Emilie Kreuchen

Miss Emilie Kreuchen was born on 1 October 1882 ¹ in Germany. 

She was the daughter of Theodore Kreuchen and Anna Bauer and had at least one sibling, a sister named Anna(1879-1974)². The family lived in Oldisleben, Kyffhäuserkreis, Thuringia, Germany.

Emilie had emigrated to the USA in 1897 ³ and by the time of the 1900 census was living and working in St Louis, Missouri for William Berger, a banker, and his family. She had made at least one trip back to Germany and returned to the USA on 23 September 1907 aboard Kaiser Wilhelm II, sailing from Bremen. She later went to work for another St Louis family, lawyer Edward Scott Robert and his wife Elisabeth Walton McMillan Robert, appearing with them on the 1910 census. Mr Robert died in 1911 and Mrs Robert took herself, her daughter Georgette Madill, and Miss Kreuchen for a vacation to Europe. 

The party, including Mrs Robert's niece Elisabeth Allen, boarded the Titanic at Southampton (ticket number 24160 which cost £211, 6s, 9d). She probably occupied a cabin forward on E-deck close to that of her employer. 

On the night of the disaster, Miss Kreuchen stepped from her quarters into a passageway filled with water and went to the purser to ask what was wrong. She was told to return to quarters while parts of the ship were blocked off to slow the flow of water. Emilie hastened to the cabin of Elisabeth Allen telling her that the baggage room was full of water but was told not to worry and to return to her cabin which she did but found it flooded. Kreuchen recalled being summoned to a lifeboat by a whistle and shared the open boat with 20 other passengers. Their lifeboat, boat 2, was found shortly after daybreak. 

After the sinking Emilie travelled to Missouri with her employer where she also had relatives but would return to Germany the following year where she resided for several years. When she returned to the USA around 1916 she settled in San Francisco, California and was later married to a fellow-German immigrant named Wimar Wurm (b. 4 April 1880) who had first come to the USA in 1910; the couple had no children.

By 1918 (at the time of the latter's WWI registration) Emilie and Wimar lived at 907 Steinar Street, San Francisco and Wurm's employer was given as City of Paris Cleaning Company. The 1930 census shows the couple residing at 1025 Ellis Street in that city whilst the 1940 census shows them as residents of apartments at 350 Gough Street; on both occasions neither had any stated profession. They continued to sail back and forth across the Atlantic, one voyage being as late as August 1951 when they sailed aboard De Grasse.

Emilie was widowed when her husband died on 2 January 1960. She herself passed away on 25 March 1971 aged 88 and was buried in Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California.