The Life And Legend Of 'The Unsinkable Molly Brown'

The Molly Brown House Museum offers histories of Denver (+ Colorado), the unsinkable” Titanic, and an inspirational local and national political leader. On the night the Titanic sank, she tried to coordinate efforts to put more people into each lifeboat, before she herself was thrown into one against her will by a crewmember who thought she was being a nuisance. The Molly Brown House Museum has been hosting its annual Victorian Horrors Halloween ghost stories for 21 years and it is one of the most popular events.

No one called her Molly during her lifetime — her name was Margaret — and biographer Kristen Iversen, author of "Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth," writes that there's no proof she ever referred to herself as "unsinkable." The nickname seems to have originated with a Denver gossip columnist who may have been mad that Brown gave her account of the Titanic disaster to a newspaper in Newport, R.I., where she also spent time.

Their second child, Catherine Ellen Brown, nicknamed Helen, was born on July 1, 1889 in Leadville, Colorado. Margaret's parents, John and Johanna Tobin, raised a close-knit Irish Catholic family. The birthplace and museum tells the life and history of Margaret Tobin Brown, famously known as Unsinkable Molly Brown.

One project Margaret was most proud of was the construction of a playground and summer school for poor children at Denver's River Front Park. Brown helped to establish many of the things that make Denver Denver,” says Annie Robb Levinsky, assistant director of the museum.

Cold spots have been felt in Molly Brown's room and her apparition has been seen by the living as she goes around corners. By 1889, Molly and J.J. had two children, were living back in Leadville in a nice house with nearly all the Tobin clan living nearby. Margaret used her new fame as a platform to talk about issues that deeply concerned her: labor rights, history women's rights, education and literacy for children, and historic preservation.

The wealth that Maggie dreamed of arrived in 1893 when the Ibex Co., in which J.J. owned substantial shares, struck gold in Leadville`s Little Jonny Mine. Besides the history that the tour guide shares, there is a plethora of information about Margaret Brown's life sold in the Visitor Center.

But the Molly Brown House, the fashionable home of one of the sunken ship's most famous survivors, isn't new. Brown was played by Kathy Bates in James Cameron's "Titanic." In this scene, she tries to get the other women in her lifeboat to go back and rescue people from the water.