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Memory can vanish quietly—sometimes with a server shutdown. This week, we open the door to the Eastland disaster’s online past: from an early researcher’s dial-up “postcard pages” to an early Eastland website’s now-defunct archive. We trace how those pioneering digital efforts shaped what many of us think we know today.

Along the way, we revisit transportation historian George Hilton’s foundational work—his flexible approach to casualty counts and the permissions that seeded the first online lists. We also explain why numbers in mass tragedies should stay open to revision, not carved in stone.

Then we bring three family voices back into the light:

• Ole Nicholas Jensen, rescuer and survivor.
• Mary Vrba Lippert, whose resilience carried her from a Wisconsin farm to Western Electric.
• Frieda Emma Amelia Till, saved at 17 and determined to build a full life after that harrowing experience.

Their stories—once carefully attributed online—eventually lost their bylines or disappeared from view. We talk about how that happens, how to restore them, and why proper citations and links aren’t pedantry—they’re respect.

This is a story about historiography, ethics, and repair: using the Internet Archive, public history standards, and persistence to restore authorship, correct omissions, and make the record more trustworthy for descendants, educators, and curious listeners.

If you love genealogy, history, or digital preservation, you’ll find both practical guidance and renewed purpose—along with a cautionary tale.

Resources:

• Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Archived version of “Biographies” page, Eastland Memorial Society website. Captured October 9, 2015.
• Elizabeth Shown Mills, “QuickLesson 15: Plagiarism—Five ‘Copywrongs’ of Historical Writing,” Evidence Explained, n.d., accessed October 15, 2025

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