Marie Grice Young

**Marie Grice Young** was an American woman who survived the sinking of the *Titanic*.

## Early life

Marie Grice Young was born in Washington DC on January 5, 1876. She was the daughter of Samuel Grice Young and Margaret Brown Young, née Wilson. Her Romanc Catholic family consisted of many politicians and belonged to the Washington upper class, and she was the niece by marriage of Alexander Shepherd, an influential politician. The Young family was originally from Virginia. In 1880 they lived in Brooklyn, New York.

Something tragic happened to her father in 1891. Falling on his head from a car, his injuries were so severe that his mental state declined. After a short stay in an asylum for the mentally unstable, he sank into depression and drinking problems. In 1898 he even attempted suicide by overdose of laudanum but survived, still not himself, and they sent him back to the asylum. Marie oversaw the asylum herself when she gained a function as clerk. He seemed to improved and picked up his old passion as a choirmaster, but in 1901 a second attempt at ending his life followed by using the same drug. Samuel Young was in a Baltimore hotel, Hotel Rennert where he signed in as guest, but he was found unconscious and he couldn't be saved anymore.

## Music and the Roosevelt family

By 1897 she was studying music with John Porter Lawrence. In 1904 she accompanied on the piano a reading of "Enoch Garden", with which she went on tour. The Young family was very involved in music. Marie Grice Young also sang as a soprano in the choir of St. Matthew's Catholic Church, Washington DC.

Throughout the early 20th century, Young taught others to play the piano. Her pupils included Ethel, Archibald and Quentin Roosevelt, the children of President Theodore Roosevelt. Her relationship with the Roosevelt family allowed him in 1907 to provide information regarding the management of their household. It remained in the Washington DC area until about 1911. She never married.

While she wasn't busy with music or the Roosevelts, she spent time with her widowed mother. A longue illness on February 21st, 1910 ended Maggie's life however, and left Marie without both parents.

## *Titanic*

For a long time, Marie Grice Young shared a house with Ella Holmes White. They had met in Atlantic City, after Marie spent grieving over her mother. This childless widow Young was a close friend of Thomas Nelson Page and his wife, Florence Lathrop Field. Young and Ella were travelling together by car in France. Marie Grice Young boarded the *Titanic* in Cherbourg with Ella White, and they were sharing a First Class cabin, Ella had two servants with them: a butler called Sante Righini and a maid named Nellie Mayo Besette. The women took exotic French-bred chickens with them, intending to keep them at their New York country home. They had bought tickets for cabin C-32.

Marie would often go lower decks and check on the hens to see how they were doing. The ship's carpenter, John Hall Hutchinson came along with her and she tipped him with golden coins, which he saw as a good omen, since it was her Maiden Voyage. Furthermore miss Young would meet with several acquaintances from Washington.

Ella White never left her cabin until she was roused after the ship had hit an iceberg on the night of April 14. Marie, Ella with maid and servant went to A-Deck, and waited in the Lounge for further instructions, and soon Captain Smith came down in a hurry to order to get the lifebelts and get up to the Boat Deck. Marie, Ella and Nellie escaped in lifeboat 8 but had to leave the poor Sante behind. He would be lost in the sinking.

She was also one of the women in her boat who aided in the rescue of other passengers, convincing the crew in charge of the lifeboat to fetch as many strugglers from the water as possible.

## Later life

The two women remained close and in the 1920s still lived in New York, in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. When the building had to be replaced by the Empire State Building in 1929, they lived together at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.

When White died in 1942. White's will bequeathed Young personal effects and money. Marie still enjoyed playing piano and had moved into an appartment in Manhattan. When she later had arthritis, playing became impossible. With only the descendants of her brother Wilson left in the 1950s, she moved yet again, this time to the state of New York. There, she would make home in the Mount Loretto Convalescent and Rest Home of the city Amsterdam.

Young died on July 27, 1959, being 83 years old. She was laid to rest Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Westchester.