Sunday, September 18, 2011

“I ‘fraid, I ‘fraid.” - Mom Kidnaps & Abandons Little Girl - 1870


FULL TEXT: A little two year old girl was found wandering the fields in the town of South Onondaga, a few days since. She proved to be the daughter of John Morgan, of Otisco. Her mother had eloped with a man named James Lafayette Newman, taking the child with her. The pair, however, tired of the little one, and it is supposed that Newman carried her home, but finally determined to desert her. A correspondent from the Syracuse Journal says:

The child wandered backward down hill, across one bridge and brook to another more deep and frightful; and fearing to cross this went through a partly opened farm gate off into a lot, where it was found. Those who know this rough and but little traveled road, think it fortunate that the child was not killed or was found at all; and we want clutch at the throat of the villain who left the little darling to a possible, if not probable death – a black-eyed, light-haired, delicate girl just able to say a few words, whose tears dried up and who was happy when taken by strangers, but who very naturally said in a faint voice frequently – “I ‘fraid, I ‘fraid.”

[“An Inhuman Mother.” The Evening Gazette (Port Jervis, N. Y.), Jun. 7, 1870, p. 1]

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