Mary Alice Edmundson was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, England, on the 11th December 1855, the daughter of Richard and Caroline Ingram Edmundson (née Foster). He father was an overseer of weavers in a woollen mill. She was the eldest of nine children – all girls!
Mary became a cotton weaver and on the 10th February 1879, she married Robert Alexander George McKenzie, who had been born in Canada, to British parents, on 4th June 1858. While he was still a child, his parents had returned to England.
In 1882, Robert McKenzie found employment in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and went there with his wife and a son, James Richard Donald McKenzie, that was born to them prior to leaving England. While residing in Canada, Mary gave birth to three more children, William, Caroline, and Ethel Annie. Caroline died in 1888, aged 1 year.
In 1894, the McKenzie family moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, and it was here, in 1901, that Mary’s husband, Robert, died. Mary went to reside with her
daughter, who in 1908 had married Ralph Forbes Purrington, at 567. Dartmouth Street, New Bedford.
In the spring of 1915, Mary McKenzie booked second cabin passage on the May sailing of the Lusitania to travel from New York to Liverpool, presumably on a visit to the area of her birth, to visit family and relatives.
Having left New Bedford sometime in April, she would arrived at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 in New York port on the morning of 1st May 1915, in time for the liner’s scheduled 10.00 a.m. sailing. She would then have had to have waited - like all the other passengers and crew - until 12.27 p.m. before the liner actually left on what was to become her last ever trans-Atlantic journey. The delay was caused because she had to embark passengers, cargo and some of the crew from the Anchor Liner Cameronia, which had been requisitioned for war service as a troop ship by the British Admiralty, at the end of April.
Then, six days out of New York, on the afternoon of 7th May, the Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk within sight of the coast of southern Ireland by the German submarine U-20, only hours away from the safety of her home port.
Mary McKenzie lost her life as a result of this action. She was aged 59 years.
The official list of passengers published by Cunard in March 1916 shows Mary McKenzie amongst those passengers who were lost, but a revised list of dead, published the following year, and held at the Public Record Office at Kew, Surrey, England does not include her at all. The fact remains that no trace of Mary McKenzie was every found.
Mary’s children later submitted a claim for compensation for the loss of her life and personal belongings in the sinking of the Lusitania. The Mixed Claims Commission rendered a decision on 30th October 1925, awarding William McKenzie, as administrator of his mother’s estate, the sum of $300.00 in compensation for the loss of her personal belongings. No award was made to any of her children for the loss of her life as none were financially dependent on her at the time of her death.
By the time the Mixed Claims Commission announced their decision, her son, James, had died on 12th January 1921, leaving a widow, Hattie May Walker McKenzie, and a daughter, Margaret.
Mary McKenzie’s surname is found to be spelt as MacKenzie or Mackenzie in many accounts, including some Cunard lists, but this spelling is incorrect.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, Lancashire England Church of England Births and Baptisms 1813 – 1911, 1861 Census of England & Wales, 1871 Census of England & Wales, 1881 Census of England & Wales, 1891 Census of Canada, 1910 U.S. Federal Census, Canadian Passenger Lists 1865 – 1935, Cunard Records, Mixed Claims Commission Docket No. 2482, PRO BT 100/345, UniLiv D92/2/423, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.