’Unsinkable Mrs. Brown’ was Hannibal native
Birthplace of “Unsinkable Mrs. Brown,” Shown is the first home of Margaret Tobin Brown, who became famous for her heroic deeds after the sinking of the Titanic. Reprinted from the March 21, 1957 edition of the Hannibal Courier-Post.
By Mrs. Oliver Howard
Staff Correspondent
(Reprinted from the Hannibal Courier-Post, March 21, 1957. Prepared for republication by Mary Lou Montgomery)
Among many natives of Hannibal who have become public figures in America are the late Mrs. James J. Brown of Denver, Colorado, and her sister, Baroness Helena von Reitzenstin of Bavaria, Germany. They were born Margaret and Ellen Tobin. Of these, Mrs. Brown was the better known.
Recently, the Telephone Hour, on nation-wide television, told the story of “The Unsinkable Mrs. Brown”, called the “unsinkable” after her survival of the sinking of the Titanic. The TV version didn’t exactly jive with known facts, but it was diverting to see a native of Hannibal as a subject for a big show.
The TV version, like other biographies of Maggie Brown, related that she was encouraged to go west during an encounter with Mark Twain, on “one of his visits to Hannibal.” I have done only cursory research, but Twain’s biographer, Paine, and three other books with collections of letters and other lists which reveal his activities, show that Mark Twain was not in Hannibal during the period in which Maggie Tobin was a waitress at the Park Hotel. She was a babe in arms during the 1868 and 1869 lecture tours which brought him to Hannibal, and she had gone to Leadville two years before he and Cable visited Hannibal on the tour of 1885. The supposed interview with Mark Twain is evidently repeated to add luster to her story.
Her story is colorful enough to stand alone, without the spurious crutches and many tales she foisted on the public in her attempt to reach the top rung of society. Essentially a likable person, in spite of her inclination to boast, she eventually achieved fame because of an inherent charity.
Margaret Tobin was born in Hannibal in a small fame house on the corner of Prospect and Sixth streets, in July 1867. Her family was shanty Irish. Her father dug ditches for the gas works. His name was John Tobin; her mother, Johanna, had first been married to a man named Collins. It was a second marriage for both, so Maggie had two older half-sisters, Katie Tobin and Mary Ann Collins. Later they were Mrs. John A. Becker, of Hannibal, and Mrs. John Laundrigan of Leadville and Aspen, Colorado, and various town in Nevada.
Of Margaret’s “full” brothers and sister, there was Daniel, four years older than Margaret, Ellen and William, younger.
The Tobin girls had red hair, Maggie’s was auburn and Ellen’s was golden red. Ellen, born in June 1871, was a real beauty, with a galaxy of beaux. Her first marriage ended in divorce. Her second husband was the Baron von Reitzenstein of Bavaria, Germany.
Mrs. Tobin could not read or write, but she sent her children to school, in season. They played around the woods and hills of Hannibal. Maggie and Daniel dreamed of going west to make a fortune. At sixteen, Daniel got a job selling newspapers on a railway car. In her early teens Maggie worked in a tobacco factory, and then graduated to a job as waitress at the Park Hotel, where she claimed to have had the supposed encounter with Mark Twain. She spent much of her spare time at the home of her half-sister, Mrs. John Becker, at 322 North St.
There was a big silver strike at Leadville, Colo., and John Laundrigan, Maggie’s brother-in-law, went there to run a blacksmith shop. Daniel followed in 1883. Maggie went a few weeks later, and they stayed at a boarding house on Fifth street, near Carbonate Hill in Leadville, where millions was made in silver daily. Maggie tended the table and washed dishes in the boarding house.
Leadville was noisier than Hannibal, with a business section booming with a red light district t, variety halls and saloons. Fortunes were made and lost every hour.
By 1884 Maggie was 17 years old, a clerk in Daniels, Fisher and Smith’s Emporium. She was being courted by James J. Brown, 30-year-old manager of the Louisville mine. They drove around Leadville in livery stable rigs while he pleaded his suit and promised to make her a fortune. On Sept. 1, 1886, they were married in the Church of the Annunciation in Leadville. They went to live in a two-room log cabin in stump town, a cabin and shanty town three miles from Leadville. Jim prospered, became a mine superintendent, and they bought a house in Leadville. They had two children Lawrence and Helen. Maggie moved the remnants of her family West from Hannibal. Her mother and sister, Ellen, lived with them at first.
In 1894 Jim Brown struck it rich - he found gold in the Little Jonny mine. The grateful owners gave him one-eighth interest, and he eventually had between one and two million dollars - much less than other western fortunes, but adequate to feed the social ambitions of his wife. They bought a big house at 1340 Pennsylvania Avenue in Denver. It had a parapet and wall by the front steps. There were two large stone urns, as finials, and four stone lions - two sitting and two standing. (Later Mrs. Brown added two Egyptian sphinxes to the display.”
Then Margaret set out to conquer Denver society, using fair means and foul, and spending Jim’s fortune in a manner termed by sociologists as “conspicuous consumption.”
She gave elaborate parties, invited persons she had never met. Each time only a few came. Neighbors and relatives ate the food the next day.
But Denver society was led by a close-knit group called the “Sacred Thirty-Six” They made her a laughing stock, calling her “The Impossible Mrs. Brown” and “Hand Made of the Lord.” She was acceptable only in her work in Catholic charities.
Jim Brown was a philanderer; his interest in other women increased. Finally Jim and Maggie parted ways, but he continued to pay her bills.
Maggie went to Europe to acquire some polish. She learned several languages and arts. She studied drama under a teacher of Sarah Bernhardt in France, learned to yodel in Switzerland, and to play the guitar in Spain.
Maggie returned to New York, and through work in Catholic charities there, acquired Countess Annie Leary as a friend.
Countess Leary, daughter of a New York hatter, had been given her title by the Pope, as a reward for her contributions to Catholic welfare. She insisted on being addressed by her title. She had a summer home in Newport, and introduced Maggie Brown there. Maggie was accepted in the East, by Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont, the Astors, Vanderbilts and Whitneys.
But she was continually snubbed in Denver, until the tragedy of the Titanic. There are many accounts of this event, most of them mention Maggie Brown. Basic facts, beneath all the fiction, show that Maggie did man an oar in lifeboat No. 6, quiet panic-stricken men and women with songs and curses. Safely on land, she gave financial aid to many survivors, among them immigrant women and children, who spoke no English and faced starvation in a strange land when their men perished with the ship. Mrs. Brown had a new title, beefing her worth, she was now, “The Unsinkable,” acceptable even in Denver.
In her previous efforts to crash society, Maggie had told many tales. She took her daughter, Helen, to England and bought lavish gowns hoping that the American ambassador would arrange their presentation at the Court of St. James. He refused. But that didn’t keep her from describing her presentation at court on many later occasions. Even after her acceptance in inner circles, she continued to weave a fictional background for herself.
She once claimed to be married to “Leadville Johnny,” John F. Campion. He was much richer than Jim Brown, but he had a wife and four children of his own. In 1927, she announced her engagement to the Duke of Charles, but remained unwed.
She gave dramatic readings on a fling-hung stage erected in the corner of her drawing room. Her favorite monologue was an account of her experiences as a personal friend of Mark Twain, although he was 35 years older than she and left Hannibal long before she was born. The climax of his story came when he swam out and saved her from drowning when her boat capsized in a hurricane on the Mississippi at Hannibal.
Her unselfishness often outweighed her faults, in spite of herself.
She saved Eugene Field’s home in Denver from destruction, making it a library and literary shrine.
According to Floyd Shoemaker of the state Historical Society of Missouri, Mrs. Brown, in World War I, received all the medals the allied nations could award a civilian for the welfare work she did among the soldiers.
In 1955 and 1956, the United States government used her picture and story on ads to sell Savings Bonds, published in all magazines of national importance. These ads said that her courage at the scene of the Titanic tragedy “wasn’t luck - it was pluck. And Americans have always had plenty of that smiling, hardy courage.”
People who really knew her, liked her. Yet we cannot but wonder if, minus millions, she would not have been considered just plain foolish because of her pretense. She was rich and she escaped much criticism and was politely called “eccentric.” Luck, pluck, or both, she made it herself.
Note from Mrs. Oliver Howard: To write this brief sketch I have used six references. For persons particularly interested in Mrs. Brown, I suggest “The Unsinkable Mrs. Brown, by Caroline Bancroft, a book which may be borrowed from the Hannibal free public library. Miss Bancroft visited Hannibal to collect material and photographs for this small book. It is the best biography of Maggie Tobin Brown. The book has 35 large photographs, with extremely amusing captions, showing Maggie’s family, homes and fabulous wardrobe.
