Nearly half a century after she was abandoned as a newborn, one Pittsburgh woman found herself looking into the face of a baby whose story closely resembled her own.
In December 1861, she had been discovered at Union Station, only two weeks old, sitting in a basket on a bitterly cold day. A Civil War soldier found her and turned her over to police. His wife later adopted the child and raised her as her own.
By 1910, that abandoned baby had grown into a married woman with a good home and a life she credited to the kindness of strangers.
Then she learned that another infant had been left at Union Station.
She went to a local foundling asylum and begged to adopt the baby, hoping to give the child the same second chance she had received nearly 50 years earlier.
Abandoned As Babe, Wants A Foundling
PITTSBURG, Pennsylvania. — One bitter cold day in December, 1861, a soldier of the Civil War, on his way to the South to join his regiment, found an abandoned baby girl, two weeks old, in a chip basket on a seat in an old Union Station. The big blue eyes and smiling face of the infant appealed to the soldier, but he was on his way to war, and so turned the child over to the police.
A month later, the soldier’s wife, learning of the innocent babe’s plight through a letter from her husband, adopted the child and took it to her home near Pitcairn. It was reared and cared for with the love of a mother, and, finally growing to womanhood, married.
Several days ago, the foundling of ’61 walked into the Rosalia Foundling Asylum, on Cliff Street, and asked permission to adopt the infant abandoned by its mother in Union Station, under circumstances almost identical to her own case.
“My heart aches for that infant, because I was abandoned by my real mother and was found in a basket, hungry and sick. A good family adopted me and I was reared and educated and made happy. I want to make this poor little one’s life just as happy as mine has been. Won’t you please help me to get this baby,” sobbed the woman to the matron at Union Station yesterday.
The matron referred her to St. Rosalia’s Foundling Asylum on Cliff Street, and there she begged the sisters for nearly two hours to allow her to take charge of the infant.
The good sisters of the institution were impressed with the woman’s story, but informed her that it was the custom to keep an abandoned child for at least two months, as the mother might in the future claim the baby. With the assurance that at the expiration of that period her request would be considered, the woman left for her home, but promised to return frequently to visit the babe.
When she was shown the abandoned babe she lifted it into her arms and caressed it. When asked her name the woman, with tears in her eyes, said:
“There are few who know the story of my life, and I wish to keep it a secret. Nobody, but a very few, knows that the woman who reared me from infancy is not my mother. I think I am much entitled to take this babe in charge, because my case was so similar, and therefore I would appreciate the poor little one’s predicament and care for it with motherly love.”
Source: Carrizozo News. Carrizozo, N.M. January 14, 1910.
