Samuel James Hayden Sobey

Mr Samuel James Hayden Sobey was born in St Keverne, Cornwall, England on 6 November 1886.

He was of eight children born to Richard Sobey (1846-1930), a fisherman, and Mary Jane Hayden (1852-1915), both St Keverne natives who were married in 1880. His known siblings were: Mary Elizabeth (1880-1958, later Mrs William Edward Cooke), William John (1882-1960), Adelaide Gladys (1885-1959, later Mrs Henry Chegwidden Benney), Arthur Richard (1888-1968), Thomas Elliott (1890-1968), Lois Jane (1892-1896), and Irene Maud (1893-1951). His mother had also had another child, Emily (b. 1868), whose father is unknown.

Samuel, better known as Hayden, first appears on the 1891 census living in Porthallow, St Keverne and the family would still be listed there on the 1901 census. Hayden was absent from the family home however; aged 14 and having already left school, he was listed at an address nearby, Halwyn, St Keverne, and was described as a general labourer on a farm. He was back in the family home by the time of the 1911 census and was described as an unmarried stone quarryman.

Sobey had decided to emigrate with two men from his locality, Fred Banfield and Joseph Fillbrook, and settle in Houghton, Michigan where he intended to work in the copper mines, his two friends already having relatives there. He boarded the Titanic at Southampton as a second class passenger (ticket number 29178 which cost £13).

Hayden Sobey died in the sinking and his body, if recovered, was never identified.

His parents and sibling continued in Cornwall; his mother died in 1915 and his father in 1930. His surviving siblings all died within a few years of each other in the 1950s and 1960s.