Praise for Mail-Order Kid
“As I read through Mail-Order Kid it was like Jessie Teresa Martin was sitting on the couch with me telling the story of her life. It is so real. I knew Jessie Teresa personally. In fact, she stayed in our home attending one of OTHSA’s reunions of Orphan Train Riders. She sat in the yard swing; her feet in the air because she was so short, and laughed as she told me about flirting with the doctors and how she loved to dance. She showed me her Star of David and told how she came to have it. Her remark was that she had all her bases covered with her Catholic upbringing and her Jewish genetics.
“Everyone who met her loved her. She was just that kind of person and Marilyn Coffey has caught the real Jessie Teresa on the pages of this book. In 1993, Jessie Teresa’s story was written by her family and submitted for publication in “Orphan Train Riders: Their Own Stories Vol. 2,” however, she always wanted her story told in more detail and called me when she knew Marilyn Coffey was writing it for her. This book fulfills her desire to have her very own life story told in a way that people can understand what it meant to her to be an ‘orphan.’ I wish she had lived long enough to autograph my copy of her book.”
—Mary Ellen Johnson
Founder and Executive Director,
Orphan Train Heritage Society of America, Inc.
“Quite fascinating, a new and unusual look
at the Orphan Train experience.”
—Pippa White
performer “The Orphan Train,”
One’s Company Productions
“An excellent job of bringing to life
a little-known part of our country’s history.”
—Sandy Hill
journalist, novelist
“A classic!”
—Kira Gale
publisher, River Junction Press
© 2010 Marilyn June Coffey. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Any similarities to other intellectual works are either coincidental or have been properly cited when the source is known. Trademarks of products, services, and organizations mentioned herein belong to their respective owners and are not affiliated with “out West” Press. The author and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused, or alleged to have been caused, directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.
ISBN-10: 0-9626317-2-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-9626317-2-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2010904120
Cataloging in Publication Data on file with publisher.
“out West” Press
13518 L St.
Omaha, NE 68137
www.Mail-OrderKid.com
Cover Photo Credits:
Orphan train, Kansas State Historical Society
Foundling tag #4, Harold Dupre, President,
Louisiana Orphan Train Society
Book Design: Gary James Withrow
Production, Distribution and Marketing: Concierge Marketing Inc.
www.ConciergeMarketing.com
“Once an orphan, always an orphan.”
Eileen Simpson
To orphan train riders and their offspring,
especially to Teresa Martin and her descendants.
Contents
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1 – Out of the Foundling, Into the Fire
Chapter 2 – Becoming a Bieker
Chapter 3 – Teacher’s Pet
Chapter 4 – Oh, Sweet Jesus!
Chapter 5 – A Ward of the Court
Chapter 6 – Little Orphan Annie
Chapter 7 – A Marriage of Convenience
Chapter 8 – Maybe I Loved Him
Chapter 9 - Oh, to be Learn-Ed!
Chapter 10 – Orphan Train Rider’s
Chapter 11 – A Foundling Orphan
Chapter 12 – Horse Thieves
Chapter 13 – The Scene of the Crime
Chapter 14 – An Endangered Species
Chapter 15 – Home Again
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Resources & References
Foreword
Two years ago, I met Marilyn Coffey and her Mail-Order Kid at the annual Nebraska Orphan Train Reunion in Fremont, Nebraska—a celebration that I organize. It didn’t take me long to recognize that Marilyn has a heart of gold. I noticed the passion with which she read an excerpt from her book about Teresa Martin, the orphan train rider featured in Mail-Order Kid. Marilyn is a bit of an actor as well as an author, and she made Teresa come alive for those of us in the audience.
When I read her well-written, earlier memoir, Great Plains Patchwork, I could see that Marilyn is not the sort of writer who sits around and dreams about being a great author, but the sort who dives into subjects that are near and dear to her heart. I also could see that Marilyn takes her time researching. She made certain that Mail-Order Kid is a book that an orphan train rider would be proud for you to read. So many orphan train books are fictional, fabricated to add spice to the story.
I am deeply committed to the orphan train movement. It touched a quarter million people in a seventy-five-year time span, yet many people are unaware that it began what we know today as foster care and adoption.
Over the years, I traveled some 15,000 miles to interview the last surviving riders. Their stories appear in my books, Plains Bound: Fragile Cargo and By Train They Came, a series. So the first thing I noticed about Mail-Order Kid was Marilyn’s in-depth interviews with her orphan train rider, Teresa Martin. I could tell that Marilyn believes what I believe: no amount of invention reads better than an orphan train rider’s own words.
The day of interviewing orphan train riders is drawing to a close. Marilyn’s Teresa Martin died in 2001, and many orphan train riders who gave me their interviews in their last, fragile, elderly years have now gone before me. I guess that’s not surprising. In October 2009, hundreds gathered in New York City to celebrate the 140th Anniversary of the New York Foundling Home. The other primary orphanage that sent children West, the Children’s Aid Society, is now 155 years old. Many people are surprised to learn that these places still exist and are still helping children, just in a different capacity today.
A dear friend and orphan train rider, Lester Davis, wanted everyone to know that the children on the trains were well fed. Church groups chipped in and made sure of that. Many times disabled children weren’t allowed to ride the train. Davis’s older sister had to stay behind in New York City. It took seventy-five years for his siblings to find each other. The train ride wasn’t a fine ride like you find at the zoo. Davis rode in a cattle car lined in cardboard from NYC to Osceola, Nebraska.
Marilyn’s orphan train rider, Teresa Martin, had some tough times as a child. Unfortunately, some children did fall upon abuse. However, had they not had the good fortune of the train ride, many children most likely would have perished on NYC streets.
Marilyn Coffey’s book, Mail-Order Kid, is in your hands for a reason. Fewer than a hundred actual orphan train riders are left nationwide to tell you their stories at www.unsungneighbors.com. Sit down a spell and let Marilyn tell you a story of a time not so long ago. Help keep this history alive, as the riders would have wanted, by sharing what you learn with a friend. Then go one step further and donate your book to a local library for others to discover.
Charlotte Endorf, author
Plains Bound: Fragile Cargo, By Train They Came series
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About Charlotte Endorf: Charlotte Endorf orchestrates her professional life around the orphan train movement. Since 2004, she has traveled more than 15,000 miles seeking surviving orphan train riders. Twenty-nine stories of this last generation of riders became a book, Plains Bound: Fragile Cargo. Endorf followed this with thirty more orphan train stories in her series By Train They Came.
A popular speaker for the Nebraska Humanities Council, Endorf is on the “high-use” list of the council’s Speakers Bureau, thanks to her Fragile Excess Baggage. This is an orphan train presentation where she appears in period attire. Endorf, a long-time member of Toastmasters International, is one of its rare “Distinguished Toastmasters.”
Organizer of the annual Nebraska Orphan Train Reunion, Endorf uses her training as a travel representative and tour guide to heighten the reunion’s renown.
Preface
“Orphan trains? What’s that?”
“Oh, you know.” My friend Renae sounded impatient. “When they brought orphans out on trains and gave them away. You could write about that.”
Write about orphan castoffs? I thought her suggestion sounded squirrelly. Surely, folks didn’t ship children to Nebraska on trains and give them away. I ignored Renae’s crackpot idea.
A few weeks later, I sat in the Nebraska Humanities Council’s Lincoln office, hoping NHC would hire me as a speaker. After thirty years in New York City, I had relocated to Nebraska in 1990, trusting that I could carve a modest living freelancing. Program Officer Mollie Fisher and I inched down my list of proposed projects, topic by topic. She listened, pressed her narrow lips tighter, and didn’t latch on to any of my ideas.
As I stood to leave, Renae’s crazy suggestion popped into my mind, so I said, “Or maybe orphan trains.”
What a quirk of fate that was!
Mollie beamed like a harvest moon. “You’d do that?”
Ignorant of what lay ahead, I gulped and agreed.
•
In the University of Nebraska’s large Lincoln library, I soon learned that indeed orphanages had shipped children by rail to Nebraska and to every other state in the United States. For seventy-five years, from 1854 to 1929, big city orphanages had relocated some 100,000 to 500,000 children. Such massive figures staggered me. That would be about four to eighteen children a day, day after day, year after year, torn from an old life and plopped down in a new one not of their choosing. How had they survived losing their metropolitan culture and being grafted onto another one, usually rural?
As I read about the people who were part of the orphan train movement, I became excited. I imagined its founding by visionary Charles Loring Brace, its application by stolid Clara Comstock and other agents, and their competition from a rival orphanage started by Sister Irene.
Then I read dozens of stories of children who rode the trains, some to terrible homes, others to marvelous ones. Most children probably ended up with indifferent families who used them as free labor. I read how children struggled to live on the city streets, about New York newsboys who rose before dawn from their street beds to hawk papers and about less fortunate girls who turned to prostitution and often to suicide.
To my surprise, not all of these children were orphans—that is, children with no parents. More than half had at least one parent; about a quarter had two. But Brace’s Children’s Aid Society (CAS) had no compunction about relocating indigent children who had living parents. Or about splitting up families.
The most horrible story I read about children separated from parents was one I called “Henrietta’s Mother.” She placed her toddler in a daycare center. But her employer had other ideas; she arranged with the center to send the child on an orphan train to Exeter, Nebraska. Despite the mother’s desperate search for Henrietta, she could not find her.
Henrietta’s mother haunted me. I imagined impersonating her the way Chautauqua performers impersonate historical figures such as Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson, or Louisa May Alcott. When I tried out my idea in a nearby school, it went well. Soon I put together a program called “Orphan Train Riders” and impersonated Henrietta’s mother, Clara Comstock, Charles Loring Brace, Sister Irene, and many children riders. To do this, I dressed in black and switched characters by changing hats (and in the case of Brace, donning a beard).
Schools and other organizations received this program eagerly. It was the second most popular NHC program during 1991–95, the span of years that the humanities council offered it.
As I trudged from school to school, I continued to wonder about these orphans. What happened to them? Oh, I knew that some were happy in their new homes and some were not, that some were educated and others not, that many grew up to marry and have children but others not. But how had being relocated influenced their lives?
I wished I could interview an orphan train rider, but the chances of that seemed slim. Most were dead or dying, and the few I had met either lived in remote Nebraska villages or were not inclined to discuss their experiences.
•
After I realized that performing for NHC could not support me, I accepted a teaching position at Fort Hays State University in 1992 and moved to Hays, Kansas. The local paper, The Hays Daily News, publicized my continuing orphan train activities. That first semester, I gave programs in sixteen Nebraska towns. I visited libraries, women’s clubs, an art group, a museum, and many schools, including some colleges,
Then one day, I picked up a small square hand-addressed envelope from a Mrs. Teresa Martin, an orphan train rider, and out fell a note penned by an ancient hand: “How can you lecture on orphan trains when you’ve never heard my story?”
I chuckled. Mrs. Martin was right. There I was, an orphan train “expert,” and I’d never interviewed an orphan train rider. But how could I find time with full-time teaching and my NHC contract, due to run until 1995? Finally, I said, “Okay. I’ll go hear what she has to say. But only for twenty minutes tops.”
Smiling at her Hays apartment door and standing ramrod straight was Mrs. Martin, a tiny, trim, smartly dressed woman. She seemed so young! Her curly hair was not beauty-parlor black but actual black. Sprinkled with a little salt but still mostly pepper.
Inside, books, magazines, and newspapers cluttered her small living room. Fliers, stacked high on tables and chairs, drifted down the sofa. Mrs. Martin was, I discovered, a retired librarian, having worked as children’s librarian in the Hays Public Library and, later, as a medical librarian in many Denver hospitals. She led me to a closet where wobbly stacks of paper carpeted the floor and gestured. “That’s my life in there.”
We piled her papers on the only possible place—her floor—and looked at them. “Nearly everything’s there,” she said. “But I can’t figure out how to put it together.”
The challenge hooked me. We sorted documents by date, and three hours passed before I noticed the time.
Meeting weekly, we continued our work. We became warm friends, even though she was eighty-seven and I only in my late fifties. She became “Teresa” to me instead of “Mrs. Martin.” We went to see the Hays Medical Center’s medical library where she worked part-time. We visited the Ellis County Historical Society to read about Volga Germans; the Foundling orphanage had placed Teresa with a Volga German family. Intrepid researchers, she and I haunted the local and university libraries.
We drove to Schoenchen, the tiny Volga German village in Kansas where Teresa grew up. It looked like a doll’s town, so isolated, its houses so small. The church, in contrast, was huge with fine lines, beautiful in an austere way. Then we visited the cemetery and stood at the graves of the two people who had taken Teresa in and treated her so poorly.
Week after week, we talked and she read what I had written. Slowly Mail-Order Kid took form. Once when I wrote a scene, I used my imagination as well as Teresa’s memory to create it. As usual, I read the scene to Teresa. “What do you think?”
“Oh,” she beamed, “it makes my life alive again!”
So I balanced her a
cute memory, our research, and my imagination to complete Mail-Order Kid.
•
Mail-Order Kid is a story of transformation. This biography depicts how the abuse Teresa experienced as a child weakened her self-esteem. It shows how she at first accepted this self-deprecation and then fought it until, through her efforts and the love of others, she no longer needed to apologize for having ridden an orphan train.
This book is the first orphan train rider biography written for adult readers. Unlike typical juvenile biographies that focus on the train ride and the orphan’s placement, Mail-Order Kid follows the entire arc of Teresa’s experience. We see not only the train ride and the placement, but also the effect they had on Teresa as an adult.
Readers will find this biography easy to believe, since the subject of the book, Teresa Martin, read and approved every page of it, except the pages about her final illness and death.
As for me, I learned a lot writing Mail-Order Kid, both as an author and a human being. As an author, I learned about the necessity for trust in researching a biography. If Teresa and I didn’t have confidence in one another, she never could have revealed to me some of the details of her life, especially painful ones. As a human, I learned from Teresa the value of genuine humility. In her lack of pretension, she showed me the joy of connecting with other people by not putting herself above them—or below them.
Marilyn June Coffey
Int
roduction
“We are our own self-healers.”
Mail-Order Kid: An Orphan Train Rider's Story Page 1