George Albert Williams was born in Westfield, New Jersey, in the United States of America, on the 12th May 1908, the second son of the six children of John and Annie Williams (née Millman). Originally from England, the family had immigrated to the United States of America in April 1904, and first settled for a short time in Marlborough, Massachusetts. The family moved on to Westfield, New Jersey, before finally settling in nearby Plainfield, where his father took up a job as a motor mechanic and later a groom. In total, there were nine children born to the Williams’; however, three died in infancy.
On 1st April 1915, George’s father joined the Cunard Steamship Company as a steward, and sailed for Liverpool on the Lusitania on that date, the last eastward voyage the great liner would ever complete. Once in Liverpool, he crossed the River Mersey to the home of his sister, Mrs. Charlotte Forster of Deva Villas, Church Road, Hoylake, Cheshire. Having obtained work as a motor mechanic in a garage opposite the nearby railway station, he sent for his wife and family to join him.
The family was obviously not able to afford the fare back to England, so a charitable group, The St. George’s Society, paid their passage to England and as a consequence, at the end of April 1915, George’s mother Annie and the other children, John Edward, Ethel, Edith, Florence, and David, all set out from Plainfield to New York, where, on 1st May they boarded the Lusitania as third class passengers for the trans-Atlantic voyage.
The liner‘s departure from New York harbour was delayed until just after noon, because she had to wait to embark passengers, cargo and some crew from the Anchor Liner Cameronia, which had been requisitioned for war work by the British Admiralty. When the ship was sunk, six days out of New York, when the ship was twelve miles off the southern coast of Ireland and only 250 miles away from her Liverpool destination, she was torpedoed and sunk, by the German submarine U-20.
Mrs. Williams and George, Ethel, Florence and David were killed and only Edith and John Edward survived. George was just five days away from his seventh birthday when he died and his body was never found and identified after the disaster. Consequently, he has no known grave.
In the summer of 1915 John Williams applied to The Lusitania Relief Fund, for financial help. This fund had been set up immediately after the liner had gone down, by The Lord Mayor of Liverpool and other local business dignitaries to help second and third class passenger survivors and the relatives of those who had perished, who had come upon financial difficulties as a result of the sinking. It was thought at the time that the saloon passengers would not need financial help!
The awards committee granted John Williams £5-0s-0d to compensate him for the loss of most of his family. At that time he was stated to have been employed as a coachman.
In May 1916, John Williams, still employed as a steward with the Cunard Steamship Company, returned to the United States with his two surviving children. He left them with friends for a while, but returned to England with them in 1919. He filed a claim for compensation for the loss of his wife and children, but it was rejected by the Mixed Claims Commission on the grounds that both he, and his late wife, had been British subjects at the time of their deaths, and therefore were not qualified to make a valid claim.
It has been reported in many accounts that John Williams had deserted his family in April 1915, but no evidence has been discovered in support of these accounts.
New Jersey U.S. Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey Church Records 1700 – 1970, 1910 U.S. Federal Census, Cunard Records, Mixed Claims Commission Docket No. 2558, Birkenhead News, Exploring the Lusitania, Tragedy of the Lusitania, Liverpool Record Office, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Stuart Williamson, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.