The Williamsport Home For The Friendless 1872-Present
Today The Williamsport Home
"The Home for the Friendless, a philanthropic institution, was founded by the ladies of Williamsport in 1872. It affords a home for aged and infirm ladies, as well as children and infants. The building is a neat brick structure and cost $10,322.62. It has accommodations for fifty persons. The State aided it with appropriations amounting to $5,000, but it has to look largely to the liberality and charity of the citizens for maintenance. The Home is governed by a lady superintendent under the direction of a board of lady directors. It has been well managed from the beginning and has done much good." - Meginness, History of Lycoming County, 1892
.jpg)
The Home had several locations over the decades. The building shown above was located on Campbell street and Rural Avenue.
==========================
There are MANY histories of this home already written, so rather than repeat them, I will simply list them, along with photos, and a few stories
=========================
The idea for the Home came from a talk given by John Wanamaker, founder of John Wanamaker and Sons department store in Philadelphia, given at Pine Street Methodist Church on November 18, 1872.
"The primary inspiration for the Woman’s Christian Association came from women who were active in several Protestant churches in Williamsport. The city was in the midst of a lumber boom, one of the greatest in the history of the nation, and was growing rapidly. A group of Christian women had been considering “for some time” the possibility of helping meet the physical and spiritual needs of young women who were moving to town from nearby rural communities in search of work.
They had not yet decided on a way to accomplish this when some of them attended a meeting at Pine Street Methodist Church on November 18, 1872, at the invitation of H. Howard Otto, one of the leaders of the recently organized Young Men’s Christian Association. He had arranged for John Wanamaker, founder of John Wanamaker and Sons department store in Philadelphia, who was in town for a meeting of the YMCA, to speak to them. One of the women remembered that Wanamaker had made a “most touching appeal.”
Building on Campbell, and Erie [Memorial] Avenue
The women’s readiness to act combined with Wanamaker’s appeal stimulated them to create the Association. They set about writing a Constitution, which was necessary to obtain a Charter of Incorporation from the County, and By-Laws.
The legal process took about a year and was completed on November 26, 1873, with the able assistance of “the legal gentleman who has served us so many times without charge.” He was most certainly attorney James M. Wood who signed his name to the legal document as the Solicitor for the Petitioner. His wife Lou was a charter member of the Association, and he was a prominent member of the Williamsport community having served as its first mayor in 1866.
Home For The Friendless, Rural Avenue & Campbell Street
The text of Wanamaker’s speech has not been found but the substance of it can be inferred from the mission the women adopted for their Association. Its “Object” as defined in its Constitution, was to provide ways “of rendering aid, temporary, moral and religious, especially to young women, who are dependent on their own exertions for support.”4 Specifically, the members of the Board of Managers, “assisted by the members of the Association,” were: to seek out women, taking up their residence in Williamsport, and endeavor to bring them under moral and religious influence – by aiding them in the selection of suitable boarding houses and employment, by introducing them to the members and privileges of this Association. Encouraging their attendance at some place of worship and by every means in their power, surrounding them with Christian associates."
======================="Elderly women had to be over 65 years of age and have no other means of support. An initial sum of money - $500 in 1899 - was due upon acceptance and money was also requested of each to pay for future funeral expenses.
Children were admitted to the Home for the Friendless for a limited period of time. Although age guidelines changed over the years, children had to have either only one or no parents. The parent or guardian was to pay for board and shoes when they were able. Often the children returned to their families when their family situation stabilized." Lycoming County Women's History Project
The Presidents and other members of the Home were consistent in their praise of the matrons for good reason. They realized, as President Hepburn said on one occasion, how “difficult and arduous” the job was. She could have used stronger language because one of the matron’s primary jobs was to enforce the Home’s policies for running the house, called “The Rules.” The officers, perhaps with help from the
Managers, had created them at least as early as the move to the Campbell Street location. In 1877 they were:
The inmates of the Home are required to observe the following rules:
1. Implicit obedience to the matron.
2. The matron shall preside at the table and ask a blessing before each meal.
3. All inmates shall attend family worship, except in the case of sickness.
4. All must perform cheerfully duties required by the matron, and at all times deport themselves with obedient respect.
5. No one shall be permitted to leave the Home, unless in case of urgent necessity, when permission may be given by the matron for a limited absence; nor to be absent after dark.
6. Neatness in dress and person; also, perfect order in their rooms.
7. Perfect courtesy, in word and action, toward each other; no tale-bearing or mischief-making; any infringement of this regulation shall be reported to the managers.
8. Doors shall be locked at eight o’clock, and inmates retire at nine o’clock.
9. The children shall be subject to the control of the matron, only.
10. Parents and others coming to the Home as visitors, or inmates, shall not interfere with the management of the children in any respect, neither shall they give them candies, fruits, nuts or cakes,
without the consent or knowledge of the matron; furthermore they must stay in the rooms assigned to them.
11. The matron shall be required to read these rules to each person upon entering the Home, and see that they are enforced.
12.Visitors shall be received on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday of each week between the hours of three and five p.m.
These remained the Rules for years. A list of them in 1893 was identical except for no. 12. It is likely that specifying the visiting days became too hard to enforce as the number of residents increased, more of them coming from outside the Williamsport area.
==============
LOCATIONS
==============
1873 - Rented House on Pine Street. Small, used for just two months. Moved to 136 E. 3rd Street.
Campbell Street and Erie [Memorial] Avenue
1874 - Peter Herdic donated a lot on the corner of Campbell Street and Erie Avenue [today Memorial Avenue]. Eber Culver, prominent Williamsport Architect, Designed the new home. The cornerstone was laid on June 23rd 1875. This new building was used from 1876-1899.
In January of 1895 the Home purchased a lot from the Vallamont land company at the corner of Campbell street and Rural Avenue, for $6,000. The new home building was designed by Thomas P. Lonsdale, an architect from Philadelphia. Lonsdale has recently completed Bradley Hall on the grounds of Dickinson Seminary. The Home moved to its new location at 904 Campbell Street on January 4, 1899. It remained there through 1922.
================
READ MORE
================
1904 Home For The Friendless Fete
In 1904, Williamsport's Home For The Friendless hosted a Fete.
The line up of entertainment appears to be very similar to that of the Dime Museums, as if included Lady Samson, The $10,000 Beauty, the Snake Charmer, A Tattooed man, and, or course, a tight rope walker.
Altonna Tribune, 1901
========================
OFFICERS
[Included for search purposes]
The women organized their Association around an annual
meeting. They elected a group of officers and standing
committees. The primary action item at the annual meetings
was the election of officers. The President, Treasurer, and
Corresponding Secretary were the key officers and their
reports were the main ones at the annual meetings. The
founding members created in addition to these groups a
Board of Managers, which included members chosen from
Protestant churches. The first officers were: President, Adelia
Swartz (Mrs. Rev. Joel); Vice Presidents, M. Alcesta Reiley
(Mrs. Rev. J. McKendree) and Caroline Clapp (Mrs. T. L.);
Recording Secretary, Miss Lizzie Updegraff; Corresponding
Secretary, Frances Dayton (Mrs. John E.); Treasurer, Elizabeth
Hepburn (Mrs. William); and Assistant Treasurer, Sarah
McDowell (Mrs. Lewis).11 Before the first year was over both
vice presidents had left the city and were replaced by Cordelia
Ayres (Mrs. J. J.) and Encie Herdic (Mrs. Peter). Mary Miller
(Mrs. H. C.) took Lizzie Updegraff’s place and Moriah Noble
(Mrs. S. J.) stepped in for Frances Dayton. After these initial
changes the leadership remained quite stable, with many
officers serving for twenty or more years, sometimes in
different roles, establishing a pattern which continued until
1939. When Adelia Swartz left the Association in 1875 to
follow her Lutheran pastor husband to a new appointment in
Harrisburg, Encie Herdic moved up from Vice President and
remained President until 1881. On that occasion Elizabeth
Hepburn moved from Treasurer to President. When she
resigned because of poor health in 1905, Anne Perley (Mrs.
Allen) succeeded her and was the leader of the Home until she
died in 1934. Bessie Clapp (Mrs. H. Forest), who was serving
as a vice president, took her place. There is no evidence of a
contested election in the history of the Home.
===================
The 1890 Scandal
It was in the context of admissions that the Home became involved in a most dramatic and tragic event. In early April, 1890, someone discovered the body of a two or three week old girl on the bank of the Susquehanna River near Academy Street. The Sheriff launched an investigation which led to a Mrs. Beck, who had “given birth at the Williamsport Hospital in March.”63At first she denied the child was hers, but later acknowledged it and revealed that her real name was Hattie (Harriet) Aderhold. She confessed she had thrown her baby in the river in a moment of despair, and had then tried to save it but failed. The Sheriff arrested her for murder, and she was held for trial in December. The story she told at the trial was confirmed by the testimony of others. She was from nearby Warrensville, where her father was a miller and successful farmer. She had gone to visit her grandmother in Ohio where the father of the child had “‘forced himself on her.’” When she returned home her father refused to let her live there in her condition. After she had the child, under an assumed name, she and her mother went in search of help. One place they visited was the Home for the Friendless, which had turned her away despite her offer to pay for her child’s care. Her father, despite his earlier rejection of his daughter, hired an attorney. Witness after witness, teachers, relatives and friends, described Hattie as not of normal intelligence or dimwitted. The jury acquitted her, deciding that she was not capable of distinguishing right from wrong. At the time of the trial the editor of The Grit wrote a stinging rebuke of the decision of the Home for the Friendless to turn Hattie away. Does this mean, he questioned, that rumors about the Home were true, “that it is only the moneyed friendless who could expect to be cared for in that institution?” Indeed, it seemed to the author that the Home had a “code of requirements that closes the doors of the home to many deserving persons.” Hattie Aderhold “is a striking example of the inhumanity that governs at the Home for the Friendless.” The author rolled on, claiming that after the Home denied her child care, Hattie left “friendless and alone,” and in her frenzy she sacrificed her innocent child “simply because of the regulations of the Home for the Friendless.” “Ye gods,” the editor concluded, “was there ever such a mockery? Was any charitable institution ever so misnamed?”64 The officers responded quickly, without question stunned by the intensity of the attack. Their account of the event revealed that they saw the situation in terms of their admission policies They wrote a Card of Explanation which they sent to all the newspapers, in which they explained their view of the event. The previous spring, they said, two women brought a baby girl to the Campbell Street house and sought admission for the child. They apparently did not introduce themselves. The matron met them and after listening to their request said that she had no authority to admit the child. She referred them to the committee on admissions, and gave them the name and address of the person to contact. The officers of the Home had no record of contact from the two women and the committee on admissions never received a request to care for the child. They defended the matron and cited their admission procedures. It was unfortunate that the officers did not stop there. The testimony at the trial, they continued, revealed that Hattie’s father “showed a nature devoid of the parental instinct of the lowest of the brute creation.” They also pointed out that the Home had never been “either a lying-in, foundling, or Magdalen hospital,” but that it had helped find homes for such infants “and to place the mothers in a self-supporting situation,” and had also sought to “bring to justice the guilty fathers, as some have found to their sorrow.”65 The editor of The Grit took exception to the response of the officers. Feeling he had been accused of “sensationalism”, he went on the attack. Fresh in the minds of many people, he claimed, was a recent incident at the Home, similar enough to the Aderhold case to warrant comparison to it. One night someone left a baby at the Home with a fifty dollar bill attached. Within two days, the editor claimed, surely exaggerating the incident, everyone knew who the mother and the “putative” father were. Both were members of “the aristocracy of Williamsport,” and perfectly able to pay for the child’s care. The editor continued, “Was this woman’s child refused admittance to the home? Was the ‘guilty father’ in this instance brought to justice, or was any attempt made to bring him to justice?” Did, in fact, the officers of the Home investigate this case before they accepted the child? As he closed his argument the editor softened his tone, suggesting that all the Home needed to do was show a little more charity and use a little less red tape in emergency situations.66 There is no evidence that this event harmed the reputation of the Home; however, in their response the officials had failed to live up to the Christian admonition to turn the other cheek. This stands as the major instance of major instance of negative public controversy in the
Home’s entire history
The Boys Industrial Home, Williamsport Pa
.jpg)
.png)
.png)
.jpg)
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment
I'll read the comments and approve them to post as soon as I can! Thanks for stopping by!