While watching a movie one snowy night in Washington D. C., journalist
and author Chauncey Corey Brainerd and his wife Edith, were both killed
when the flat roof of Crandall's Knickerbocker Theatre collapsed under
the weight of over two feet of heavy snow. That night the Great
Knickerbocker Storm of 1922, as it later became known, killed or
injured well over two-hundred moviegoers and theater employees. A
former congressman, an aid to President Wilson and a number of house
musicians including the conductor, also perished in the disaster.
Brainerd and his wife, the former Edith Rathbone Jocobs, were married
at her parent's home in Mount Vernon, NY on 4 June, 1903. She was born
in Washington DC around 1885 and later lived, at least for awhile, in
Westchester, NY where her father worked as a postal inspector. Chauncey
Brainerd was born in New York City, the son of Alanson and Adelia Corey
Brainard. His father was a merchant who died before Brainerd's second
birthday. His mother later worked as a housekeeper in order to support
him and his older sister Adelia.
Chauncey and Edith Brainerd, who were both writers, would go on to
collaborate on a number of stories together under the pen name E. J.
Rath. Chauncey Brainerd was a veteran of the Spanish-American War. At
the time of his death he had been the Washington bureau chief for the
Brooklyn Eagle for over ten years.
