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chapter two Raising Orphans The Child Care Dilemma of Families in Crisis Dr. Fulton, the young pastor of the Fourth United Presbyterian Church of Allegheny, was appealed to by a dying mother to try to find Christian homes for her five fatherless children soon to be left without relatives to care for them or money to sustain them. Dr. Fulton caught the vision of the church providing care for its needy children and called together the women of the United Presbyterian Churches of Pittsburgh and Allegheny in the Fourth Church Allegheny to consider the matter. —W. H. Vincent, “The United Presbyterian Women’s Association of North America, A Retrospect.” Born in Ireland in 1836, the ill-fated Isabella Nelson was living in Alle­ gheny, Pennsylvania, with her mother and sister when she met her future husband, James Longmore. The Nelsons had little money, and Isabella and her younger sister, Ellen, both worked as dressmakers to support their mother, Catherine. In 1861, at the age of twenty-five, Isabella married James and almost immediately became pregnant with their first son, who was born the following year. The Longmores had four children—ages seven, four, three, and an infant—when James died in 1869, leaving Isabella to support her family by keeping a store, a common occupation for widows who often could keep their children with them as they worked.1 James may also have left her a little nest egg, as she reported personal property shortly after his death totaling $1,500 (worth $21,923 in 2007), possibly reflecting the value of the merchandise in her store. Longmore’s neighbors were solidly working-class families: the men worked as carpenters, bridge builders, railroad men, and police officers, while the women kept house. Some of the older daughters worked, making dresses and boxes. In these working-class neighborhoods it was not unusual for multiple families to economize by living together, which may be why Longmore shared her Ramey_Child text.indd 32 2/15/12 10:12 AM home with another woman, Lizzie Gardner, a forty-year-old Irish immigrant who kept house, and ten-year-old Susan Herren. Gardner may also have helped provide child care for Longmore’s children, making it possible for her to work longer hours in the store.2 Regardless of whatever child care arrangements she had made previously, by the time she realized she was dying, just seven and half years after her husband, Longmore had no one to permanently care for her children, now aged fifteen, twelve, eleven, and eight. If her mother and sister were still alive, they were either unable or unwilling, or Longmore thought them unsuitable to take the children. Longmore also could not find willing or suitable friends and neighbors, and instead turned to the Rev. James Fulton for help. Fulton may have indeed helped Longmore locate“Christian homes”for the children, but there is no evidence they ever lived in the United Presbyterian Orphan’s Home (UPOH).3 In fact, Fulton did not even convene the women of the church to contemplate an orphanage until October of 1878, more than a year and a half after Longmore’s death, and the institution did not accept its first children until the end of December that year, nearly two full years after the Longmore children became orphans.Yet, the Longmore story and name have become an integral part of UPOH’s identity: the tale of the “dying mother” and her “fatherless children” is often repeated, a Bible reportedly belonging to Isabella Longmore is prominently displayed in the institution’s board room, and the organization recently opened Longmore Academy, an on-site school for the troubled teens served today by the orphanage ’s descendent, the Mars Home for Youth.4 Although the Longmore children were likely never residents of the facility, this founding story resonates with larger truths about “orphaned” children and their families in the late nineteenth century. “Orphans” generally had at least one living parent and, while institutional rhetoric often constructed them as homeless waifs, most residents had active, involved parents who were integral to the very founding and functioning of the orphanages. It was Isabella Longmore’s own plaintive cry for help that launched UPOH, and other parents’ consistent demand for child care services that kept them in business. Yet parents sometimes withdrew their demand—as happened at UPOH’s sister organization, the Allegheny Day Nursery—leaving those organizations that did not suit them and refusing to engage those that did...

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