St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church was on the Lower East Side of Manhattan island. It was in a German-American neighborhood called "Kleindeutschland", or "Little Germany." The church paid the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company $350 for the General Slocum to take a special trip. The trip was to celebrate the end of the school year. Not everyone who came on the trip was German-American. Churchgoers invited their friends and neighbors to come too. Most people wore their best clothes. The people on the boat planned to go to Locust Grove on Long Island's North Shore for the day. They brought baskets of food for picnics. There were 1,358 people on the boat in total, passengers and crew. Most of the passengers were women and children.