Lenawee County History: More information, but sister mystery remains
Last week, I wrote about a long-time mystery I had been trying to solve — what happened more than 100 years ago to two young girls being adopted by a Rollin Township family?
I came across a picture scan I had of the kids as I was updating my 100 GB database of digitized Lenawee County images. Remembering the research I had done years ago, I decided to bring the mystery to the forefront to see if anyone may have information on the girls’ fate.
Several years ago, I keyword-searched the digitized Daily Telegram newspapers but nothing returned. Perhaps the search system has improved since then, because the day after the column appeared with great reader interest, I made another search and got one result: “Children disappear from Rollin school,” referencing the taking of Esther and Anna from school on Dec. 10, 1919.
Ah, the “sausage-making” part of research. You always tend to find something after you concede you can’t find anything. As I learned Jan. 11, the net just was not cast wide enough. The digitized article is somewhat contrasted, which oftentimes makes keyword searches difficult.
What little information I had came from a now-deceased researcher, and a student witness, Meader Stevens. While Stevens had a pin-sharp memory until he died in 2008 just three weeks shy of turning 100, he said he was 7 years old at the time the girls disappeared, making the year 1915. My research went a couple years in either direction, 1913 to 1917, just to be sure. Nearly all my footwork was manually going through old newspapers and microfilm, to no avail. Since the kidnapping actually happened in 1919, Stevens would have been 11.
Seven, 11, perhaps he misspoke or that part of his memory had faded; perhaps I misheard. Whatever the case may be, I now have a dated newspaper article confirming the incident.
More:Lenawee County History: What happened to Esther and Anna?
Anna, 6, and Esther, 8, were brought from Columbus, Ohio, around 1917 by the Rev. F. J. Cope of the Adrian Friends Church. The girls, last name Smith, were housed at the Rescue Home for Girls in Columbus. Their father had died and their mother had abandoned them, making them homeless. They were taken in by Emerson and Rose Beal, and by 1919 the adoption process was in the works. Because the process was close to completion, they were referred by family and friends as Anna and Esther Beal.
In early December 1919, a man who identified himself as the girls' uncle, B.F. Smith, showed up at the Beal home near the corner of Rollin Highway and Quaker Road, asking the family to give the girls to him. The Beals refused, and Smith left.
About a week later, as class was getting ready to dismiss for the day at the Rollin District 3 "Quaker" school, a man appeared at the classroom and requested Anna and Esther come with him. The girls did just that, leaving behind their school effects. When the girls did not come home to the farm, Emerson and Rose learned what had happened. Security measures that are common practice today did not exist. The girls did not protest the removal from school, and witnesses said they responded as if they knew who was taking them away.
In a telephone call with the Telegram at the time, Emerson Beal would not say whether a search for the girls was in the works. Further searches turned up no new information; neither Emerson's nor Rose's obituaries decades later mention the girls as daughters, suggesting the likelihood the Beals conceded Anna and Esther were gone.
A look into "B.F. Smith" through online research portals gets a number of returns, but if the girls retained their names and if they went to Ohio, there is a chance their fate can be found. Several people are independently looking into the matter, and if something comes of it, I will provide an update in a future column.
Dan Cherry is a Lenawee County historian.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Lenawee County History: More information, but sister mystery remains
