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Posts Tagged ‘The Unsinkable Molly Brown’

Molly Brown (Margaret Tobin Brown) was born in 1867 and grew up in Hannibal, Missouri as the daughter of Irish immigrants.  She married Joseph Brown in Leadville, CO.  Joseph was also the son of immigrants but became wealthy due to his work as an engineer for the Ibex Mining Company.  Molly was an activist and fought for woman’s rights and began work in a soup kitchen for the families of miners.

Molly continued her interest in woman’s rights when her family moved to Denver, Colorado in 1894.  She became an early student at the Carnegie Institute in New York.  She and her husband had two children and quietly separated in 1909.  Molly enjoyed traveling and was one of the first women in the U.S. to run for a political office.  She ran for a Senate seat twice but did not win.  She went on to help develop the first court for juvenile matters and remained active in her activism pursuits.

Molly was traveling when she heard that one of her grandchildren was very ill.  She purchased a ticket on the RMS Titanic and boarded in France.  Molly became famous after her life saving efforts when the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912.  She helped others get in the lifeboats and only boarded one herself at the last possible minute.  She talked the people in her lifeboat to turn back to look for survivors.  This she got her name “The Unsinkable Molly Brown”.  Molly used her status as the hero of the Titanic to increase her activism activities in woman’s rights and literacy for children among others.

In the last years of her life Molly became an actress.  She was estranged from her children and died in 1932 from a brain tumor.