Mina Rose Morales, Belmont Voice correspondent
While many are familiar with the fictional story of Jack and Rose in James Cameron’s famous film, “Titanic,” fewer are familiar with Belmont’s connection to the historic tragedy.
In fact, three distinct stories—those of two former Belmont residents and a New York family whose descendant lives in Belmont—convey how social class determined who survived the sinking of the RMS Titanic.
“Like all ships of the time, it was divided into first, second, and third cabins,” said former Belmont resident and Harvard history professor Steven Biel, author of “Down with the Old Canoe: A Cultural History of the Titanic Disaster.” “It was expensive to travel in first class, and it was also because it was the maiden voyage. There were a lot of wealthy and powerful celebrities of the time on board, traveling in first class.”
Among the wealthy were John Jacob Astor and Lady Madeleine Astor; Maj. Archibald Butt, President William Howard Taft’s military aide; Macy’s department store co-founder Isidor Straus and his wife Ida Straus, and at least two Belmont residents.
On April 14, 1912, on its maiden voyage, the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic struck an iceberg just before midnight and sank.
The ship sailed from Southampton, England, on April 10, bound for New York. Along the way, it stopped at Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown, now Cobh, Ireland.
According to one of many documents available at the Belmont Historical Society — including news clippings and other records — the ship sank five days later, at 2:20 a.m. in the North Atlantic, not far from Newfoundland, Canada. According to an article in The Titanic Times, approximately 2,200 people were on board, and about 1,500 died.
Next week marks the 114th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic.
Caroline Lamson Brown
A Belmont Historical Society newsletter, written by former editor Richard B. Betts, in December 1987, holds the key to Belmont’s connection to the Titanic. Betts came across an old newspaper dated April 19, 1912, while researching the records of the All Saints’ Episcopal Church for an article he intended to write for the church’s 100th anniversary. The article contains an interview with 59-year-old Caroline Lamson Brown, who lived on Common Street in Belmont. She was the widow of John Murray Brown, namesake of the Boston-based Little, Brown Publishing Company.
“Oh, I shall never forget to the end of my days that tragic sight as the Titanic disappeared below the waves,” recalled Brown.
Brown was on the last lifeboat that escaped the Titanic before it sank. Even more providential is the story of how she ended up on that lifeboat. The church’s Memorial Records show Brown presented a Bible to a woman who gave up her seat on the last lifeboat.
Brown donated a white altar hanging embroidered in gold thread, which Betts’ mother, Isabelle, helped restore to better condition. The church only uses the donated altar hangings for special occasions such as Christmas and Easter.
Henry Hart
Henry Hart, born in County Sligo, Ireland, represented a different side of the Titanic story. Before leaving for Ireland in 1911, he worked for E.F. Atkins in Belmont, likely as a coachman or estate servant, where he met Delia McGillicuddy. In 1911, he married McGillicuddy at Belmont’s St. Joseph’s Church. The newlyweds returned to Ireland to meet her family, and shortly after, she became pregnant. They decided they would return to the United States, but Hart, 27, boarded the Titanic alone as a third-class passenger. He did not survive, and his body was never found.
“Outside of the north of Ireland, outside of areas such as Belfast, Ireland was not industrialized, and so there weren’t jobs in factories that meant that people were leaving in search of a better life,” said Robert Savage, history professor at Boston College.
Many Belfast men built the Titanic. The vessel picked up Hart, along with other passengers, in Queenstown.
The Strauses
Two of the highest-profile victims of the Titanic were New Yorkers, Isidor and Ida Straus. Their great-great-granddaughter, Sarah Selden, lives in Belmont.
Isidor’s father, Lazarus Straus, immigrated to Georgia without his family, where he worked as a pushcart peddler. Isidor recommended the entire family move to New York, and they did, according to Selden. In New York, the family moved the pushcart business to the basement of the R.H. Macy department store. By 1888, they were partners with R.H. Macy, and in 1896, Macy transferred his ownership to Isidor and his brother, Nathan Straus. Percy Selden Straus, Isidor’s son and Selden’s grandfather, eventually dropped the Straus last name and became Percy Selden.
According to Selden, Isidor, a rich and famous man, was offered a spot in a lifeboat. He rejected the seat, and Ida refused to go without him. She gave her spot to her maid, Ellen Bird. While depictions of the Titanic show the Strauses lying together in their bedroom, surrounded by rising water, prepared to die, that’s not what happened. They died on deck holding hands as they were sucked into the ocean, according to survivors. Selden remembers first learning about her affiliation with the Titanic as young as 5 or 6 years old.
“It was a story that was fascinating,” said Selden. “When you’re a young child at that age, and you hear a story about a great, beautiful ship hitting an iceberg and sinking with your great-great-grandparents, that stuck in my head.”
