Many thanks to Michael Poirier for contributing the lovely photograph of Margaret to Encyclopedia Titanica. It is always great to see a new shot of one of the more obscure passengers. And, if I'm correct in thinking that this is actually an American passport photograph (which, then or now, are not noted for being terribly forgiving), then Margaret must have been something of a looker in the flesh.
What do we know about Margaret and her mother, Edith? A preliminary Google reveals that the Grahams were very affluent indeed. Edith's husband, William Thompson Graham, was a wealthy businessman, the President of the American Can Company, who had been one of the original backers of the 'Dixie Cup'. This simple little invention - the prototype of the disposable paper and polystyrene cups we are all so familiar with today - boosted the Graham finances still further and, by the beginning of the twentieth century, they were comfortably established in Greenwich, Connecticut, which was then (as it has remained) one of the most expensive and exclusive towns in the eastern United States. Around that time, Greenwich was attracting some of the nation's wealthiest tycoons and industrialists to its elegant environs and they spent millions of dollars building palatial houses for themselves and their families. There were replicas of the Petit Trianon and Warwick Castle; and it was in Greenwich that an heir to the Phelps Dodge fortune erected a genuine Elizabethan manor house which he'd had shipped in pieces from England. According to a recent article in 'Vanity Fair' magazine, the Grahams lived in 'a graceful Tudor home on Greenwich's Belle Haven peninsula, overlooking Long Island Sound'. The house survived until 1998, when it was torn down by multi-millionaire hedge-fund manager, Paul Jones II, and replaced by an domed-and-columned edifice sniffily described by a local as 'a cross between Tara and a national monument'.
Living close to the Belle Haven Country Club allowed the Graham children (Thomas and Edith had another daughter, Alice, and a son, Samuel) to practice their sports. Samuel was a keen golfer and both the girls were noted for their prowess on the tennis courts. In September 1908, after a long, hard struggle, the teenage Margaret was defeated in the Ladies' Doubles by Miss Mary Green and her team-mate, Mrs Frank Gould. The sports writer of 'The New York Times' reserved words of praise for the valiant Miss Graham: 'she proved a formidable opponent to the other side, was all over the court and frustrated many an attempt to pass her'.
In the spring of 1910, Edith Graham, together with Margaret, Alice and Samuel, was staying at the fashionable resort of Hot Springs in Virginia. Whilst there, the girls were chaperoned by Mr and Mrs John P. Cane at an informal dance given for the 'younger set' at the Daniel Boone Log Cabin. It would be interesting to know if they encountered their near-contemporary Dorothy Annan (shortly to become Harder) who was at Hot Springs the following month.
