Free Irish Aboard Titanic by Senan Molony Page A

back to this country to go to work again.
    Her relatives in this city, two nieces, Katharine and Mary Carr of Pine Street and her nephew, Michael Carr of Lowell Street, were not aware that she had started to return until they heard from Mrs Michael O’Leary of Windsor Locks, a former employer of Miss Carr.
    The message said that she had sailed from Queenstown for New York on the day that the Titanic put out. When the list of survivors first came out, Miss Jennie Carr was named among the Third Class passengers, but the name was later changed to Ellen Carr and Miss Carr’s relatives thought that a mistake had been made in the name.
    The Carpathia docked and the rescued passengers landed, but the relatives of Miss Carr got no word as to her whereabouts. They were confident that she had been saved and were fearing that her mind might have been unbalanced by the long exposure and the horror of the past few days.
    As no message came during the day yesterday they became more anxious and tried to learn from the steamship company whether or not she was saved.
    Miss Katherine Carr, who is employed as a domestic at 235 Pine Street, was notified last evening that her aunt had undoubtedly gone down with the Titanic. At first she could hardly believe that the words were true and when it finally dawned on her that the Carr woman registered as saved was not her aunt, she was greatly affected.
    The other relatives are still hoping that their aunt will turn up in due time, although no hope is held out.
    Miss Carr first came to this country about twenty years ago making her home in Springfield. She worked as a cook in several families, later working in a Chicopee Falls hotel. Besides her relatives in Ireland and this city she leaves three nephews and one niece in Hartford.
    ( Springfield Union, 20 April 1912, p. 7)
    A single woman, Janie found herself torn between other people’s offspring on both sides of the Atlantic. She had worked as housekeeper to a rich Connecticut banker and his family before going home in 1911. The return to Ireland was prompted by the sudden death of her widowed sister Catherine (56), which had left six children without parents. By the following spring, Janie had determined that she would make her future in Ireland. But then devastating news arrived from America: her former employer had killed himself. Selfless Janie immediately felt the need to return there to see what she could do. The visit back to Windsor Locks, Connecticut, also gave her the chance to settle her affairs before moving to Ireland permanently. It was another Good Samaritan journey, but it cost Janie her life.
    A kind of surrogate mother to everyone in her family of seven surviving brothers and sisters, Janie had spent more than twenty years in the USA, having originally made the trip c . 1887. Her parents, Tom Carr, a settler from Fermanagh, and Bridget Goldrick, were both dead. Now she was leaving Ireland again after only her third trip home. Margaret Carr, Janie’s teenage niece, planned to go with her but failed to get her papers in order in time, so Janie sailed alone.
    She signed aboard the Titanic as a 37-year-old spinster, although it is known that she was in fact eight years older, with a date of birth of 11 February 1867. Janie was listed aboard as ‘Jeannie’ Carr, and a grant of administration of the substantial estate she left at home in Sligo named her as ‘Jennie’, although her birth and baptismal entries positively name her Jane. She left £113 – the total of an account in the Hibernian Bank.
    David Charters (21) Lost
    Ticket number 13032. Paid £7 14s 8d.
    Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.
    From: Garvagh, Ballinalee, County Longford.
    Destination: 310 West 108th Street, New York city.
    David Charters demonstrated for his family how large the Titanic would be. He walked out of his front door and to the top of a ridge in front of the house, nearly one-fifth of a mile away. The walk is still