John Harper was a Scottish Baptist pastor who died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic in the North Atlantic Ocean.
Early life[]
John Harper was born on 29 May 1872 in the village of Houston, Renfrewshire, Scotland. At the age of two he fell into a well and was revived in time by his mother.
He personally embraced his parents' Christian faith at age 14 and began preaching at 18. He supported himself in early adulthood by doing manual labor in a mill until Baptist pastor E.A. Carter of Baptist Pioneer Mission in London heard of his preaching and placed him in ministry work in Govan, Scotland.
In 1897, he became the first pastor of Paisley Road Baptist Church in Glasgow, Scotland. Under his care, the church quickly grew from 25 members to over 500 and soon moved to a new location on Plantation Street.
On April 28, 1903 he married to Annie Leckie Bell. She was a native of Govan and had previously worked as a dressmaker. They had one daughter, Annie Jessie Harper, who was born on January 3, 1906. Tragically his wife died 5 days later, following complications after she gave birth. John's sister-in-law, Jessie Wills Leitch, a Renfrewshire native who lived with Annie much of her life, stepped up to help take care of 'Nana', as his daughter was often called. This was imperative as John worked and preached throughout Britain and Ireland, including North America.
Titanic[]
At the time of the Titanic's Maiden Voyage, Harper was 39, while In a letter written on the 1st of April it appears he planned to sail on the RMS Lusitania from Liverpool, but he left more than a week later from Southampton, on Titanic. He was a Second Class passenger and was traveling with his daughter and niece Jessie W. Leitch to Chicago to preach for several weeks at the Moody Church, where he had been the guest minister in the Fall of last year.
When the ship hit an iceberg on the night of 14 April 1912, the ship began to sink. On April 15 after midnight, evacuation started. His daughter and niece were put on lifeboat 11 and survived, but Harper stayed behind and jumped into the water as the ship began to sink. Some who survived told that Harper preached the Gospel to the end (especially Acts 16:31), first aboard the sinking ship and then afterward to those in the freezing water until he no longer could.
Legacy[]
In 1923, Paisley Road Baptist Church in Glasgow moved into its present building on Craigiehall Street and was renamed Harper Memorial Baptist Church in his honor.
The story of John Harper aboard the Titanic is told in the book, 'The Titanic's Last Hero', published by Moody Adams.
A children's version of John Harper's last days on board the Titanic was published by Christian Focus Publications in March 2011 titled 'Titanic – Ship of Dreams – John Harper' written by Robert Plant.