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Thomas Andrews Jr. was born 7 February 1873 in Belfast,
Ireland. His parents were the Right Honourable Thomas Andrews, a local
politician, and Eliza Pirrie, who were married in 1870. Thomas was their
second son. The Andrews family home is Ardara, located in Comber,
County Down, Ireland.
Eliza Pirrie Andrews, Thomas's mother, was the sister of Lord William James Pirrie, the controlling owner of the shipbuilders Harland & Wolff. As his nephew would later, Pirrie worked his way up the ranks in the company, beginning his career as an apprentice. He would become a partner in the firm by age twenty-seven. Pirrie was created a Baron in 1906 and a Viscount in 1921, but as his marriage was childless, the peerage would die out with his death. Thomas's elder brother John continued in the family's political tradition ultimately becoming Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. Young Thomas, who had shown an early interest in ships, attended the Royal Belfast Academical Institution from 1884 to 1889, when he left at age sixteen to begin his apprenticeship at Harland & Wolff. On 24 June 1908, Thomas was married to Helen Reilly Barbour, daughter of John D. Barbour, a company director. The couple made their home at "Dunallon," Winslow Avenue in Belfast. It is known that he took her to view Titanic one night in 1910, shortly before their daughter Elizabeth was born, while the ship was still in its cradle and Halley's Comet was at its greatest brilliance. In his will, Thomas left his wife £10615 in addition to 11 shillings and 3d--a good amount for the time. One of her relatives, a John Milne Barbour, was an executor of the will. After Thomas's death, Helen was married a second time to Henry Pierson Harland. They had no children and Helen herself died in England in 1966. Unfortunately, there is little known about Elizabeth Andrews after the death of her father, which occurred at such a young age that she would have been unlikely to have any memories of him. I have heard that she lived in Kenya for awhile, worked on no-kill safaris, and died in a car accident, but have not been able to find a confirming source for the information. Members of the Andrews family still reside in Belfast and Comber.
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