Buried Treasure: Medfield's Connection to the Titanic

Rob Gregg, president of Medfield's Vine Lake Preservation Trust, found a local – and family – connection to the sinking of the Titanic, which took place 100 years ago on Sunday, April 15, tragically taking the lives of more than 1,500 people, including two passengers that have a connection to Medfield's Vine Lake Cemetery.

Gregg explains:

"Interred in Vine Lake Cemetery is Marcus Gilmore, fourth great-grandfather to Helen Loraine Allison, the only child in first and second class on the Titanic to perish in the sinking," Gregg said. "She was not yet three years old. Her body was never recovered, nor were her parents'. Her 11-month-old brother survived and died of ptomaine poisoning in 1929. Helen is my ninth cousin once removed."

And while Gregg, a Medfield resident, has a personal connection to the Titanic tragedy, the more interesting connection, according to him, is between White Star Line's "unsinkable" ship and the town of Medfield. Gregg shares that connection in this month's Vine Lake Preservation Trust newsletter, "Quiet Voices." Below is story from the newsletter, in its entirety.

Buried Treasure: Did you know that ...

Vine Lake Cemetery has a connection to two passengers who perished when the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912?

Twenty-five-year-old Bess Waldo (Daniels) Allison and her twenty-two-month-old daughter, Helen Loraine Allison, drowned that fateful night, as did their husband and father, Hudson Joshua Creighton Allison, age 30. Helen's eleven-month-old-brother, Hudson Trevor Allison, survived.

The Medfield connection arises from Marcus Gilmore, ancestor to Bess, Helen, and Trevor, who resided in Medfield in 1860 as a carpenter and who died here in 1865. He and six other family members are buried in the Old Section of Vine Lake Cemetery – Lot 191.

Marcus Gilmore was born June 13, 1797 in Wrentham, the only child of Captain Andrew and Hannah (Makepeace) Gilmore. Much of his life happened in Walpole, where he married and had one daughter. After the death of his first wife, Marcus married in 1824 Atarah Smith of Medfield, daughter of Titus and Atarah (Hamant) Smith. Their five children were born in Walpole and Wrentham. Marcus and Atarah were in Medfield by 1860. By then, a daughter Helen and a son Marcus had married, and two daughters had died. Another son, George, raised a family in Medfield prior to his death here in 1892, while another son, William, had removed to New Hampshire.

It is from Marcus and Atarah's daughter Helen Rowena Gilmore and her marriage to Waldo Daniels of Franklin that the connection is made to the Titanic's victims and survivor. Their son Arville Fisher Daniels was Bess' father. Marcus Gilmore of Medfield was Bess' great-grandfather and a second great-grandfather to her two children.

Trevor, the only family member to survive the sinking, was visiting his grandfather Arville in Franklin in August 1929 when he became ill. Resisting any care because of his independent and youthful nature, he returned to his uncle's home in Ocean Park, Maine. Soon after arriving there, he died from ptomaine poisoning occasioned from the eating of a tongue sandwich that was spoiled.

Trevor died on Aug. 7, 1929 at age 18, and is buried next to his father, the only body in the family to be recovered, in Maple Ridge Cemetery, Chesterville, Ontario, Canada. Alice Catherine Cleaver, Trevor's nursemaid, who brought him to lifeboat No. 11, returned to England, married there in 1918, and died at Winchester, N.H. in 1984.

The Gilmore memorial at Vine Lake Cemetery is one of 50 featured sites on ',' a map and guide available for the first time on Patriots' Day – Monday April 16 – from 10 a.m. to noon at the cemetery.