Thomas Broadfoot on the Ship Lucania

 Thomas Broadfoot 

1884-1937

On this date, March 26, more than one hundred years ago, my paternal grandfather stepped aboard the ship S.S. Lucania in Liverpool, England to come to America. For more than forty years, off and on, I have been learning about him, his wife and his ancestors. It is time to write what I have learned. I never knew him, he died before I was born.


Thomas Broadfoot was only 20 years old when he made this journey, alone, to America. He was single. The year was 1904. On 1 April, he stepped off the ship in New York at Ellis Island.

How he arrived in Liverpool from the small town of Dalbeattie in the lowlands of Scotland was a mystery that I have partially solved.

As you can see by the passenger record, he has $20 and his ticket. Of course, that's what he told them he had but he may have had more money since he had a job as a car conductor in Edinburgh.


He was going to Westerly, Rhode Island to his Uncle Thomas A. Broadfoot. Uncle Tom worked in the quarries there mining and making monuments. The granite in Westerly is blue. You can see it all around you in the River Bend Cemetery.  Tomorrow, we will examine Tom's gravestone.