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PRINCETON, Ill. — April 15, 2024 will mark 112 years since the Titanic sunk and now the Bureau County History Center is bringing the story to life of one of the ship’s survivors.
In 2023, one of their researchers discovered Nellie Becker, who’s buried in Princeton’s Oakland Cemetery, sailed and survived the Titanic, along with her three children.
Her story is part of the museum’s 1912 Exhibit.
“We just had one little paragraph on her,” Curator Jessica Gray said. “It was a detective story, trying to piece out those details and tell it in a way that was captivating.”
Gray learned that Nellie and her husband Allen were missionaries. They were living in India when her youngest child Richard became sick, and doctors said he needed to return to the U.S. Allen was set to travel with the Becker family but became too ill to leave. Nellie traveled with Richard and her two daughters, Ruth and Marion on the Titanic.
“They are woken up at about 11:30 in the evening on April 14,” Gray said. “There’s some voices in the hallway and she’s not sure what’s going on. And she goes out and she meets with a steward and he says, ‘ma’am, you must come right away. Get your life preserver on.’ And she says ‘I have children, do I have time to dress them?’ And he says ‘ma’am, you have time for nothing.'”
The Becker family was traveling in second class. Nellie later sent Ruth, who was 12, back downstairs for blankets. Marion and Richard were first put on lifeboat 11, but Nellie was told there was no room for her.
“Nellie screams and begs to be let into the boat with her children, which you can imagine you’re handing your two-year-old and your four-year-old to like 50 strangers in the middle of the ocean, any mother would be frantic,” Gray said. “They kind of pick her up and throw her in. And she turns around, stands up and the boat has been lowered and there’s her 12-year-old left alone on the ship. And she screams at her, ‘Ruth get in another boat!'”
Ruth was able to get into lifeboat 13. She was on it for about three hours before being rescued by the RMS Carpathia. Nellie and the other children were on their boat for about seven hours.
“By the time they are rescued, Ruth, her hands and her legs are frozen, so she can’t hardly move,” Gray said. “And they lower a swing to the lifeboat and they literally pick her up and strap her in. Because she can’t do anything, she can’t hold on.”
“Three children is the most amount of children rescued in any one family,” she said. “They didn’t lose anyone, which almost every family lost at least one person in their party. It’s quite remarkable … She is the hero of that family to get those kids off that ship safely and home back to America.”
Nellie’s husband, Allen, most likely would’ve died if he had traveled on the Titanic with them.
He would later join the family nine months later in Michigan. He and Nellie moved to Princeton in 1927 so he could pastor St. Matthew’s English Lutheran Church. Gray said that some people have come into the museum and remembered him baptizing a member of their family or marrying their parents. One of her friends said her grandfather was Nellie’s doctor.
Nellie struggled after surviving the sinking, dealing with trauma. She was institutionalized at one point while living in Princeton.
The younger daughter Marion died in 1944 in California and was buried in Princeton’s Oakland Cemetery.
The couple moved to Michigan in 1945, and nine years later, the Rev. Becker passed and his remains were placed in the family plot at Oakland. Nellie died in 1961 of a heart attack at age 84. One of their son’s wives is buried with them as well.
“Being able to tell [Nellie’s] story now, with the understanding of her struggles that she experienced later in life, being able to tell it in a way that does service to her in a way that hasn’t been done before, was really the great honor of myself and this society to tell her story in a way that she deserved,” Gray said.
The 1912 Exhibit isn’t just about the Titanic; it also features other parts of Bureau County’s history happening during that year. The exhibit is open through December. You can find a list of events happening throughout the months, including a guest speaker and a showing of the 1997 Titanic movie, here. You can also learn more about Nellie Becker’s story here.
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