The City of Halifax has many connections to the TITANTIC
disaster. One of the major ones is the this cemetery, the final
resting place of over 100 victims, some of them unidentified to
this day. The grave markers are laid out in the shape of a ship's
hull, and although it wasn't known at the time, laid out in the
same direction that the bow of the ship is resting on the ocean
floor, facing north-east. There are many stories to go with the
markers. November 6, 2002, Alan Ruffman and Dr. Ryan Parr announced
that the remains of the "unknown child" had finally been identified
through DNA analysis. Blood samples provided by descendents of a
child from Finland named Eino Panula matched the DNA extracted from
the tiny bone fragment recovered from Fairview Lawn Cemetery. Eino,
who was just over a year old at the time, was traveling as a
third-class passenger with his mother and four brothers. Eino's
mother, Emilia Maria Ojala, and father, Juho Panula, had married on
February 14, 1892 before immigrating to Coal Center, a small
community near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Five children were born in
Coal Center before the family moved back to a small farm in western
Finland in 1904. There, two more children were born, including Eino
on March 10, 1911. Shortly thereafter, the Panulas decided to move
back to Coal Center, and Juho preceded his family to the U.S.
sometime in 1910 or 1911. Maria stayed, finalizing the sale of the
family's farm on February 1, 1912 before booking third class
tickets for her family on the Titanic to join her husband in
America. None of the family members traveling on the Titanic
survived the disaster, and Eino is the first of the Panulas to be
identified. The discovery of the child's identity stands as the
first time that an unknown victim of the 1912 Titanic sinking has
been named through DNA analysis.
CORRECTION ON BABY's Identity
Titanic baby given new identity Wednesday, 1 August 2007,
12:29 GMT 13:29 UK
More than 1,500 people died in the Titanic disaster of 1912 A
baby boy positively identified by DNA testing decades after he died
when the Titanic sank has now been named as someone else. The boy
was first said to be a Finnish boy aged 13 months, but experts now
say he was a 19-month-old English child.
He was found dead floating in the waters of the North
Atlantic six days after the luxury liner sank. Titanic was heading
from Southampton to New York when it sank on 15 April 1912, killing
1,503 passengers and crew. After DNA testing in 2002, scientists
declared they had identified the boy.
It's very easy to say you got this wrong, but nevertheless
that is how science works, and you do change your ideas and you do
change your theories Ryan Parr Lead researcher He was initially
said to be Eino Panula, whose DNA was matched to living family
members in Finland. But Canadian researchers now say that he was
19-month-old Sidney Leslie Goodwin, who was travelling on the
Titanic with the rest of his family to start a new life in
America.
"It's very easy to say you got this wrong, but nevertheless
that is how science works, and you do change your ideas and you do
change your theories," said Ryan Parr, the case's lead researcher
at Lakehead University in Ontario. "The evidence was pretty
conclusive at the time." Lasting symbol Based on the size of the
child's teeth, scientists had been able to narrow the field of
possible candidates to children of about one year old.
"There were some aspects that made us a bit uncomfortable,
even though that's what the teeth experts were telling us," Mr Parr
said. "So we pressed forward and did more DNA testing." A test on
the child's HVS1, a type of mitochondria DNA molecule, did not
match the Panula family, the researchers said.
The child was one of some 150 Titanic victims buried in
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. For decades, the boy was known simply
as the unknown child and regarded as a symbol of all the children
who died in the sinking.
After he was first identified, his surviving Finnish
relatives travelled to the grave for a high-profile ceremony.
Although the Goodwin family has been informed of the discovery, it
is not known whether they have any plans to visit the cemetery.
.