Nina Harper on a tricycle
Annie Jessie Harper, often known as Nana or Nina, was born on January 3th, 1906 in Govan, Lanarkshire, Scotland N as the daughter of John Harper an evangelical pastor and a native of Renfrewshire. Her mother Annie Leckie Bell, also a native of Govan, had previously worked as a dressmaker.
John and Annie married in 1903 and Annie was fated to be their only child when she died following complications arising from childbirth on January 8th, 1906. Annie's niece, Jessie Wills Leitch, a Renfrewshire native who lived with Annie much of her life, stepped to help take care of Nana. This was imperative as John worked and preached throughout Britain and Ireland, including North America.
Titanic[]
Nana, John, and Jessie boarded the RMS Titanic at Southampton as Second Class passengers. They were travelling to the Moody Church in Chicago, Illinois. She is listed in the passenger list as Nana Harper.
On April 14-15, around midnight Mr. Harper came to their stateroom and told them that the vessel had struck an iceberg.
Niece Jessie remembers she was dressing while John went to learn further particulars and returned to say that the order had been given to put on the life belts. Everyone obyed and John picked up Nana in his arms, he took her up to the deck. There the women were ordered to the Upper Deck. Jessie had to climb a vertical iron ladder and Mr. Harper brought Nana after her up the ladder and the men at the top lifted her up to Jessie again.
There was no opportunity for farewell, and, in fact, even then they did not realize the danger, as they were assured again and again that the vessel could not sink, that her sister Olympic was steaming there way and would be alongside at any minute.
Jessie and Nana are believed to have rescued in lifeboat 11 but John was lost in the sinking. Lifeboat 11 was well manned, it was the 11th to leave the vessel. Fort-five minutes later, the Titanic went down. They were about a mile away at that point.
Following their rescue by the RMS Carpathia they weren't given a cabin but slept in a library aboard her. Arriving in New York, still in the clothes they wore to leave the Titanic, Jessie and Nana were met by Reverend Ervine Wooley, the assistant pastor of the Moody Church.
Later life[]
Jessie elected not to not continue to Chicago and decided instead to return to England at the earliest available opportunity and arrived aboard the RMS Celtic on April 25th. Sadly enough, she didn't understand why her father wasn't with them. Nana returned to England and was apparently raised by an uncle and aunt in London.
In 1921, she performed the opening ceremony of the Harper Memorial Baptist Church in Glasgow, which was dedicated to John's memory. However during her upbringing, talk of Titanic was discouraged by her family. She later worked at Richland's Bible College in London and it was there she met Phillip Roy Pont (born 1903), an alumnus of All Saints Bible College and a native of Heathfield, Sussex, to a grocer.
They married in London in the closing months of 1934 and had 2 children: Gordon and Mary (Later Dr. Gurling). They moved back to Scotland around 1936 where Philip was the pastor at a Baptist Church in Denny, Falkirk before they moved to Shetland followed by Dundee and eventually Glasgow.
Philip retired around 1984 and they settled in Burnside, Lanarkhire. Nana in her later years continued to live in Burnside but had few memories of her time on the Titanic. Nana's recollection were sparse but she later recalled sitting on Jessie's knee as she watched the Titanic sink and she later recalled the noise of those struggling in the water.
She spoke very little of her time on Titanic but kept in regular contact with Eva Hart who remembered playing with Nana on Titanic as a child, past exchanges that Nana had no recollection of. Nana died in her home on April 10th, 1986 at the age of 80, on the 74th anniversary of when Titanic left Southampton for her maiden voyage. She was buried in Moffat Cemetery and Philip died in 1995.