Piano / flute version of "A St. Patrick's Day Poem" now available on iTunes! http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/m.a.-ludwig/id288609048
Mrs. Margaret J. Tobin - Brown was never called "Molly", as legend would suggest. Two writers by the name of Gene Fowler and Carolyn Bancroft created a romantic and highly fictionalized story between them which was played on numerous radio broadcasts during the 1940's and became the basis for the Broadway play, "The Unsinkable Molly Brown", which was later turned into a movie of the same name starring Debbie Reynolds. Little of Margaret Brown's actual legacy has survived her own myth, and her family has long since stopped trying to set the records straight against the continual circulation of misinformation regarding Margaret's life.
She was born Margaret Tobin on July 18, 1867 in Hannibal, Missouri, U.S.A., the daughter of Irish immigrants John Tobin and Johanna Collins. In her youth, she learned to steer a boat on the Mississippi River...a skill she little could have guessed would come to her advantage later in life. Her husband struck it rich in the mines of Leadville in 1890, which bought them a 16-room house on 1340 Pennsylvania St. which is now a Victorian museum.
Margaret was involved in the early feminist movement in Leadville and the establishment of the Colorado Chapter of the National American Women's Suffrage Association. She was also one of the first women in the United States to run for public office, and ran for the Senate eight years before women even had the right to vote. At the time of the Titanic's first and last voyage, Margaret and her daughter Helen had been traveling all over Europe when Margaret got work that her first grandchild, Lawrence Palmer Brown, Jr., was very ill. On the fly, she decided to leave for New York immediately, and bought tickets for the earliest ship due to sail: TITANIC. Her daughter Helen stayed behind.
It has been said that when Titanic hit the iceberg, Margaret assisted others in boarding their lifeboats until she herself was forced to board lifeboat six. She, along with the others in the boat, worked together to row and keep spirits up amidst all the disaster. When rescued by the ship Carpathia, Margaret was right there, helping the survivors of the Titanic get on board. She continued her assistance once Carpathia docked at New York to get the survivors onto dry land. She had also established the "Survivor's Committee" before disembarking Carpathia, where she was elected chairwoman and in such capacity helped raise nearly $10,000 for destitute survivors. Her multilingual skills which included French, German, and Russian were invaluable among passengers who did not speak much English, and she stayed on Carpathia until all of the Titanic survivors had been attended to and dispersed.
In a letter to her daughter shortly after the Titanic sinking, she wrote: "After being brined, salted, and pickled in mid ocean I am now high and dry... I have had flowers, letters, telegrams-people until I am befuddled. They are petitioning Congress to give me a medal... If I must call a specialist to examine my head it is due to the title of Heroine of the Titanic."
*Margaret was not allowed to testify at the Titanic hearings because she, as a woman, was not allowed to. This did not prevent her, however, from publishing her account of the tragedy in newspapers spanning from Denver to New York to Paris.
*Margaret Brown died from a brain tumor on October 26, 1932, and was buried in Long Island's Holy Rood Cemetery next to her husband.
*The first full biography of Margaret Tobin Brown was published in June, 1999.
*James Cameron's film "Titanic" in 1997 didn't really touch upon Margaret's true story, preferring instead to allude to her legend rather than her actual achievements.
*Margaret was 44 years old at the time of the Titanic sinking.
*This particular photo was made more difficult by the fact that someone at some point had tried to "pen in" the missing details of Margaret's left side, but apparently was not a skilled artist when they attempted it. The harshly drawn lines had to be removed before any other work could be done.
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"Reviving the Elephant Man" (Forensic Reconstruction)by JudeMaris50,259 views
wow you are very good in photoshop, excelent work
andhong73 5 months ago
Beautiful work Mel, much enjoyed. Larry
safeharbor7 5 months ago
excellent work
Hellnback005 5 months ago