Helen,
I'd be most interested to get in touch with you. I just joined ET although I have looked at it from time to time for the past three years. Archie Frost was the person who really got me into researching my family Titanic connection, as my grandfather Edward Boreland Whitley (who worked on the ship in Belfast) told a tale about knowing Frost and how he went down with the ship. I knew no more about him and as you know he is seldom mentioned in books. It was on this Web site that I learned in '97 that he was part of the "guarantee group"with Thomas Andrews. I was so excited to find out something about this man who I had heard of all my life. (I grew up in Michigan, USA; my grandfather having immigrated to the US in 1920.) From this site, I found a link to the Ulster Titanic Society and got in touch with them, joined their society, and they sent me a picture of Frost from their magazine, who they say was called Artie, not Archie, although my father always had referred to him as Archie (and I doubt he ever saw his name in any books) and also told me his last living child, Marjorie, had died. I regret so much that I never had a chance to contact her. The little passage that went with the photo of him was so heartbreaking; it mentioned how Marjorie and Doreen (who is your grandmother) had gone out looking for him in the street and asking passersby if they had seen him when they heard the adults talking about how their father was "lost." The photo of him really haunted me; I'll never forget the day that arrived in the mail and I had a face to put with the name I had always wondered about. Since then, I've been to Belfast twice and uncovered a lot more about the family, lots of photos, documents etc. and met cousins I never knew of before. One of them, in her 80s, said that my grandfather's brother Frank Whitley did know Frost and worked with him in the engine works, and that the family had a little holiday cottage at Millisle--is that right, do you know? (So because of Frank knowing him, this is probably why our branch of the family repeated the tale.) The other brother, Johnny Whitley, was a woodworker or joiner. So it has been quite a journey for me--all sparked by curiosity about your great-grandfather! I have met cousins in the US and Canada too that I didn't even know I had. Eventually I want to write the story for the UTS journal. So, Helen, I would really like to correspond with you. Are you still in Belfast? Please send me an email if you see this at
[email protected]
Thank you,
Mary Ann Whitley, Cleveland, Ohio, USA
