A Titanic Day

This afternoon I had the pleasure of attending the Titanic Exhibit in San Diego at the Natural History Museum in Balboa Park. What a special way for the family to spend time together! This was one of the most fascinating exhibtions I have attended and I have seen quite a few.  At the entrance of the walk-through exhibit, each person is given a "boarding pass" from an actual passenger listing demographical information, who they were traveling with and details on their journey. At the end of the tour, ticket holders search for their name on a wall to inquire if they perished or survived the catastrophe. In my case, my ticketed passenger survived. The following is some information I found on Mrs. Jennie Louise Hansen.

Mrs Claus Peter Hansen (Jennie Louise Howard) was born 20 December 1866 in Racine, Wisconsin, the daughter of William J. Howard and Edith Dawson. Jennie was a frail woman who had been poor in health for years. She had lived through several catastrophic events in addition to the Titanic.  She was a pastry cook in the Blake Opera House and Hotel which burned to the ground on 27 December 1884. She made the last trip in the elevator before flames gutted the shaft. Prior to the fire by several months, she was found lying unconscious in the kitchen overcome by gas fumes from the stove.

Jennie was married to Claus Peter Hansen on 25 July, 1900 in Racine. They would have no children.  In 1912 Peter and Jennie (then 45 years old) were going to Denmark to visit his family. Before leaving Racine, Jennie told her brother Thomas that she dreaded making the trip, saying that she had a feeling she would never return alive; she even told Thomas the type of funeral arrangements she wanted in the event that her body was recovered (he took this in a humorous vein). The Hansens left for Europe on board the Cunarder Campania on February 14, 1912.


When the time came for Peter and Jennie to return to America, Peter´s twenty-six year old brother Henrik Juul Hansen, decided to leave Denmark and accompany them to the new world. The trio boarded the Titanic in Southampton as third class passengers (ticket number 350026, £14 2s 2d). After the collision, Peter put his wife into a lifeboat (possibly lifeboat 11) with the words: "Jennie, you had better go so that there will be one of us to tell the story back home." Peter and Henrik both perished in the sinking. Jennie claimed that in the crowded lifeboat a sailor was sitting on her lap rowing the whole time!

As a result of the Titanic disaster, Jennie suffered such a shock to her nervous system that she was unable to shed a tear after. She also suffered from severe nightmares and went to stay with her elder brother Thomas and his wife Maggie in Franksville, Wisconsin. Apparently Jennie's nightmares were so severe that Thomas and Maggie had to go and hold her down on the bed.

Eventually, Jennie returned to Racine Wisconsin where she married Elmer Emerson, 19 years her junior, on 25 August 1915. They lived at 1214 Center Street, Racine. Jennie Louise Emerson (née Howard, late Hansen) died on 15 December 1952 aged 85, due to complications of chonic Bronchitis.