. I can assume that Lulu and Lula are nicknames for Viola (Archive 8). On Viola’s gravestone, it uses the name “LuLu Steigmeyer.” Under her name, are the names Lockie and Clarence. These were the names of her brothers who died a year after birth. However, Lulu died in 1890, but her gravestone says 1870-1900 (Archive 9). I can only assume that this was a mistake. I have read online articles saying that gravestones are not always an accurate way to get a person’s date of birth or date of death. I can hypothesize that with the sudden death of their daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Steigmeyer may have not had the funds at the time to create a gravestone for their daughter. It also could have been just a mistake made by the gravestone maker that in fixing it would have cost too much time and money (Archive 10). The real reason may never be known.

On December 13, 1890, the women of Kappa Kappa Gamma were having a birthday celebration for all the girl’s birthdays that fell between the months of September to December. This celebration occurred at Cary Hall in Buchtel College. There were about a dozen or so girls dancing around a piano. These girls were wearing festive costumes, tall paper caps trimmed with