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Titanic Ties: Several survivors of ill-fated ship now rest in Delco |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Monday, 23 August 2004 |
By KRISTIN SMITH
08/22/2004
Nearly 100 years after the Titanic sank off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, there are still many unsolved mysteries surrounding some of the passengers aboard the fabled ocean liner.
And at least a few of those mysteries are buried right here in Delaware County.
James Robert McGough, a first-class passenger who survived the sinking of the ship, is buried in a three-grave plot in Yeadon’s Holy Cross Cemetery, according to burial records. However, McGough’s name isn’t recorded on the family tombstone that was purchased by his father-in-law, Patrick Hughes.
His wife, Mary J. McGough, also is buried at the site, but her name isn’t recorded on the stone either.
Two others, presumably Mary’s deceased brother and sister, along with her mother are also buried at the site and their names are listed on the headstone.
The reasoning behind the McGough omissions is still a mystery to researchers, said Titanic historian and author Calvin Sun, although there is speculation the McGoughs died childless, leaving no one to record their names on the headstone.
Little is also known about McGough’s life, except he was 35 years old when the Titanic sank and he died in 1937, according to the Web site Encyclopedia Titanica.
Walter Lord’s 1955 novel, "A Night to Remember," which helped revive waning public interest in the Titanic story, lists McGough’s occupation as a buyer for a major department store in Philadelphia.
The Titanic struck an iceberg 20 minutes before midnight on April 14, 1912. Many passengers were awake at the time, including McGough, whose "porthole was open, and as the berg brushed by, chunks of ice fell into the cabin," wrote Lord.
An April 20, 1912, New York Times article mentions McGough once, in a quote from Mrs. J.J. Brown, a survivor from Denver. Brown recounted the events leading up to the evacuation of the ship for the newspaper.
"I had noticed two men following me from place to place as I talked with the women here and there. These two men just then followed me up to the upper deck and carried me down, and practically threw me into the boat with the words, ‘You are going, too.’ They were Edward P. Calderhead and James McGough, two American merchants. I owe my life to them, for there were no more boats and I would be now with those who are at the bottom," Brown told the newspaper.
Besides McGough, there are three other Titanic survivors buried in Delaware County: Victorine Chaudanson Perkins at SS. Peter and Paul Cemetery in Marple, Henry Blank at Arlington Cemetery in the Drexel Hill section of Upper Darby, and Richard Norris Williams II, who is buried at St. Davids Church in Wayne.
With the exception of Williams, who went on to win a 1924 Olympic gold medal in tennis, little is known of the others, said Sun, who is scheduled to give a lecture next month at St. Francis Country Home in Darby, where Perkins spent her final years.
Sun, 48, of Paoli, has been interested in the Titanic story off and on since he was a young child and his mother first gave him a copy of Lord’s book.
Victorine Perkins, a Frenchwoman who was a maid to first-class passenger Emily Ryerson, was 36 years old when the Titanic went down.
She died at St. Francis Country House in 1968, although nothing is known of her time there because patient records are only kept for seven years, and any staff working at that time has since retired, said Millie Roberts, an employee at St. Francis Country House.
To Sun, it seems as soon as one mystery about a passenger is solved, another quickly takes its place.
Perkins’ headstone lists herself, her husband Henry and a woman named Anne Riney. Puzzled as to who Riney was, Sun did a bit of digging and learned she was the Perkins’ daughter-in-law.
If so, where is Anne Riney’s husband, wondered Sun.
"Henry and Victorine had a son whose name was George," he said. "According to (a source) George passed away in 2002 in Florida. The mysterious thing is George is not buried here. I checked with SS. Peter and Paul, and they say there are only those three buried there."
Victorine’s former employer, Arthur Ryerson, who perished on the Titanic, "took off his own lifebelt and strapped it to Victorine as she had none," Lord wrote.
During the evacuation, Victorine returned to her cabin to gather her possessions and was almost inadvertently locked in by one of the ship’s stewards, according to Lord.
"She found her cabin still dry, but as she rummaged about, she heard a key turn, and suddenly realized the steward was locking the stateroom door to prevent looting," Lord wrote. "Her shriek was just in time to keep him from locking her in. Without stretching her luck any further, she dashed back on deck empty-handed."
Henry Blank, a jeweler from Glen Ridge, N.J., who had grown up in the Philadelphia area, spent the last night on the Titanic in the first-class passenger’s smoking room, where he played cards with several other men, according to reports.
When he died in 1949, his body was interred in Arlington Cemetery in Drexel Hill.
Upon his rescue and safe return, he was interviewed in the Friday, April 19, 1912, edition of the Newark Evening News.
Because no one believed the ship could sink, many passengers didn’t evacuate in time, and most of the first lifeboats were not filled to capacity, according to published reports.
"The minute the boat struck the water, we began to pull away. We were afraid that if the ship went down she might draw us under with her. We had gone about a mile and a half when we saw her plunge forward and then down out of sight. Before she sank we heard the explosion of her boilers," said Blank, who was 39 at the time. "There was no confusion whatsoever on the Titanic up to the time our boat was lowered. Everything was quiet and orderly. Many of the passengers had not yet left their rooms."
The mood on the ship was so calm for much of the time, stewards were chastising passengers for damaging ship property, wrote Lord in an anecdote about Richard Norris Williams, who is buried at St. Davids Church in Wayne.
"As R. Norris Williams of Geneva, Switzerland, and his father were leaving their C-deck stateroom, they found a steward attempting to open the door of another room, behind which a panicking passenger was trapped," Lord wrote. "When Williams put his shoulder to the door and broke it in, the steward, who had been opposed to the young man’s use of force, announced, ‘I will be forced to report you for having damaged the property of the company.’"
The Titanic broke apart and sank two miles to the bottom of the ocean floor less than three hours later.
At first unbelievable, the tragedy became real soon enough for many of the surviving passengers, including Williams, who had to beg doctors not to amputate his legs, which had suffered nerve damage because of the bitter cold temperatures.
After immigrating to the United States, the Williams’ joined St. Davids Church. Richard Norris Williams, who was the great-great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, went on to become a top athlete and won a gold medal in tennis in the 1924 Olympics.
The body of his father, Charles Duane Williams, was never recovered. Upon her death, the elder Williams’ wife, Lydia Biddle White Williams, had a memorial to her husband carved into her tombstone at St. Davids Church.
Her actions were "relatively rare" in that most who were personally involved in the sinking never put it on their tombstones, Sun said.
Williams’ descendants have told Sun their famous relative seemed to want to put the tragedy behind him.
"What I’ve noticed with other Titanic survivors, they never talked about it," Sun said, comparing it to World War II soldiers who are typically reticent to talk about their war experiences. "And the other thing I’ve noticed, I’ve been to a number of survivor graves, and I never saw one that made mention of the Titanic. The victim (head) stones, only a small number have a reference to the Titanic, whether it be a grave stone or a memorial marker."
The bodies of many of those who perished were never recovered, and cemeteries would erect memorial markers even though there was no body interred, Sun said.
Of 2,228 passengers and crew on board the Titanic, more than 1,500 perished that cold April night 92 years ago.
Today, only three survivors are known to be alive: Lillian Gertrud Asplund (born 1906) of Massachusetts; Barbara West (born 1911) of the United Kingdom; and Elizabeth Gladys "Millvina" Dean (born February 1912) also of the U.K., according to Encyclopedia Titanica.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1675&dept_id=18171&newsid=12751510&PAG=461&rfi=9 |
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