One Wright County church has a tragic connection to the sinking of the Titanic.

Finnish Apostolic Church was built in 1886 in French Lake.

Back in 1912, pastor of the church William Lahtinen, his wife Anna, and their young daughter Martha took a trip to Finland to see family.

“They got there and young daughter Martha passed away,” Chris Lantto, who gives tours of the church, said. “They thought meningitis.”

The grieving parents missed a ship leaving Finland to return home.

“They booked a passage to go to Southampton, England, and then they boarded the Titanic,” Lantto said.

After the doomed ship hit an iceberg, Anna was offered a seat on a lifeboat, but when she learned that William couldn’t join her, Anna chose to stay with William on the ship. They were two of more than 1,500 who perished in the icy waters of the Atlantic.

“They both perished,” Lantto said. “Their bodies were never identified.”

Lantto tells the Titanic story when he gives tours of the church, which was moved to Minnesota Pioneer Park in Annandale.