“The Foundling has no authority in Mexico,” Sister Anna said.
“Begging your pardon, but the Foundling's authority hasn't counted for much in Clifton. And that's still in the United States.”
Sister Anna frowned, and she suddenly seemed older and more discouraged. Rory dropped her eyes to the floor. After a moment, Sister Anna tilted Rory's chin up so she could see Rory's face. “Do you want to go to Mexico?”
Rory nodded. “Ramon put himself in harm's way to protect us. And he has a sense of duty too. Even though he wanted us to go to Mexico this morning, he stayed to help you and the others.” Rory fingered her mother's necklace. “We're already a family.”
“Yes, I can see that.” Sister Anna hesitated. “But I saw such a bright future for you in New York.”
“I appreciated the offer, truly I did, Sister,” Rory said. “But it went out the window when I thought of leaving Violet.”
“Since the day I met you, everything you've done has been about Violet.”
Rory lifted her shoulders. “She's my sister.”
Sister Anna nodded. “I worried at first. Your attachment was almost too strong. I knew from experience we might have to separate you and I wondered how you would survive. But you were so clever—and worked so hard to stay with her. We laughed at all your little tricks to be useful. Indispensable even.”
Rory stared. “You knew?”
“Of course. But Rory, what you don't understand is that you can't fake goodness. You are a good girl. And you proved it today. You stayed to help us even though it would have been safer for you and Violet to just go.” Sister Anna turned her head away to look out the window. “I want you to know how proud I am of you. You are a true daughter of the Foundling and you will always have a place there.”
“But I'm still going to Mexico with Ramon and Elena,” Rory said stubbornly.
Sister Anna burst out laughing. “You'll go whether I give you permission or not, won't you?”
“I'd rather have it,” Rory said solemnly.
“Before I give my blessing, I want to speak to Mr. Martinez,” Sister Anna said.
“But …”
“Rory, I insist. For once, you are going to let the adults who love you make decisions for you. You can trust us.”
Rory stared down at her hands, rather than meet Sister Anna's watchful gaze. Did Sister Anna know that a warmth in her belly was spreading throughout her whole body? It would be grand to be taken care of! In her most respectful voice, Rory asked, “May I know what you will say to Ramon?”
“I'm going to insist that I always know how to find you.” Rory started to protest but Sister Anna silenced her with a steely glance. “For my personal records only. I'll send you news of the Foundling so you won't forget us. And more importantly, I'll send books so you can continue your education.” She paused. “There's one more thing …”
“Yes?”
“I'll make sure Mr. Martinez knows that you and Violet can return to the Foundling at any time. And perhaps, if you wish, when you are eighteen, you can come back and work for me.”
Rory did the sums quickly. She would be eighteen in six years. By then Violet would be almost twelve, the same age Rory was now. By then her little sister would be able to take care of herself.
“I can still have the job?” she asked breathlessly. “Really?”
“Really,” Sister Anna said. “Now, promise me you will write.”
“Sister, you're my other family. I promise.”
“There might be questions about Violet,” Sister Anna mused. “We'll have to adjust our paperwork so no one, either in New York or Clifton, questions where Violet is. You were never listed in our documents, so that's no problem.”
Rory stared at Sister Anna with new admiration. “You'd fib in your official record for me?”
“I will have to—otherwise, someone might come looking for you and Violet.” With a tired smile, Sister Anna said, “Luckily, Mrs. Chacon has already confused my records beyond all recognition. That will be an excellent excuse.”
Rory looked up at this woman who had been her touchstone ever since her mother died. Never had she loved or respected Sister Anna more than in this moment. On an overwhelming impulse, she threw her arms around Sister Anna and hugged her tightly. Sister Anna stiffened.
“I love you, Sister Anna,” Rory whispered.
Slowly Sister Anna hugged her back. “I love you, too, Rory.”
Rory felt a dampness against her cheek but she dismissed it as her imagination. Sister Anna never cried.
Early the next morning, before the sun rose, the children ate their breakfast quietly in their rooms. A few asked about their missing friends, but most responded to the Sisters’ mood and were quiet.
Sister Anna managed to meet with Ramon in the barbershop. When she returned, she seemed content. Rory was satisfied.
Their bags were packed and the children were dressed in their playclothes. A knock on the door revealed Sheriff Simpson and two men.
“It's time, Sister,” he said.
The Sisters and nurses brought the children downstairs to the empty lobby. Mr. Mills's men waited outside to escort them to the train a block away. Rory wondered why they bothered since the streets were empty. After everything they had seen in Clifton, Rory found the silence unnerving. Sister Anna didn't seem to notice as she marshaled the adults and their charges like a general moving troops on a battlefield.
At the station, their car was hitched to an engine puffing smoke. Not a moment was wasted getting the children on board. Rory helped until only a few children remained. Poised on the steps into the car, she met Sister Anna's eyes. Sister Anna nodded.
Rory slung the sack with Violet's and her clothes over her back. She hopped off the steps on the side of the train away from the station platform. She ducked down low and ran to a shed on the far side of the tracks. Ramon was waiting out of sight.
Nothing needed to be said. He led Rory through a maze of alleys and back streets until they reached a narrow track that went into the hills above town. They met no one, which was exactly what Ramon and Rory wanted. Elena and Violet were waiting. In a few minutes Rory was seated on a horse behind Ramon. Elena and Violet were perched on a donkey, except that Elena called it a burro. Vi was in heaven; she loved any kind of animal. Behind them were two more burros loaded with household goods and clothing.
The track was narrow and there was a sheer drop to the rocks below. A part of Rory thought she should be afraid of the steep cliff. But for the first time in a very long while, Rory decided to trust someone else to look after them. She leaned forward, her arms wrapped around Ramon's middle, and let him take care of the family. At the top of the valley, Ramon reined in his horse to look back and down.
The sun was rising higher in the sky, outshining the glow from the smelters. From here the odor of the sulfur was not as strong as it had been as they climbed the canyon. They could see the train station far below them. The Foundling car that had seemed so luxurious and secure on the trip west looked small and vulnerable. There was a faint sound of a train whistle. The train slipped away slowly, carrying Rory's old life with it.
Looking south toward Mexico the sky was clear and there was a golden haze in the distance. The only green was from trees along the banks of a far-off river, but in the distance a hawk was floating on the breeze. From Rory's perspective at the top of the canyon, Mexico looked a lot better than Clifton.
She touched Ramon's arm. “Let's go,” she said.
“Where're we going, Rory?” Violet called.
“Home.”
A NOTE TO THE READER
RORY'S PROMISE is based on a true story.
Between 1853 and 1929, 250,000 orphaned, abandoned, or homeless children were placed on Orphan Trains from eastern cities to go west. The majority of children were sponsored by the Children's Aid Society of New York (CAS). The children would arrive in town and a local charitable organization would organize an event where anyone with a good re
putation who wanted a child could have one.
The Foundling, a Catholic institution, designed their orphan program very differently. Their most important concern was to keep the children with Catholic families. The CAS did not place children with families of the same faith. In our story, you can see how Brigid's placement was very different from Violet's.
None of the orphan organizations had ever placed children in Arizona prior to the time of our story. But when a priest assigned to the towns of Clifton and Morenci offered homes for forty children in response to a letter from the Foundling's agent, George Swayne, the Sisters were convinced to go to Clifton without any firsthand knowledge. The Foundling had to rely on letters and expensive telegrams for their information.
Father Constant Mandin was a young French priest newly appointed to temporarily serve the Catholic population of Clifton and Morenci. He did not speak English or Spanish and was unaware of the tensions between the Mexicans and Anglos in town. To many Anglos, the Mexicans were a lower, and despised, class of persons. Father Mandin was not prepared for the reaction of the Anglos to the placement of Irish Catholic children with Hispanic Catholics.
Many of the events in Rory's Promise occurred. The scene with the angry white women on the station platform was based on eyewitness reports. The Anglo women assumed they could have a child for the asking. They did not understand that the Foundling had already selected families from among Father Mandin's Mexican Catholic parishioners. So not only were they disappointed to find there were no children available; they were furious that the beautiful fair-haired children had been promised to Mexican working-class families.
Their eagerness to adopt was driven by the high rate of infant mortality in the copper mining towns. The 1900 census shows an Anglo woman had a 24 percent chance of losing one child and a 10.5 percent chance of losing two or more. The statistics were even more tragic for the Mexicans. A young woman like Elena had a 48 percent chance of losing her first child and a 28.5 percent chance of losing two or more. Not surprisingly, emotions ran high when the Foundling brought forty children to town.
The scene where the posse takes the children from their home in a driving rainstorm is based on eyewitness accounts. One adoptive father resisted the posse's demands with a rifle.
Also true to life is the scene in which Rory overhears the crowd threatening Agent Swayne and Father Mandin with lynching. The Sisters were also in danger. Sister Anna's room was overrun with angry Anglo women just as it happened in Rory's Promise. Of course, in real life, there was no quick-witted Rory to trick the women into leaving.
To the Foundling officials, their charges had been kidnapped. Sister Anna did not want to leave Clifton without them, but it became clear the Foundling representatives were not safe. To ensure the safety of the remaining children, she took them back for placement elsewhere. Just as she did in Rory's Promise, Sister Anna was forced to agree to the adoptions of three children to ensure safe passage for the priest, Mr. Swayne, and the other children. She assumed she was only abandoning the sixteen children temporarily; as soon as she returned to New York she would enlist the courts to get them back.
In January 1905, the Foundling Sisters, nurses, and Swayne went to the Territorial Supreme Court in Phoenix, Arizona. They fully expected the court to restore the orphans to their lawful guardian, the Foundling. To the Sisters’ dismay, the judge decided that since the business of the Foundling was to get homes for the children and this had been accomplished, he chose not to disturb the ones already in Arizona. Swayne complained the judge never considered the children were taken from the Foundling by force. No mention was made of the loss of the children's Catholic heritage. From a modern perspective, it seems the court was saying implicitly that despite how the Anglo families got the children, they would be better parents than the Mexicans.
The Foundling's attorneys objected to the Arizona court verdict at once. The case was taken to the United States Supreme Court in Washington, which dismissed the Foundling appeal on a technicality. The case attracted national attention. In newspapers across the country there were pictures of the orphans looking extremely well dressed, implying they were happy with their new families. Other newspapers had very negative opinions about the orphan abductions in Arizona.
Of the eight Anglo women who organized the kidnappings, seven took and kept orphans. It is unknown what happened to the rest. All their names were changed. However, one Mexican family may have kept their orphan. A persistent rumor circulated in Clifton that many years after the 1904 incident a Mexican family returned to the area with their redhaired daughter. The truth of the rumor cannot be confirmed. In 1914, the Clifton postmaster, E. J. Lehman, decided to find out more about the orphans. He wasn't able to learn much but he discovered a discrepancy in the lists of names. There was one orphan not accounted for. Her name was Violet. This was the germ of the idea that led to Rory and Violet's story.
For the sake of the plot, we increased the time it took to travel from Exchange Place in New Jersey to Philadelphia. Also, the actual events that inspired Rory's Promise took place in two towns, Clifton and Morenci. For simplicity, we combined all the action and set the story in Clifton. For example, the Clifton Hotel is based on the Morenci Hotel. We also changed the location of the smelter so Rory could see it when she travels between the train station and the church. Despite the liberties we took with some of the details, we feel we have the essential history correct.
Sister Anna Michaella Bowen is as true to her life as we can make her from the distance of more than one hundred years. She was forty-one in 1904, spent much of her career supervising the orphan placement program for the Foundling, and in 1917 became the Foundling's director. Sister Eileen is invented. We wanted Rory to have a companion close to her age. The two nuns who actually traveled with Sister Anna to Clifton in 1904 were both over fifty.
Mrs. Gatti was based on eyewitness accounts and her testimony in court. Mrs. Chacon was indispensable to Father Mandin, acting as his translator and assistant.
Ramon and Elena Martinez are fictional characters we created to be the parents Rory and Violet deserved.
Rory is an invented character, as is Violet and all the other children and staff at the Foundling and on the orphan trains. Rory's arrival at the Foundling, baby sister in tow, was not the norm for the Foundling. Most of the children were dropped off by abandoning parents or found on the street. Almost certainly in history Rory would not have been permitted to stay with Violet in the Foundling nursery as long as she did in our story. But then, few siblings were as determined as Rory.
A NOTE ABOUT OUR SOURCES/FURTHER READING*
About the Orphan Trains
There is an excellent website devoted to the history of the Orphan Trains. It is orphantraindepot.org, managed by the National Orphan Train Complex. The site is “dedicated to the preservation of the stories and artifacts of those who were part of the Orphan Train Movement from 1854–1929.”
Andrea Warren, author of We Rode the Orphan Trains (HMH Books for Young Readers, 2001), focuses on one child who rode a train in 1926. The child's story is interwoven with general history about the Children's Aid Society orphan train program.
Elizabeth Raum, author of Orphan Trains: An Interactive History Adventure (Capstone Press, 2011), lets you sample a variety of outcomes for an orphan train trip. Some of them are really sad.
Marilyn Irvin Holt's Children of theWestern Plains: The Nineteenth-Century Experience (Ivan R. Dee, American Childhoods Series, 2003) has wonderful photographs and a good narrative on what it was like to be a child on the American frontier. Although the book focuses on the nineteenth century, Arizona Territory was still the frontier well into the twentieth century. Another Holt book, The Orphan Trains: Placing Out in America (Bison Books, 1992), has commentary from orphans on what it was like to ride the trains.
About the Foundling Hospital and New York City in 1904
Primary records about the Foundling are available online at nyhistory.org/library/rese
arch. Most moving are the notes that parents left with their orphans on placement with the Foundling.
Martin Gottlieb's The Foundling: The Story of the New York Foundling Hospital (Lantern Books, 2001) covers parts of our story. If you want to learn how the Sisters of Charity created the Foundling in the nineteenth century, there is Maureen Fitzgerald's Habits of Compassion: Irish Catholic Nuns and the Origins of New York's Welfare System, 1830–1920 (University of Illinois Press, Women in American History, 2006). For the Foundling's current activities see its website: nyfoundling.org.
* * *
*Websites active at time of publication
If you want more information on life in New York City in the very early days of the twentieth century, look at Raymond Bial's Tenement: Immigrant Life on the Lower East Side (HMH Books for Young Readers, 2002) and Deborah Hopkinson's Shutting Out the Sky: Life in the Tenements of New York, 1880–1924 (Orchard Books, Jane Addams Honor Book Awards, 2003). An older book, John Grafton's New York in the Nineteenth Century: 321 Engravings from “Harper's Weekly” and Other Contemporary Sources (Dover Publications, 1977), has images of many of the places we describe. Jacob A. Riis, a famed New York photographer, in Children of the Tenements (1897; republished Cornell University Library, 2010), tells the story of life for children on these very mean streets during Rory's time.
About the Kidnapping in Clifton and Morenci
There are two books about the 1904 events in Clifton and Morenci, Arizona Territory: Linda Gordon's The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction (Harvard University Press, 1999) and Anthony Blake Brophy's Foundlings on the Frontier: Racial and Religious Conflict in Arizona Territory, 1904–1905 (University of Arizona Press, 1972).
Gordon divided her book into chapters on what happened in Arizona and what the orphan incident meant for the region. The book also delves into race relations between Anglos and Hispanics, the role of copper in developing Arizona, and labor disputes in mining camps, and tells a great story to boot.
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