Mrs Hedwig Turkula (née Holma)

Mrs Hedvig Turkula, 63, ws born on 6th June 1848 in Jalasjärvi, Finland. She  boarded the Titanic at Southampton. She was travelling to Hibbing Minnesota. Most of her family (she had four sons, two daughters and some thirty grandchildren on different farms in Minnesota) had preceded her to America, and, as a widow, she had decided it was time to go to them to live out her life. Her husband, Isaac Kujala Turkula, had died some ten years before.

She started her journey from Vaasa Laani, Finland, eventually arriving at Southampton where she boarded the Titanic as a third class passenger .

She was asleep when the ship struck the iceberg and was helped to the deck and into a lifeboat (15) by another Finn, Eino Lindqvist. Also helping her into the lifeboat was "a minor officer" who appeared to be intoxicated.

On arrival to New York she was sent to St. Vincent Hospital. Later, she told the Finnish-American Newspaper in New York how she couldn't understand that "She, an old woman, was saved, while so many young women had gone down with the ship." She added that she had no bad effects from her experience other than a slight cold. Mrs Turkula would live only 10 more years after Titanic. She died on 3rd April 1922, in Little Swan, Minnesota.

References and Sources
Claes-Göran Wetterholm (1988, 1996, 1999) Titanic. Prisma, Stockholm. ISBN 91 518 3644 0