Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Eleanor ELKINS
Mrs. Widener gave the following account of the suicide (from the New York Times of April 20, 1912, reprinted in The Titanic: End Of A Dream by Wyn Craig Wade):
" I went on deck and was put into a life boat. As the boat pulled away from the Titanic I saw one of the officers shoot himself in the head, and a few minutes later saw Capt. Smith jump from the bridge into the sea."
Mrs. Widener was in lifeboat #4, which was fairly close to the ship when she sank - in fact, No. 4 picked up a number of people swimming in the water when the Titanic went down. It is possible that Mrs. Widener saw what she reported, although No. 4 was on the port side of the ship, not the starboard, where the shootings are usually said to have taken place.
Mrs George Dunton Widener (Eleanor Elkins), 50, was born in Philadelphia, PA on 21 September 1861
A resident of Elkins Park, PA, she boarded the Titanic at Cherbourg with her husband George Widener, son Harry Elkins Widener, Mr Widener's manservant Edwin Keeping and her own maid Amalie Gieger. The Widener's occupied cabins C-80/82.
Mrs Widener was helped into Lifeboat 4 after more than an hour's wait by her husband and son. They then stood back to await their fate.
After their arrival in New York, Mrs Widener and Miss Gieger were met by a private train which took them back to Philadelphia.
After losing her husband and son to the sea, Mrs Widener devoted herself to charitable work. A lasting monument to her generosity stands as the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library at Harvard for which she made a large donation. Her only stipulations being that no stone be touched as long as the library stands and that each graduate of Harvard pass a swimming test (she felt her son might have been saved had he been able to swim). Both rules stand today although the library has been augmented by new buildings in recent years.
In 1915 Mrs Widener married the geographer and explorer Dr Alexander Hamilton Rice of New York, NY and in the coming years followed him on several expeditions in South America 1. They also travelled extensively in Europe and India.
Eleanor died in Paris on 13 July 1937.
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