07/14/2026
Have you visited our historic Cemetery at Washington Memorial at Valley Forge? This is one of the fascinating stories you will find!
This is the grave of Titanic survivor Lucile Polk Carter Reeves at Washington Memorial Chapel Churchyard in Valley Forge, PA.
Lucile was the eldest child of William Ernest Carter and Lucile Stewart Polk. Her father, a banker, was the wealthy heir to a coal and iron baron while her mother was the daughter of affluent insurance brokers in Baltimore. She had one sibling, her younger brother William Thornton Carter II.
Following a trip to Europe, the Carter family boarded the Titanic at Southampton as first class passengers and occupied adjoined cabins B96-B98.
On the night of the sinking, the Carter entourage was among a number of first-class passengers who had been earmarked to leave in lifeboat 4. Lifeboat 4 had been lowered to A-deck but difficulties in opening the windows on that promenade had delayed its loading, much to the annoyance of the many affluent passengers waiting.
The Carters were among the passengers waiting; Lucile, her mother, brother and their maid left the ship in boat 4, being forced to part company with their dog who remained on the ship under the care of Colonel John Jacob Astor.
The survival of Lucile's father in another lifeboat had repercussions: perhaps in an already unhappy marriage, her mother and father filed for divorce, she citing his survival and possibly ahead of her as a keystone to their separation. They were divorced in June 1914 and her mother remarried George Clymer Brooke Jr, a banker and steel manufacturer.
In 1922, Lucile married Samuel James Reeves, an iron executive and a graduate of Yale.
When returning from a business trip in Washington to his home in Bryn Mawr on February 18, 1944, Samuel crashed into the stone wall of a cemetery. Believed to have fallen asleep at the wheel or having become disoriented by the heavy fog, he was killed instantly, suffering broken ribs and a punctured lung after his chest was penetrated by the shattered steering wheel of his vehicle.
Lucile never remarried. She died on October 19, 1962 in Summerville, SC, the day before her 65th birthday.
