SHEBOYGAN - "All the pieces had to fall into place for this tragedy to happen."

That's how Paul Timm, an eighth-grade teacher at Random Lake Middle School, feels about the story of the Lady Elgin, a steam ship that sunk off the coast of Winnetka, Illinois, in 1860.

The passengers on the Lady Elgin had ties to several parts of Wisconsin, and its voyage had connections to controversies over the Fugitive Slave Act and the presidential campaign that would elect Abraham Lincoln. At a pivotal time in the state and country's history, tragedy struck. Many lived to tell the tale. But more did not.

Though it's not as famous as the Edmund Fitzgerald or the Christmas Tree Ship, the story of the shipwreck reads like a movie script, and Timm says it has it all: politics, religion, U.S. history. His interest in it started as he traced back family members he had on the Lady Elgin, and in time Timm became an expert on the wreck, writing a historical fiction book based on his research.

The Lady Elgin was a side-wheel steamship full of many Irish Democrats from the Third Ward in Milwaukee. It was returning to Milwaukee from Chicago when it sunk in the early hours of Sept. 8, 1860.

Timm's fascination with the tragedy began when he was helping his cousin take care of his aunt's estate after she died two years ago. It was then he discovered they had distant relatives who'd perished on the Lady Elgin.

After that Timm went on a mission, researching the tragedy, tracking down the names of people who survived and those who died in the wreck, and finding many graves of both.

The result is his book, "Lost Lady: The Lady Elgin Tragedy," by M. Paul Hollander, his pen name. Timm turned the story of the Lady Elgin into a work of historical fiction for young adults.

Wisconsin's abolitionist governor called for state's secession

The story begins six years before the steamship ever left the dock, Timm said. In 1854, Joshua Glover, a runaway slave, made it to Racine, where he was arrested under the Fugitive Slave Act, a new and controversial law which required the return of runaway slaves even if they were caught in a free state.

Sherman Booth, a well-known abolitionist in Wisconsin, led a mob to break Glover out of a Milwaukee jail. Glover then fled to Canada.

What people don't realize, Timm said, is that Wisconsin Gov. Alexander Randall, also an abolitionist, was an early supporter of splitting with the south, encouraging Wisconsin to do so. When the federal government imprisoned Booth for breaking Glover out of his cell, Randall began to talk about seceding.

Early in 1860, Randall asked all the militias throughout the state if they would stay with Wisconsin if it seceded.

Timm said almost every militia pledged its loyalty, "except for Garrett Barry."

Barry was head of the Irish Union Guard in the Third Ward in Milwaukee and had been a lieutenant in the Mexican War. He and his men thought seceding was treason. So Randall stripped the Union Guard of its weapons and Barry of his title and commission.

In retaliation, Barry assembled his men as an independent militia. But to afford new guns, they needed to raise some money.

The fundraiser they organized was a voyage of the Lady Elgin, a side-wheel steamer known as the "Queen of the Great Lakes," from Milwaukee to Chicago and back, coinciding with several political rallies in Chicago right before the election that would give Abraham Lincoln the presidency.

The Lady Elgin left Milwaukee on Sept. 7, 1860 with a ship full of about 400 people. Its passengers spent the day attending rallies and political events, as well as seeing Chicago. When they returned to the ship around 11:30 p.m., the captain, Jack Wilson, was hesitant to leave port.

There was a storm coming.

'The greatest loss of life on the Great Lakes'

With only enough sleeping berths to accommodate about half the people on board, Captain Wilson faced pressure to get passengers back to Milwaukee late that night.

Reluctantly, the captain agreed.

Wilson was the first person to take a ship through the Soo locks in 1855. The esteemed captain had never lost a person on any of his ships.

But that was about to change when the Lady Elgin set out into the storm.

A couple hours on Lake Michigan brought a schooner filled with lumber, called the Augusta, right up to the Lady Elgin's side. The Augusta's captain was a 26-year-old with little experience on the ship.

Timm said the Lady Elgin was well lit as the party continued on board. A second mate on the Augusta spotted the Lady Elgin around 2 a.m. on Sept. 8, but in the days before running lights, the Augusta would have had little to warn nearby ships of its presence, Timm said.

The Augusta, full of lumber that had shifted during the storm, began to tilt to one side. It T-boned the Lady Elgin amid 12- to 20-foot waves.

The Augusta pierced one of the cabins and punctured a hole in the hull.

"The water is just pouring in," Timm said.

Timm said crew members tried to plug the hole with mattresses and whatever else they could find.

The captain ordered his crew to steer the ship back to shore, but it was too late. The water put out the fire in the steam engines, "so they were just sitting there," Timm said.

Firemen on board hacked away at the top deck, separating it from the rest of the ship, Timm said. When the rest of the ship split off and sunk in about 20 minutes, more than 100 people were left on the deck, which became a makeshift raft. They would float most of the way to shore on the deck, which gradually splintered apart.

Others grabbed onto whatever they could find to float — including some of the 40 dead cattle that were on board.

By dawn, crew members in two rowboats made it back to shore in Winnetka, coming face to face with steep bluffs.

"And you have 20-foot waves coming in and you have an undertow," Timm said.

Crew members from the row boats made it up the bluffs, getting help and sending telegrams, but others weren't so lucky.

About two hours after they made it back, other passengers, who had clung to debris for several hours through the night, began to float into shore.

Edward Spencer, a Northwestern University student, saw people struggling to make it up the bluff and jumped into action, ultimately saving 17 people.

"For hours, (passengers were) in the water," Timm said, "some of them almost 12 hours."

Of the 398 people on board the Lady Elgin, 96 survived. Of those 96, only eight were women. This was because learning how to swim wasn't encouraged like it is now and women in the 19th century wore much more restrictive clothing back then, Timm said.

Most people don't realize the sinking of the Lady Elgin was the greatest loss of life on the Great Lakes, Timm said. He doesn't count the SS Eastland, which was docked on the Chicago River in 1915 when, overloaded with passengers, it rolled onto his side killing more than 800 people.

For the next year after the Lady Elgin sank, bodies were found in Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan, but the Lady Elgin itself wasn't found until 1989.

Many of the victims were within 100 yards of shore when they died, Timm said.

"That's just the saddest part of this whole story," he added.

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A walk among the tombstones

Timm's great-great-great grandfather, Michael Fahey, was one of the first settlers in Richfield, Wisconsin. Michael and his brother Patrick came from Ireland in the 1840s. Patrick moved his wife and three children to the Third Ward. Patrick, his wife, Mary, and their oldest daughter, Mary Anne, 10, were all on the ship.

Patrick's two younger sons, 8 and 4, stayed behind.

Timm's relatives on the Lady Elgin lived a block away from the Barrys in Milwaukee.

"I said I wanted to try to find my family and what I ended up was finding a lot more," Timm said.

Timm's research took him to several cemeteries throughout southeastern Wisconsin and even out of state. He'd start by checking cemetery records to see if any passengers of the Lady Elgin were buried there, but that presented a challenge — cemetery records usually show who bought the plot, not who is buried in it.

So Timm found himself wandering through the oldest parts of some of the cemeteries, like Calvary Cemetery near Miller Park in Milwaukee.

"I've been down to Calvary probably 20 times just searching," Timm said.

He ran into other challenges like the deterioration of the headstones, which made them difficult to read and sunken gravestones easily covered by leaves.

As Timm found more graves, he learned the stories of many of the passengers on the Lady Elgin.

"I think those people should be remembered," Timm said.

'I'll keep looking for clues.'

Among the passengers on the Lady Elgin was William Farnsworth, who lived in what would become Sheboygan. Farnsworth arrived in 1833, started a lumber and real-estate business and built the first sawmill on the Sheboygan River.

According to Timm, at one point Farnsworth faced assassination from a fur-trading company that hired a group of Native Americans to kill him. Farnsworth scared them away by lighting a keg of gunpowder and watching the wick burn down to the very bottom before putting it out.

Timm said Farnsworth was probably just going to Chicago for business, but he can't help but wonder what he was doing on the ship since he was good friends with Gov. Randall, who was an enemy of Garrett Barry.

Barry brought his son on the ship. Both perished. Barry's wife was pregnant with his fifth daughter when he died.

Another passenger who was from the Third Ward was a 21-year-old woman named Eliza Curtin. She wasn't going to go back on the ship, but her mother convinced her to go. She didn't survive.

Thomas Shea, an Irish immigrant and Union Guard member in the Third Ward who helped organize the fundraiser, survived the wreck and went on to have continued success in the freight business.

John Miller, another Irish Union Guard member, is buried at Forest Home Cemetery. He survived the Lady Elgin and also went on to survive fighting in the Civil War.

Timm is still looking for the grave of Thomas Murphy, who moved to Random Lake after surviving the Lady Elgin. He was a watchman on the ship and made his way back to shore in one of the rowboats with the crew members. He helped guide the boat, which made it out with only one oar.

Timm said he's also still looking for the graves of his relatives, Patrick and Mary. Their daughter Mary Anne's body was never found.

"I may never know, but I'll keep looking for clues," Timm said.

For more information

While Timm's book is historical fiction, many of the things characters say are things real passengers said during the tragedy that he found through survivors' accounts of that night.

"Lost Lady: The Lady Elgin Tragedy" by M. Paul Hollander is available on Amazon, or Timm said he can sell them directly. You can reach Paul Timm via the Facebook page for M. Paul Hollander or by email, ptimm@rladvantage.org.

Timm also gives public presentations on his research:

March 14: Oostburg Public Library, Oostburg, 6:30 p.m.

April 12: Random Lake Historical Society, Random Lake, 6:30 p.m.

May 23: Richfield Town Hall, Richfield, 7 p.m.

July 30: North Shore Senior Center Men’s Club, Northfield, Illinois 10 a.m.

Timm grew up in southeast Michigan and has taught fourth through eighth grade for 26 years. He's also traveled over 100,000 miles on his motorcycles and visited several historical landmarks for inspiration. He's ridden his Harley in 49 states and plans to ride in Alaska this summer to get to 50.

Timm has written three other historical fiction books as part of a trilogy called "Curse of Atlantis:" book one is "Roanoke," book two is "Jamestown" and book three is "Plymouth Rock."