Cook, Eleanor Emily - Southampton, MA

Cook, Eleanor Emily

Southampton, MA

N 42° 14.078 W 072° 43.649

The grave of Eleanor Emily Cook is marked by a marble horizontal marker in a family plot in the historic Center Cemetery in Southampton, MA. The marker is inscribed:

                                                    ELEANOR EMILY COOK
                                                 MARCH 17, 1936
                                                    JULY 6, 1944

On July 6, 1944, in Hartford CT, the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus tent caught fire. The inferno killed 167 people and injured 700 more. The most famous casualty of the fire was an unidentified 8 year old girl known only as "Little Miss" 1565, the number assigned to the body by the coroner.

She was buried with five other unknown victims in Northwood Cemetery in Windsor, CT and despite nationwide and worldwide media coverage, he body was never claimed. Forty-seven years later she was identified by the Connecticut State Police forensics unit as Eleanor Emily Cook of Southampton, MA. Her body was exhumed and placed in a family plot next to her brother Edward, who also died in the Hartford Circus Fire, in Center Cemetery in Southampton, MA.

Her cenotaph in Northwood Cemetery in Windsor, CT  (N 41° 48.577 W 072° 39.973) is inscribed:

                                        RESTED IN PEACE HERE 47 YEARS AS
                                                 "LITTLE MISS"
                                                                    1565