A 6-year-old child from Corvallis, Oregon, goes missing in a cherry tree orchard back in 1903. Hundreds of people turn up to search for the child.
There were many theories as to what happened to the child. The theories ranged from the child falling into an old well to, of all things, being stolen by gypsies. According to the paper, Corvallis had had its fair share of strange disappearances previous to the following.
Where is Garnet McCready?
Little Garnet McCready, aged six years, is missing from her home in Corvallis, and nobody knows what has become of her. She went with her grandfather to pick cherries at the E.W. Strong place in the north end of town at one o’clock Wednesday, and while her elderly companion picked cherries in a tree she disappeared from the spot so completely that not a single trace of her has been discovered although the search for her has been kept up almost day and night ever since.
Some believe that she has found a grave in the cruel Willamette, others that she has fallen into an unused well or hole in the vicinity, and not a few surmise that she may have been stolen by gypsies.
The disappearance has kept the town in a state of more or less commotion ever since the facts became known. Rumors and reports, most of them without foundation have been circulated, and the public mind has been kept in a state of unsettled expectation.
The known fact, that at any moment the little body may be found in the Willamette, or in some hidden well or hole, or that the little girl, alive and well, may be discovered in the hands of child stealers, serves to keep the disappearance constantly before the people. Developments of some sort are momentarily expected, that will solve the mystery.
Little Garnet is the daughter of John McCready, blacksmith at the carriage factory. Her grandfather is John Mills, who came to Oregon four years ago from Minnesota, lived until last year near Philomath and has since resided in Corvallis. Her mother is dead, and Garnet made her home with her grandparents, who reside across the street from Dr. Altman’s, in a house owned by Miss Kline.
Right after dinner, Wednesday, Grandfather Mills and Garnet left the home and went to the Strong place to pick cherries. It was two or three minutes after one, when they reached the cherry trees.
The time is certainly fixed, because the town clock struck one, as they neared the place, and Mr. Mills remarked to the child that they were getting a late start, within 20 or 25 minutes thereafter, Garnet was gone, and up to the present, nobody knows where, or in what way she went.
When they reached Strong’s, the grandfather mounted a ladder and began picking. The child remained on the ground below. He was in the tree long enough to pick a gallon, and then came down. Garnet was gone. He missed her but paid no attention. A block south on the St. Germain place, Mr. Mills has a garden that he and Garnet were accustomed to visit together. She often played around there, and frequently went home alone after they had gone to the garden in company. Besides, she had playmates at several houses in the vicinity, and he fancied that Garnet had gone to play with one of them.
So he mounted the ladder, and remained there until he picked another gallon of cherries. Then he went home, picking up Garnet’s bucket which sat empty on the sidewalk near.
Garnet was not at home when he arrived. She had not been there. Neither had she been at any of the neighbors. Alarmed at her absence, he started at once to places she was accustomed to visit, and for spots where she was wont to play, the garden at the St. Germain place among them. This was between two and three o’clock. All were visited, but Garnet was not found.
Neighbors were told of her disappearance and a general search was instituted. It was kept up with an increasing number of searchers until eight o’clock in the evening, when the fire bell was rung in order to spread the news throughout the town. Before darkness set in, all Corvallis knew of the disappearance, and hundreds of people were engaged in the child hunt.
Dan Reed of Wren, a boy of 15 or 16 saw the child after the grandfather climbed the cherry tree. Reed was picking cherries in the same orchard. He saw her near the gate where her bucket was found, which was near where he picked. She was playing there. and is supposed to have been there still when he stopped picking and paid Mr. Strong for his cherries.
Mr. Strong also thinks he noticed the child there at the time, but as she was a stranger, he paid but little attention. This is supposed to have happened about twenty minutes past one. Reed left the place at once and knows nothing of where the child went.
Garnet was a light-haired child, and Al Kemp saw a light haired girl of five or six years sitting on the river bank at the foot of Polk street about this time in the day. It was not long after one o’clock. He was taking his team to water. As he passed the child he asked her if she wasn’t afraid of falling in the river. She smiled and said, ‘”no.” Then she arose and passed up the slope towards the Gerber house.
The grandfather firmly believes this child was Garnet. So do many others. If it was, she traveled a block southward or little more, after leaving her grandfather and Reed.
When last seen by Kemp, she was going towards Main street, and had disappeared when he returned from the brink of the river, after watering his horses.
About that hour in the day a wagon passed the vicinity, going north, that several people claim carried a family of gypsies. Mrs. Gerber says the occupants were gypsies, Mrs, Smith at the Sargent house, talked with one of them and says the same. The reputation of gypsies as child stealers has suggested to many that possibly there is explanation of the child’s disappearance. They were in a covered wagon and drove three horses abreast, leading one horse behind One citizen, connecting their disappearance with their going, followed them, found them en camped at Albany bridge, but he did not find the child.
In the river where Garnet disappeared, there is a log boom. It extends perhaps a third of the way across the river. A block to the southward, J. H. Moore picked cherries in the Gerber orchard, about the time Mr. Mills picked in the Strong trees. He says he saw a child, answering very closely the description of Garnet, playing on the boom a considerable distance out from shore. He noticed her, because he thought the position a dangerous one for so small a child. When he looked a short time later for her she had disappeared.
Mattie Strong, picked cherries in her father’s orchard at the same time, but she says she did not see any child on the log boom.
Corvallis has had a share of strange disappearances in the past. In all the others, there was darkness and silence that goes with it as a favoring circumstance in the incident of going. In the case of little Garnet McCready, aged six, who slips from under the very eyes of numerous persons in the vicinity and all within a short span of twenty minutes there is a chapter as incomprehensible as the best told tale of romance.
Source: The Corvallis times (Corvallis, Or.), July 4, 1903.
