Emily Jones was born in Liverpool, Lancashire,, England, in 1881, the daughter of William and Elizabeth Jones (née Roberts). The family home was at 35, Rullerton Road, Liscard, Wallasey.
She was engaged to be married to George Albert Percy Sullivan, a qualified marine engineer from Wallasey, who had immigrated to Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States of America in 1900. He had returned for a holiday in 1907, and it might have been at this time that they announced their engagement.
On the 2nd June 1908, Emily Jones boarded the Ivernia at Liverpool and when she disembarked in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 11th June, she was met by her fiancé and the couple were married in Quincy, Massachusetts, within a few hours of her arriving in the United States of America.
The couple later moved to Groton, Connecticut, where George was employed at the New London Ship & Engine Company, where he was manufacturing submarines. The couple lived at Allen Street with their pet dog.
Perhaps because of the war, in the spring of 1915, they decided to return to Wallasey to see both sets of parents and consequently booked second cabin passage on the
Lusitania. Leaving Groton by rail, the couple joined the liner on the morning of 1st May 1915, in time for her delayed sailing out of New York harbour, which commenced just after mid-day. The delay was caused because she had to wait to embark passengers, crew and cargo from the liner Cameronia which the British Admiralty had requisitioned for war service as a troop ship at the end of April.
Six days out of New York on the afternoon of 7th May, and within sight of the coast of southern Ireland, the Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-20. At that time, she was only about 250 miles away from her Liverpool destination. Both Emily and George Sullivan were killed as a result of this action. She was aged 34 years.
As neither of their bodies was ever recovered from the sea and identified afterwards, neither has a known grave.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, Massachusetts U.S. Marriage Records 1840 – 1915, 1881 Census of England & Wales, 1891 Census of England & Wales, 1901 Census of England & Wales, 1911 Census of England & Wales, Massachusetts Passenger Lists 1820 – 1963, Cunard Records, Hartford Courant, Liverpool Echo, Norwich Bulletin, PRO BT 100/345, Wallasey and Wirral Chronicle, UniLiv D92/11, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.