The Orphan Packet

In a previous post, I had put out a family beacon for Warren relatives from Western Kentucky. The hope of re-connection was based on my Grandfather's unfortunate experience as a child. When he was around the age of 8 or 9, his Mother gave birth to a baby boy while she was in the last stages of battling Tuberculosis. The baby's fate remains a mystery based on conflicting information. However, my Grandfather and his younger sister, Estelle, were placed in an orphanage in Louisville Kentucky.

You will notice that I just used a variable for his age at the time of entrance into the orphanage. This variable is based on the records received from the orphanage. In 1999, when my Grandfather was roughly 85, the orphanage contacted him and sent him his case file. As you can imagine, this was bittersweet for him, knowing the traumatic circumstances that prompted his placement in an orphanage that happened to be halfway across the state.

The packet of documents included invaluable pieces of information about our family. In this post I want to take a look at the documents that were included. Outside of any actual court proceedings for an adoption, I'm assuming this packet would be typical for Kentucky children placed in orphanages of the time - and even more so for cases such as this, when the child was never adopted, but aged out of the system.

Correspondence:
Chronologically, the earliest correspondence is between the public health nurse and the director of the orphanage, asking for them to take the two children. Apparently this was the first contact, and the nurse has explained the family situation in great detail - including the time frame of how long my Great Grandfather had the injuries that had rendered him partially paralyzed and unable to care for his children.

There is also a letter from the Mayor of Mayfield, providing a letter of recommendation for the children - based on the urgent need created when a third child was born within the few days that followed the previous letters.

Letterheads:
The County Health Nurse is writing on two types of letterhead:
"Mayfield and Graves County Chapter of the American Red Cross"
"State Board of Health of Kentucky"

These two letterheads may point me into the direction of more documents. The Kentucky Board of Health records may be too difficult to obtain without a lawyer, but the Red Cross may be an avenue of pursuit in the future.

Application:
Application for Admission into the Christian Church Orphans' Home of Kentucky - This appears to be a form made in-house, not produced by any state or local government. Full of amazing info: Parents' full names, ages, health approval of my Grandfather, and the religious affiliation of the parents.

**Note** On the reverse of the Application are Conditions of Admission, including the cut-off age for children entering the home: 12 years old for girls, 11 years old for boys. Yikes!

Commitment Papers:
Commitment to the Christian Church Widows and Orphans Home of Kentucky - This one is even better - chock full of birth locations for both parents and the child, as well as specific Church the parents attended during their life. Also includes the signatures of my Great Grandparents, including Great Grandmother Florence who died at the age of 25 of tuberculosis and who had just given birth a few days earlier. I've always thought that both of their signatures looked very shaky. I can only imagine the horrible emotions involved in the act of signing away your children.

A brief "Health Record" was attached for my Grandfather, stating that he had had measles in 1926.

Attorney Correspondence:
This brief letter from my Great Grandfather's attorney is notifying the orphanage of the death of my Great Grandmother, and leaving the decision of notifying the children up to the administrators of the orphanage. He is also asking for some sort of report from the orphanage as to the well-being of the children now that they have been in the orphanage for a few days. Note that the information about the woman who "took" the infant included her state of residence - but that conflicts with newspaper accounts which stated she was from Mobile, Alabama.

Family Correspondence:
Wonderful handwritten letters from my Great Aunts who were writing to the children, checking on their condition and asking them to write to them, since they hadn't had any letters in a while. In regards to family letters, I would have loved to have the originals - but am thankful for the copies, of course.

Host Correspondence:
Those who wanted to take my Grandfather into their home for apprenticeship - not adoption - were writing back and forth to the orphanage, describing their intentions and level of provision for the child, including basic education at a rural school.

Application for Removal:
Last family to host my Grandfather had to complete the Application for Child to be Taken out of the Christian Church Widows and Orphans Home of Kentucky - this outlined the family conditions and provisions that would be provided - they also specified that this was for apprenticeship and not for adoption. Again, this appears to be a form created in-house, not something produced by the state or city/county.

Conclusion:
Without these documents, I would have very little direct information about my Great Grandparents. Their location has always been a challenge due to the state line being nearby, and each branch hailing from different states (plus a few courthouse fires in one of their native counties.) These documents provided me with the small towns they originally hailed from. Witnesses who signed the paperwork are also great clues for my future research. A timeline of my Great Grandmother's death was also included, with notes about her illness. Family information from Aunts was also invaluable - and seeing their letters was a connection to the family that subsequent generations had missed, in comparison to the wealth of connections we had for other branches of the family. Again, giving me some clues for researching the rest of the family.

When researching adoptions in Kentucky, this packet reminds us to look for the orphanage records. Sadly, there was no central location for these records. They were not transferred to KDLA, nor the local courthouse. The truth is, we don't know what happened to the records of each institution. Just remember, I'm talking about the orphanage records, not the actual adoption. There were loads of kids in the system that were never adopted, which resulted in equally parentless records. Adoptions were handled by the courts, but the orphanage records were retained on-site. Which then requires a scavenger hunt if you had any ancestors in the orphanage system. What exists? What survived? Those questions are never easily answered, simply due to the enormous amount of institutions that existed....and then faded away, along with their records.

P.S.: I recently contacted the current incarnation of the Christian Church Homes of Kentucky in Louisville - now called the Christian Care Communities. They still claim to have been around since 1884, but no longer care for children. Talking with staff, they related that the records pertaining to the orphans are stored off-site. In order to access them, they need advance notice to retrieve the appropriate box....BUT....they also need a release form from the former resident. Ummm, yeah, you read that right. I asked her about cases where the resident is deceased, and she said "sorry, we would need a release form for access." This reminds me of the hoops one has to jump through to access the Eastern State Hospital records. I'm assuming you would need to go through legal channels for access, but luckily, that's not something I need to do since I already have Grandpa's records.

For more information about recent adoptions and Kentucky law, see Kentucky statute 199.570. This was apparently created in 1956, and amended in 2005.

Serendipity Strikes Again!

Despite the many years of genealogy research under my belt, it did not take long before I quickly dubbed serendipity as my full partner in crime. There are just too many instances of important discoveries that seem to randomly fall into our laps from the oddest places - too many to ignore the Big 'S' and its importance. Years ago, I purchased a small, rectangular gold frame at an estate auction that seemingly housed a calendar print glued to a piece of cardboard. I was happy with the purchase, since all I wanted was the beautiful frame, but once I got it home, I discovered a gorgeous panoramic photograph of an unnamed church congregation from roughly the 1930s or 40s hidden behind the front print.

I really only had a few clues to go on when trying to figure out which church this group was sitting in front of: purchased in central Kentucky, "Lafayette Studios, Lexington Kentucky" embossed in the lower right corner, and a building cornerstone that read "Christian Church, 1894". Based on the size of the congregation, the location of Lafayette Studios and even the type of house sitting next to it, I arrogantly assumed this was a Lexington Christian Church. While I never conducted full scale research on the photo, it was always something I looked for when driving downtown. When leaving work, I would sometimes just take some extra side roads to view a different brick church that might fit the architectural mold. Over the years, it was definitely a church whose outer details were very committed to my memory.

Earlier this week, I was conducting some research for a patron, and was only having marginal success finding their family. Since church records and histories can have additional snippets of local history, I took a chance and picked up this book about the First Disciples-Christian Church in Georgetown Kentucky by Ann Bevins, 1981. I looked through the book and wasn't really having any luck, but when I went to put it back, it fell a bit out of my hands and onto the book shelf with the back cover flipping open as it came to rest. Since I hadn't looked at my panoramic shot in a year or two, I was having what I thought was an extreme deja vu moment - but apparently, my brain was pulling out this memory, and I was suddenly reminded about the photo and missing church. This is what met my eyes:

In an instant the mystery was completely solved. I had not only found my group and building in question, but also a full history of the congregation. Since I have lived in Georgetown for the past 10 years, the mere fact that this Church was in my town completely shocked me.....but then I read enough to realize that this beautiful building, built in 1894 and photographed here in 1939, had tragically burnt in 1947. The current structure was built in 1955, and did not resemble the 19th century brick in any way. So, Serendipity solves another mystery. I did not happen to have family members in Scott County in the 1930s, so for those of you who might be wondering about the identity of the peeps featured, here is a partial list as printed in the back of the book. I will confess that the 1939 image made me think of the 1940 census.....matching a name to a face in 1940 would be quite a treat! I think I'll wait until the index is finished to tackle that one!
C

Lincoln Park Legacy - A New Journey

Telling the story of the Lincoln Park Baptist Church will require many voices. My voice, encased in my personal experiences with this institution will be here at my blog. However, the new Lincoln Park Legacy blog will be the newsfeed for the many voices I hope to restore to our collective memory. After my first segment of the Lincoln Park story told here, I encourage you to visit the new and official blog of the project to learn more and follow along as we uncover historical gems and past identities.

My introduction to Lincoln Park Baptist Church in Cincinnati Ohio came through my parents and grandparents. My grandparents were members of this church between the span of the late 1950s to the mid-1980s. My parents were married here, yet they did not belong to this congregation as they made their own family. Actually, many of my family members were married here: My aunts and uncles, and a few cousins.

Among my personal memories, I can relate a few: visiting many times with the grandparents, attending Sunday school on occasion with my cousin, attending weddings, and two favorite memories that my family love retelling when they need a good laugh. The time when I was 3 years old and had an accident that made my grandmother think her water pills were playing tricks on her, and the only time I was ever asked to be a flower girl in a wedding – I fainted dead away while standing so long, and hit my head on the seat of the hard wooden pew. This was my cousin’s wedding, and my aunt supposedly has an audio tape of the horrible, loud “bong” that my hard head made as it hit the pew. Have no fear, there were no lasting mental effects – at least that is what they continued to tell me over the years.

Back in 2007, my Aunt, who was still a member of this church, invited my parents and I up to visit during the “homecoming” celebration. This yearly event was special in 2007 for a couple of reasons. 1. The Church was celebrating 165 years of being a congregation. 2. This would probably be their last celebration because the building was about to be sold and the congregation had voted to merge with another in order to survive in any capacity. There was a third reason I was called up – due to the anniversary, all of the historical items of the church’s long history would be on display, and with my Special Collections training/history degree/genealogy experience, they could use an expert pair of eyes. At this point, the congregation knew they had a unique collection, but had no idea what to do with it once they merged with another church.

My visit in 2007 was thrilling. I instantly fell in love with this collection. It was rich and fairly well preserved. There were stories of women missionaries to China, immigrant congregations, healing ministries, hardships through the decades of American history, and just plain adorable social tidbits. After snapping some initial photos of the collection, I recommended some options if they intended to keep the collection, or if they planned on donating it to another entity.

Within the next year, I was invited back to take a closer look, give even more detailed preservation advice, and this time, advise on packing. By now, the church building had sold, and the moving had already begun. Knowing the long history of this church, I was saddened by these turn of events.

There were many in the congregation that understood the scope and value of this collection, but they were not ready to part with it. They had the foresight to plan for preserving the material, but were unsure how to go about this properly. They set aside some money to purchase preservation material and to house the items in an environmentally controlled space. However, after a few years of debating, a mold outbreak, lack of space, and re-allocation of some of the money, plans were altered by necessity. This is where I came back into the picture within the capacity of Pastology.

Under our normal operating procedures, we advise on how to set up digitization efforts in-house, in the hopes of preserving and digitizing items on a long term basis. With the Lincoln Park remnants, circumstances were changing fast, and it was evident that a long-term digitization/preservation effort was not possible with the few volunteers they had on hand. Also, their new facilities were not conducive to maintaining the items securely. Extra help was needed, and due to our unique relationship, Pastology agreed to digitize off-site, with each newly digitized batch of documents being donated to a local historical society, for longterm preservation of the original material. Another reason for this choice was the desire for quick and full access of these documents for the remaining members who are aging fast. Part of this new project will also include a portion devoted to oral history. Hopefully we can add to the collection with some oral history interviews in the near future.

That is about it for my personal connection to this collection. When I say Pastology will be digitizing the collection, that means, me, myself and I. This one is near and dear to me, so I’m taking this one on all by my lonesome. Disclaimer: Pastology is under contract and is being paid for the digitization efforts…..we are NOT however, being paid to wallow in how much fun wading through all of this content has already proven to be! What is it they say about a pig wallowing in mud? Sometimes it feels like that with the dust, and yes, a bit of mold from time to time, but I am as happy as that proverbial pig!

To follow along on the journey and keep tabs on the wonderful historical gems we uncover, please consider following our newest blog Lincoln Park Legacy. We also have a new twitter account: @oldlincolnpark. Once the newly digitized documents are entered into Pastology, they will be free to access. For any of you with Cincinnati relatives/ancestors…..you will want to keep tabs on this collection. The congregation was downtown for over a hundred years with as many as 1000 members at the turn of the century. One of the most fantastic things we have to digitize is a large number of completed member cards, some as far back as the 1920s. Many new Romanian and Hungarian immigrants attended this church for sometime as well…..and that is just the tip of the iceberg!

So far, my favorite serendipity moment:

I was allowed to come take charge of a few document tubs at a time. Nothing is in any order anymore, so I did poke through some of the collection to create a tub with some of the oldest things first – they will need the quickest preservation care. As soon as I arrived home with the tubs, I grabbed a few files to look through. One photo in a clear sleeve slipped out on top of the others – the subject: an adult Sunday school class from the 1950s – in the front row – my grandparents - well at least Grandpa and half of Grandma.....but still a fun moment!