By Photo: Bain News Service; quick cleanup by Adam Cuerden, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Margaret Tobin was born in Hannibal, Missouri, in 1867, to Irish immigrant parents. At 18 she moved to Leadville, the silver mining boomtown, where she married James Joseph Brown, a mining engineer, in 1886.
In 1893, J.J. Brown helped develop a method to reach gold ore at the Little Jonny mine, and the family became wealthy. They moved to Denver in 1894 and bought a house on Pennsylvania Street in Capitol Hill.
Her causes
Brown was active in Denver society, but she also worked on causes beyond it. She helped raise money for the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, supported Judge Ben Lindsey’s juvenile court, and worked on women’s suffrage and education. She ran for the U.S. Senate in 1914, before women had the vote nationally. After the 1914 Ludlow Massacre she helped relief efforts for miners’ families.
The Titanic
In April 1912, returning from Europe, Brown was aboard the Titanic. She helped load others into lifeboats before boarding Lifeboat 6, where she reportedly urged the crew to go back for survivors. Afterward she raised money for survivors on the Carpathia.
The nickname “Molly” came later, mostly from the 1960 Broadway musical and 1964 film The Unsinkable Molly Brown. She was known as Maggie in her lifetime.
She died in New York in 1932. Her Denver home was saved from demolition in the 1970s and is now the Molly Brown House Museum.
