History's Headlines: A night forever remembered
In the spring of 1912 Annie C. Funk was far from Hereford Township, Berks County. But then, India was exactly where the 37-year-old Mennonite missionary wanted to be. Since 1906 Funk, who was the first woman in her denomination to serve in the then British ruled sub-continent, had been running a residential school for orphan girls in the town of Janjgir-Champa in the eastern Indian state of Chhattisgarh and had learned Hindi. “When parents died,” recalled 87-year-old Saroj Singh in 2019, “there were no medical facilities…villagers brought their orphan girls to the school…Miss Funk looked after them and provided education.”
When a new Mennonite mission was being established in India, she expressed a strong interest to help with it. Funk left America to take up her post in November of 1906. “I shall always remember vividly the picture of her standing on the deck of the great steamer 'New York' waving adieu to her pastor and some Patterson and New York friends who had come to see her off,” wrote A.S. Shelly in a Mennonite publication. But in 1912 Funk’s life changed when a telegram arrived that said her mother was seriously ill. She had to see her for perhaps the last time. And so began her journey, a tragic one she was never to complete, for fate led her to the Titanic where along with 1,500 others on the night of April 14/15, 1912, she died in the sinking of the so-called unsinkable ship.
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