Frank and Anna Warren

Frank and Anna Warren were the only couple travelling in first-class from the state of Oregon. The majority of their fellow Americans hailed from the east and a great many knew one another, or shared mutual acquaintances, before boarding the 'Titanic'. It is interesting to consider how the elderly Warrens, who had been holidaying in Europe to celebrate their fortieth wedding anniversary, may have fitted into the broader social scene during the voyage.

Mr Warren had made his fortune in fisheries and packing and operated a canning factory on the Columbia River. A photograph can be found below:

http://www.gorgediscovery.org/photoarchive/details.asp?ID=1436
 
Hi Martin - I've also frequently considered that the Warrens were a-typical of first-class passengers. Anna's photo has always added to my perception of the couple as unpretentious pioneer folk, but I know very little of them.

Anna's genealogy can be found here:
http://www.sewellgenealogy.com/p391.htm#i14929

It reveals that her father was a minister and that her roots, unsurprisingly, were in New England, though I'm not sure where she was born. It also reveals that the Warrens had four children; I had previously thought they only had two.

I have the 1937 Portland Blue Book-Social Register, in which only one of the Warren's children - the son named for his father - is listed. Mr and Mrs Frank M Warren (Laura Cranston) are shown as living at "2645 N.W. Westover Road, BE 2866". Their club affiliations are the Arlington Club, Waverley Country Club, the University Club, and the Colonial Dames.

The "Blue Book-Social Register Association" began publishing volumes in 1890 and apparently published a Portland volume from the beginning. The association is certainly different from (and less prestigious than) the Social Register Association, which publishes volumes in a different style and with a different insignia than the volume I have. I think the association that published the Portland book must also be different from that which published volumes in North American cities called "Dau's Social Blue Book". I believe Dau's was considered less elite than the SRA, but I'll wager it had more prestige than the "Blue Book-Social Register Association". I know little about this last one, and think it would make an interesting topic of research.

I'm always interested in how the newer cities of the American West went about defining what "society" was in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
 
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