The week I posted this image on Reusable Art was the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. 56 precious children died in those frigid waters, all but one from those traveling in steerage class.
This little girl, from a fictional story about immigrants was named Jeanie. While her grandfather searched New York for a foster-son, little Jeanie waited at Castle Garden for his return. She had been entrusted with her grandmother’s heirloom umbrella which was almost as tall as she was and a small bundle of other family treasures. Grandfather and child were reunited but the haunted look on her face while she waited for his return must have been repeated in the eyes of so many children immigrating to this great country of ours. Unlike, the 50% of all of the children that had died on board the Titanic, little Jeanie was happily returned to her family to grow and prosper in Maryland.
No illustrator was credited for this drawing or any of the others from the Harper’s Young People of January 13, 1880.
This image is copyright free and in the public domain anywhere that extends copyrights 70 years after death or at least 120 years after publication when the original illustrator is unknown.
