Archibald Gracie

Colonel Archibald Gracie IV was an American writer, amateur historian, real estate investor, and survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. He survived the sinking by climbing aboard an overturned collapsible lifeboat, and wrote a popular and valuable book about the disaster which is still in print today. Gracie was born in Mobile, Alabama, a member of the wealthy Scottish-American Gracie family of New York. He was a namesake and direct descendant of the Archibald Gracie who had built Gracie Mansion, the current official residence of the mayor of New York City, in 1799. His father,... Archibald Gracie III, had been an officer with the Washington Light Infantry of the Confederate army during the American Civil War, serving at the Battle of Chickamauga before dying at Petersburg, Virginia, in 1864. Young Archibald attended St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire and the United States Military Academy , eventually becoming a colonel of the 7th New York Militia. Gracie was a keen amateur historian and was especially fascinated by the Battle of Chickamauga at which his father had served.
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