From North 3rd Street to Titanic Scoop & Paris Headlines

Not every life commemorated on these bluffs stayed close to the Mississippi. Resting right before you is a woman whose courage, quick wit, and sharp eye for detail propelled her from a quiet Louisiana front porch to the glittering—and dangerous—capitals of Europe.

Her name was May Rule Birkhead.

Born in Louisiana in 1882, May grew up at 203 North Third Street, living with her widowed mother and working as a talented seamstress designing fine blouses. Through her close childhood friendship with Genevieve Clark—daughter of legendary Congressman Champ Clark—May became acquainted with the titan of American media, James Gordon Bennett Jr., publisher of the New York Herald.

In the spring of 1912, May and her aunt embarked on a European vacation aboard the steamship RMS Carpathia. In the freezing pre-dawn hours of April 15th, they woke to rapid footsteps on the deck above.

The Carpathia had arrived at the graveyard of the Titanic.

As lifeboats were pulled alongside and shivering, traumatized survivors were hauled aboard in cargo bags, May immediately sprang to action. Using her seamstress skills, she tore down ship curtains, grabbed tablecloths, and stitched together warm garments for women and children who had escaped into the night with nothing.

Publisher James Gordon Bennett knew May was aboard and cabled her a challenge: write the story.

Though she had never written professionally, May’s frontline dispatch was raw, vivid, and heartbreaking. When the Carpathia docked in New York, a courier cab was waiting. On April 19, 1912, the New York Herald printed May’s eyewitness account on its front page—the very first major national report of the disaster.

That scoop launched a stellar journalism career. May relocated to Paris as a high-society and fashion correspondent for the Herald. During World War I, she struck up a close friendship with fellow Missouri native General John J. 'Black Jack' Pershing, securing exclusive military dispatches. For nearly three decades, May was the toast of Paris, chronicling haute couture and the glamour of the Jazz Age.

When Nazi forces invaded Paris in June 1940, May remained at her post, bravely reporting on the occupation before making a harrowing escape through Spain and Portugal back to America.

She passed away in New York in the autumn of 1941. And though she had lived among world leaders, generals, and fashion royalty, she chose to come home to rest high above the Mississippi River.

When you finish your tour today, take a drive past 203 North Third Street to see the historic home where this intrepid journalist lived before writing her name into world history."