Marie Grice Young and Ella Holmes White. Courtesy OutSmart Magazine.

Photograph of Briarcliff Lodge, date unknown. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Titanic survivors in a lifeboat, May 4, 1912. Photo by J.W. Barker, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Marie Grice Young, 36, a music teacher, and Ella White, 55, a widow, boarded the Titanic at Cherbourg as first class passengers, returning to the United States after a shared European vacation. Both women survived the sinking.

Annotated Bibliography

Brewster, Hugh. Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World. New York: Crown, 2012.

Discusses the close relationship of Marie Grice Young and Ella White. Says the two women "lived and travelled together for thirty years," and that White left the "bulk of her estate" to Young (page 54).

Encyclopedia Titanica, s.v. "Miss Marie Grice Young," accessed July 22, 2024, https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-survivor/marie-grice-young.html.

Provides biographical information about Young, including details about her relationship with her "long-term companion" Ella White; her potential relationship with Archibald Butt; and reproductions of her letters.

Yasinsac, Rob. Images of America: Briarcliff Lodge. Mount Pleasant: Arcadia, 2004.

Briarcliff Lodge was a hotel located 30 miles north of New York City in which Ella White and Marie Grice Young shared an apartment. Yasinac says:

"In 1912 Ella Holmes White was a 55-year old widow and lived in an apartment at Briarcliff Lodge. It was not uncommon in the early 20th century for wealthy people to live in hotels, often in a city residence for most of the year and a country hotel for the summer. Mrs. White lived with a companion named Marie Grice Young, a 36-year old musician who once taught a daughter of Theodore Roosevelt."

"Ella White and Marie Young visited England and France in early 1912 and boarded the Titanic in Cherbourg, France, for the voyage home. The pair were traveling with White’s maid and manservant. Also on the boat for Mrs. White’s trip to New York were French chickens. The manservant did not survive the disaster; I don’t know about the chickens, however well they may have been cared for. White was able to get to safety in a lifeboat where she found the men rowing her craft to be inept. She also managed to still have her cane with her, and with its lighted tip she tried to flag down a nearby rescue boat . Ms. Young’s recollections of the disaster, told six months later, can be read here. Ella Holmes White died in New York City in 1942, and left most of her estate to Marie Young."

Young, Marie Grice. "LEST WE FORGET: Former Music Teacher at the White House, Rescued From the Titanic, Describes the Sufferings of Some of the Survivors." National Magazine, October 1912.

In this magazine article written by Grice in 1912, just a few months after the sinking of the Titanic, she reflects on her time on the ship and asserts that there will never be such a thing as an unsinkable ship.