Harry Henry Tracey |
On Saturday morning, September 18, 1926, Marie Jeanette Hohmann Tracey was sorting clothes from a large straw basket on the laundry porch of her comfortable two-flat at 4919 Potomac Avenue, Chicago, while her daughter Marie Ann played nearby. Her husband, Harry Henry Tracey usually worked a half-day on Saturdays at his job as a dispatcher for American Railway Express.
Harry Tracey and Marie Hohmann were married on September 20, 1916 at 440 North Mayfield, Chicago, Illinois, by Rev. James P. Kiely, a Catholic priest. They quickly started a family of five children: Harry, 20 July 1917; John Hohmann, 24 November 1918; Marie Ann, 8 August 1920; Valerie Josephine, 20 November 1921; and Richard Anthony, 16 July 1924. At first, they lived in a small frame house just down the block from her parents, John H. and Katy Walsh Hohmann, at 5832 Iowa Street, later moving to the brick two-flat. |  |
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Suddenly, two men appeared at the door and announced to Marie Tracey that her husband had been shot dead. She fainted.
Two stories persist about the death of Harry Tracey and each likely reveals more about who believes it than it does about what actually happened. Harry's death certificate lists his cause of death as "bullet wound and hemorrhage" due to "suicide." Some people believe he was engaged in some kind of illegal or immoral activity, had gotten caught and couldn't face up to it. |
5832 Iowa Street, Chicago
Photo credit: Anna Harrison Griessel |
4919 Potomac Avenue,
Chicago
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Harry Tracey was laid out in the dining room of the two-flat, and my mother (the little girl playing nearby when the message arrived) clearly remembers wounds to his head and to his right hand. The second version of Harry's death is that he was ordered by "the mob" to smuggle booze on the trucks he dispatched, that he refused and was murdered by them. |
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