We can all remember at some point sitting down with our relatives and being told our family history. Maybe we were told that we had originally come from Scotland or France, one of our relatives was from nobility or Grandad served in the War. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s sad but sometimes we hear a story from a loved one that stops us in our tracks. That is exactly what happened to Julie Williams when she was told the story of how her relatives was a survivor of the Titanic, one of the most well-known disasters the world has ever known.
“I'm Julie Hedgepeth Williams, from Birmingham, Alabama, USA. My great-uncle was Albert Caldwell, who survived in second class on the Titanic. He was 26 at the time and lived to be 91, and I knew him well. He was like a grandfather to me. I called him "Uncle Al."
“He loved to tell the story of the Titanic -- unlike most survivors, he kind of thought of his story as a public service. He knew people wanted to hear about it, so he spoke about it from 1912-1976. What he told me could fill a whole book and has -- I wrote "A Rare Titanic Family" about him and his family. It was published in 2012. It won the 2014 Ella Dickey Literacy Award for books that preserve history."
The book cover features a photo of the Caldwells on the deck of the Titanic on sailing day.
The photo was quite an unexpected find in his papers. Wow!
“He was traveling with his wife, Sylvia, and their infant son, Alden. Albert and Sylvia had been Presbyterian missionaries in Siam (Thailand) and left when Sylvia ran into health problems. Uncle Al (as I called Albert) always said they left because the climate didn't agree with his wife's health, but when researching the book, I found out they were fleeing their jobs against their boss's will. In fact, he had an agent ready to pick them up when the Carpathia docked, but they managed to duck the agent. It was all very exciting!"
“Anyway, they were basically on their way home to Biggsville, Illinois, when they took the Titanic. Sylvia was supposed to take "the rest cure" at a spa in Naples before returning to the United States, but when they got there, there was a cholera outbreak, so they decided to come straight home. They nearly took a ship leaving from Naples that day for New York: the Carpathia. The Carpathia was on her way back to Naples when she rescued them mid-ocean.
Maybe one day one of her descendants will read back through the family history and discover once more the incredible story of how they escaped death by luck. Perhaps it will be lost in the midst of time again and yet these stories will endure anyways in the families who survived the Titanic.
LINKS:
- Click the book cover to buy the book from Amazon
- Family photos takes you to the History Magazine article
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