Margaret Bechstein Easton

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See Encyclopedia Titanica (2013) Margaret Bechstein Hays (ref: #156, last updated: 7th June 2013, accessed 9th September 2023 06:16:54 AM)
URL : https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-survivor/margaret-bec...

Titanic Passenger Summary

Name: Miss Margaret Bechstein Hays
Titanic Survivor
Born: Tuesday 6th December 1887 in
Age: 24 years 4 months and 9 days (Female)
Nationality: American
Marital Status: Single
Last Residence: in New York City, New York, United States
1st Class Passengers
Embarked: Cherbourg on Wednesday 10th April 1912
Ticket No. 11767, £83 3s 2d
Cabin No. C54
Rescued (boat 7)
Disembarked Carpathia: New York City on Thursday 18th April 1912
Died: Tuesday 21st August 1956 aged 68 years
Cause of Death: Heart Failure / Disease* Reference: http://americanjewisharchives.org/publications/fajf/pdfs/stern_p105...

• Reference: http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-survivor/margaret-bech...

Miss Margaret Bechstein Hays was born in New York city on 6 December 1887.

A resident of 304 West 83rd Street, New York City she boarded the Titanic at Cherbourg. She travelled with Lily Potter and Olive Earnshaw. Olive and Margaret had been school friends at Briarcliff School in New York.

Olive and Margaret shared cabin C-54. Their self-appointed "escort" Gilbert Milligan Tucker, Jr. took cabin C-53. Mr Tucker had met the three ladies during their travels and fell immediately for Margaret. A handsome man, Cornell University graduate, and a 31-year-old bachelor, he had travelled with his parents and sister to Europe but left them to head home earlier than planned to spend more time with Margaret.

On the evening of April 14 the three ladies were in bed when the Titanic collided with the iceberg at 11:40 p.m. Soon after, the engines stopped and Olive and Margaret went to Lily Potter's room. Lily ordered them to go out and see what the trouble was. About ten minutes later, they reported: "We have hit an iceberg but the steward told us we should not worry and should go back to bed." Miss Hays apparently thought little of the incident but Lily was more frightened.

After dressing they wrapped Margaret's little Pomeranian dog "Lady" in blankets and headed topside, they met Gilbert Tucker along the way. Waiting for orders at the landing on C deck, Gilbert Tucker helped the three ladies into lifejackets before placing one on himself.

The group then went to the Boat Deck. As Margaret stood waiting and holding her Pomeranian, James Smith passed by and jokingly commented, "Oh, I suppose we ought to put a life preserver on the little doggie, too."

Lifeboat 7 was the first boat prepared and, after a call for women was made Lily stepped into the boat, closely followed by Olive and Margaret (still holding her Pomeranian dog).

• Reference: https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-lifeboat-7/ R.M.S. Titanic's lifeboat 7 Those aboard boat 7 were picked up by the Carpathia in the early hours of 15 April.

Aboard the rescue ship, Miss Hays, fluent in French, volunteered to care for two young French boys who spoke no English and had been unclaimed by an adult relative. The boys were Michel Marcel Navratil and Edmond Roger Navratil , whose late father Michel Navratil Sr. had been trying to take them to America after kidnapping them from their mother. They stayed in Miss Hays home, under the supervision of the Children's Aid Society, until the children's mother was located and brought to America to claim them.

Margaret Hays kept in regular contact with Gilbert Tucker after their rescue but chose to marry Charles Daniel Easton, a Rhode Island physician in 1913 and the couple lived in Providence and Newport, Rhode Island. They were the parents of two daughters.

Dr. Easton died on 4 October 1934 and Margaret died in Buenos Aires, Argentina while vacationing with her daughter and granddaughter 21 August 1956. She was buried at St. Mary's Churchyard, Portsmouth, Rhode Island.

Travelling Companions (on same ticket)

• Mrs Olive Earnshaw ( Olive Crolius )
• Mrs Lily Alexenia Potter
• Reference: Full text- https://archive.org/details/truthabouttitani00grac/page/n6 "The Truth About the Titanic" by Colonel Archibald Gracie, IV 1913 pp. 228-233

BOAT NO. 7 *

No disorder in loading or lowering this boat.

Passengers: Mesdames Bishop, Earnshaw, Gibson, Greenfield, Potter, Snyder, and Misses Gibson and Hays, Messrs. Bishop, Chevre, Daniel, Greenfield, McGough, Marechal, Seward, Sloper, Snyder, Tucker.

Transferred from Boat No. 5; Mrs. Dodge and her boy; Messrs. Calderhead and Flynn.

Crew: Seamen: Hogg (in charge), Jewell, Weller.

Total: 28.

INCIDENTS

Archie Jewell, L. O. (Br. Inq.) :

Was awakened by the crash and ran at once on deck where he saw a lot of ice. All went below again to get clothes on. The boatswain called all hands on deck. Went to No. 7 boat. The ship had stopped. All hands cleared the boats, cleared away the falls and got them all right. Mr. Murdoch gave the order to lower boat No. 7 to the rail with women and children in the boat. Three or four Frenchmen, passengers, got into the boat. No. 7 was lowered from the Boat Deck. The orders were to stand by the gangway. This boat was the first on the starboard side lowered into the water. All the boats were down by the time it was pulled away from the ship because it was thought she was settling down.

Witness saw the ship go down by the head very slowly. The other lifeboats were further off, his being the nearest. No. 7 was then pulled further off and about half an hour later, or about an hour and a half after this boat was lowered, and when it was about 200 yards away, the ship took the final dip. He saw the stern straight up in the air with the lights still burning. After a few moments she then sank very quickly and he heard two or three explosions just as the stern went up in the air. No. 7 picked up no dead bodies. At daylight they saw a lot of icebergs all around, and reached the Carpathia about 9 o'clock. This boat had no compass and no light. (The above, given in detail, represents the general testimony of the next witness.)

G. A. Hogg, A. is. (Am. Inq., p. 577) :

He had forty-two when the boat was shoved from the ship's side. He asked a lady if she could steer who said she could. He pulled around in search of other people. One man said: "We have done our best; there are no more people around. He said: Very good, we will get away now." There was not a ripple on the water; it was as smooth as glass.

Mrs. H. W. Bishop, first-class passenger (Am. Inq., p. 998) :

The captain told Colonel Astor something In an undertone. He came back and told six of us who were standing with his wife that we had better put on our life belts. I had gotten down two flights of stairs to tell my husband, 'who had returned to the stateroom for the moment, before I heard the captain announce that the life belts should be put on. We came back upstairs and found very few people on deck. There was very little confusion — only the older women were a" little frightened. On the starboard side of the Boat Deck there were only two people — a young French bride and groom. By that time an old man had come upstairs and found Mr. and Mrs. Harder, of New York. He brought us all together and told us to be sure and stay together — that he would be back in a moment. We never saw him again.

About five minutes later the boats were lowered and we were pushed in. This was No. 7 lifeboat. My husband was pushed in with me and we were lowered with twenty-eight people in the boat. We counted off after we reached the water. There were only about twelve women and the rest were men — three crew and thirteen male passengers; several unmarried men — three or four of them foreigners. Somewhat later five people were put into our boat from another one, making thirty- three in ours. Then we rowed still further away as the women were nervous about suction. We had no compass and no light. We arrived at the Carpathia five or ten minutes after five. The conduct of the crew, as far as I could see, was absolutely beyond criticism. One of the crew in the boat was Jack Edmonds, (?) and there was another man, a Lookout (Hogg), of whom we all thought a great deal. He lost his brother.

D. H. Bishop, first-class passenger (Am. Inq., p. 1000) :

There was an oflicer stationed at the side of the lifeboat. As witness's wife got in, he fell into the boat. The French aviator Marechal was in the boat; also Mr. Greenfield and his mother. There was little confusion on the deck while the boat was being loaded; no rush to boats at all. Witness agrees with his wife in the matter of the counting of twenty-eight, but he knows that there were some who were missed. There was a woman with her baby transferred from another lifeboat. Witness knows of his own knowledge that No. 7 was the first boat lowered from the starboard side. They heard no order from any one for the men to stand back or "women first/' or "women and children first." Witness also says that at the time his lifeboat was lowered that that order had not been given on the starboard side.

J. R. McGough's affidavit (Am. Inq., p. 1 143) : After procuring life preservers we went back to the top deck and discovered that orders had been given to launch the lifeboats, which were already being launched. Women and children were called for to board the boats first. Both women and men hesitated and did not feel inclined to get into the small boats. He had his back turned, looking in an opposite direction, and was caught by the shoulder by one of the officers who gave him a push saying: "Here, you are a big fellow; get into that boat."

Our boat was launched with twenty-eight peo- ple in all. Five were transferred from one of the others. There were several of us who wanted drinking water. It was unknown to us that there was a tank of water and crackers also in our boat until we reached the Carpathia, There was no light in our boat.

Mrs. Thomas Potter, Jr. Letter:

There was no panic. Everyone seemed more stunned than anything else. . . . We watched for upwards of two hours the gradual sinking of the ship — first one row of light and then another disappearing at shorter and shorter intervals, with the bow well bent in the water as though ready for a dive. After the lights went out, some ten minutes before the end, she was like some great living thing who made a last superhuman effort to right herself and then, failing, dove bow forward to the unfathomable depths below.

We did not row except to get away from the suction of the sinking ship, but remained lashed to another boat until the Carpathia came in sight just before dawn.

References and Sources

• Evening World, 22 April 1912, No Light on the Mystery Hiding the Identity Of Two Waifs of the Sea
• New York Times, 5 October 1934, Obituary [Dr Charles Daniel Easton]
• New York Times, 6 October 1934, Death Notice [Dr Charles Daniel Easton]
• Newport Daily News, 28 August 1956, Obituary
• American Foreign Service Report of the Death of an American Citizen
• Passport Application, Bureau of Citizenship, Dec 6 1911

Credits

• Michael A. Findlay, USA
• Phillip Gowan, USA
• Marta Santiago, Spain
• Emma Santiago, Spain
• Residence: 1910 - Manhattan Ward 22, New York, New York, United States
• Residence: 1930 - Manhattan (Districts 0501-0750), New York, New York, United States
  • Reference: FamilySearch Family Tree - SmartCopy: May 7 2019, 17:03:19 UTC
• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: May 7 2019, 17:40:14 UTC NOTE: There are several family trees for Margaret B. Easton (Hays) none of which are to be trusted. They are all very poorly researched including incorrect parentage, incorrect spousal assignments, and incorrect children. The Geni data seems to be appropriate.

Daughter of Frank Hays. Survivor the sinking of RMS Titanic. Margaret married Charles Daniel Easton, a Rhode Island physician in 1913 and the couple lived in Providence and Newport, Rhode Island. They were the parents of two daughters: Margaret and Mary.

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: May 7 2019, 18:14:42 UTC