Encyclopedia Titanica

HOKAN B. STEFFANSON DIES AT 78; FINANCIER WAS ON THE TITANIC

New York Times

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Page 45, columns 2-3

Hokan Bjornstrom Steffanson, a financier, died Monday night at Doctor's Hospital after a long illness. His age was 78 and he lived at 56 East Fifty-seventh Street.

Mr. Steffanson was a survivor of the sinking of the Titanic in the North Atlantic in 1912, which took 1,517 lives.

He was born Nov. 9, 1883, in Osterfarnebo, Sweden. His father, Erik Samuel Steffanson, was a pioneer in the Swedish wood pulp industry, and when Hokan Steffanson came to New York in 1909, he also entered the wood pulp business. He was a chemical engineering graduate of the Stockholm Institute of Technology.

Mr. Steffanson owned a considerable amount of real estate in the Park Avenue area before the extensive development in apartment houses and hotels. In the Nineteen Twenties he acquired interests in Canadian paper and pulp industries.

He married Miss Mary Pinchot Eno in 1917. He had been introduced to Miss Eno by Mrs. Churchill Candee of Washington, a Titanic passenger whom he had helped to rescue. Mrs. Steffanson died in 1953. The couple had no children.

In 1960 Mr. Steffanson established trust funds at Uppsala University in Sweden and at the Swedish-American Foundation in Stockholm. He was also the founder of trust funds for Swedish students at Yale University and was a supporter of the Swedish Historical Museum in Philadelphia.

Mr. Steffanson was a Commander of Sweden's Royal Order of Vasa, First Class.

He was a member of the Metropolitan Club, the Long Island Country Club, the Travelers Club and the St. Cloud Country Club of Paris and the Salskopet Club in Stockholm. He maintained a home in Ruda, Sweden.

A sister, Mrs. J. H. Douglas Webster of London, survives.

A funeral service will be held at St. Bartholomew's Protestant Episcopal Church, Park Avenue at Fifty-first Street, at 10 A.M. Friday.

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Encyclopedia Titanica (2003) HOKAN B. STEFFANSON DIES AT 78; FINANCIER WAS ON THE TITANIC (New York Times, Wednesday 23rd May 1962, ref: #251, published 28 August 2003, generated 10th October 2024 06:43:47 PM); URL : https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/steffanson-death.html