Chicago's Titanic Connections
By Amy Cavanaugh in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 15, 2012 3:00PM
One hundred years ago today, the Titanic sank in the Atlantic Ocean after hitting an iceberg (which new research suggests may have been due to an optical illusion). Since the ship was traveling between Europe and the United States, there were passengers and crewmembers from both continents, and some of the 2,224 people on board had ties to Chicago and the greater Midwest. According to Encyclopedia Titanica, one person was born in Chicago, seven were city residents, 72 were traveling here, and four are buried in Chicago cemeteries. Here are some of their stories.
A Chicago Daily Tribune article from April 16, 1912 carried the headline "3 CHICAGOANS ON SUNKEN STEAMER Mrs. Ida S. Hippach and Her Daughter and E. G. Lewy Titanic Passengers. RELATIVES AWAIT NEWS. Several Former Residents Among Ocean Travelers Probably Drowned at Sea."
Ida Hippach, 44, was born in Chicago and lived at 7360 Sheridan Road. Married to plate glass dealer Louis Albert Hippach, Ida was traveling with her daughter Jean, whose age is reported in various sources as 15,16, or 19. The Hippachs also had two children who died in the 1903 Iroquois Theater fire, and the April 17, 1912 issue of the Chicago Daily Tribune reported that Ida’s health had been “impaired” ever since the fire and the trip was planned to improve her health. The April 17 article says that the children were daughters, but a 1914 Chicago Tribune article about the death of Ida’s 19-year-old son Howard (who drove his car into a ditch), reports that the children were sons Archie and Robert. The Hippachs were first class passengers, and they boarded in Cherbourg.
An April 22, 1912 article in the New York Times reported that the Hippachs credited their survival to tycoon J.J. Astor.
"We saw Col. Astor place Mrs. Astor in a boat and heard him assure her that he would follow later," said Mrs. Hippach. "He turned to us with a smile and said `Ladies, you are next.' The officer in charge of the boat protested that the craft was full and the seamen started to lower it. Col. Astor exclaimed 'Hold that boat,' in the voice of a man to be obeyed, and the men did as he ordered. The boat had been ordered past the upper deck, and the Colonel took us to the next deck below and put us in the boat, one after the other, through a porthole."
Encyclopedia Titanica describes Ida's experience in the lifeboat:
She heard someone calling for the boat to return to pick up more passengers, but they did not dare. From their position, about 450 feet from the ship, they heard a "fearful explosion" and watched it split apart.They rowed away, expecting the suction to pull at them. The lights all went out one by one then they all went out in a flash, except for a lantern on a mast. There was a fearful cry from the people in the water. They rowed back and were able to pick about eight men out.
In the morning they saw the Carpathia and they rowed about two miles to the ship. Mrs Hippach was taken aboard in a swinging seat. 'My, but it was good to be taken aboard and nursed.'
In New York, the women were met by Mr. Hippach and a son who lived in North Carolina. They returned to Chicago on April 21 on board the 20th Century Limited. Ida died in 1940, and Jean died 1974.
“There had been dancing and card playing all the way and you felt just as safe on board as on land. And then it just sank in a couple of hours,” Karl Albert Midtsjø, a 21-year-old third class Norwegian passenger, wrote in a letter to his brother four days after the Titanic sank.
Midtsjø boarded the Titanic at Southampton, and likely shared quarters with Johan Nysveen, a 61-year-old Norwegian-born farmer and United States citizen who was traveling to back to North Dakota, where he had lived for 27 years. Nysveen was going to the United States to transfer his farm over to his son, but when he realized that the ship was sinking and he wouldn’t likely be saved, he gave his coat and watch to Midtsjø. Midtsjø managed to get into a lifeboat (“It is pure chance that I survived, because things were quite chaotic," he wrote. "I can't say that I was the least afraid, although only just over a hundred third class passengers were saved, 210 of the crew and the rest from first and second class. But a few millionaires also went down the drain from what I hear.”), and arrived in Chicago on April 26, 1912. Here, he was mentioned in a Chicago Daily News article about possible discrimination that prohibited third class passengers from gaining access to lifeboats.
Then Midtsjø traveled to Cummings, North Dakota to give Nysveen’s coat and watch to his relatives. Midtsjø married a woman from Wittenberg, Wisconsin, had a son, and resided in Evanston and Maywood, where he worked as a caretaker and landscape gardener. He died in 1939 at age 48 from heart disease and is buried in Mount Olive Cemetery.
Also traveling to Chicago was 22-year-old Eliezer Gilinsky, a locksmith and engineer from Ignalina, Lithuania. Gilinsky boarded the Titanic in Southampton after paying just over £8 for a third class ticket. His nephew, Nathan Shapiro, said in 1989:
Eliezer, also known as Lazar or Leslie, was not married. He was in England for a short time, but he wanted to go to the USA on the Titanic. It would have been very expensive, but he was a specialist in machinery so he was taken on as a reserve engineer and given a cheap passage. Unfortunately he died when the Titanic sank. He was one of 19 people who saved themselves on an ice floe, but they were not rescued and froze to death. My grandmother used to say that she heard about the Titanic disaster when she was going on the train from Vilna to Ignalina, and the names were given in the newspaper, and she fainted on the train.
The Mackay-Bennett, an English cable repair ship, was contracted to recover victims’ bodies (it ultimately found 306 of the 1,517 victims, and 328 bodies were recovered in total). The Mackay-Bennett found Gilinsky’s body. He was wearing a gray coat, green shirt, vest, and pants. His effects included photographs, a $5 bill, baggage insurance, keys, and a primer on the English language. He was buried at sea on April 21, 1912.
Anne Elizabeth Isham reportedly gave up her seat in a lifeboat to be with her Great Dane, pictured here. image source
Anne Elizabeth Isham, 50, was born in Chicago, but had been living abroad for nine years. Her father, Edward Swift Isham, established a law firm with Robert Todd Lincoln called Isham, Lincoln & Beale. Isham was one of only four first class women who died in the sinking, and there is a story that she got out of her lifeboat because she was not allowed to take her Great Dane with her.
Miss Isham visited her dog at the ship's kennel daily and when she was evacuating, asked to take him also. When she was told the dog was too large, she refused to leave without him and got out of the lifeboat. Several days later, the body of a woman clutching a large dog was spotted by crew of the recovery ship, Mackay-Bennett, and dinghies were dispatched. Eyewitness accounts by crew and ship's log confirm the sighting and recovery, and the body recovered is assumed to be Miss Isham.
Last Sunday, the New York Times ran an article about 14 emigrants from Addergoole, Ireland, who were en route to start a better life in America. Catherine McGowan, 42, was from Addergoole and ran a Chicago boardinghouse. She returned to Ireland to recruit others, including her 17-year-old niece, but 11 of the 14 emigrants died.
There are far more stories than we can cover in depth here. There's John Harper, a Scottish preacher at the Moody Bible Institute, who died bringing his daughter and niece over. There's 20-year-old Swedish servant Elin Ester Maria Braf, who was coming to live with her sister in Lakeview. There's Alma Cornelia Pålsson, who was traveling from Sweden with her four children to come live with her husband Nils, who was working in Chicago as a tram conductor. All five family members died and Alma's body was found with a letter from her husband.
In a disaster with so many victims, it's easy to gloss over the individuals involved to think about the larger loss, or focus on the famous people on board. But it's the individuals, who were clearly so hopeful and excited to be aboard the Titanic, that make this such a tragic story, even 100 years later.