4/24/2011
Mary Ellen Blatchford, an 89-year-old York resident keeps her hands busy every day reading, emailing on the computer, but most of all crocheting.
Every year for the last 30 years she has made over 300 crocheted bunnies for
her daughter and grandchildren and now great-grandchildren. Her family figures
she has made over 12,000 bunnies so far and continues to give them all away.
This year and for the past 10 years Exeter-Milligan fourth graders have helped
her accomplish this goal.
These days
Blatchford gets a little assistance putting on the pom pom tails and
squiggly eyes. For the last ten years, her daughter, Beth Vavra, has brought a
few of the Exeter-Milligan fourth graders to York to help with the
embellishments.
Vavra, works as an aide at the Milligan campus and enjoys bringing the girls to
meet and help her mother, “We come after school and glue the magnets on the
back and then go eat supper while they dry. When we come back we turn them over
and glue on the eyes and the pom poms. They get to pick out two to take home
and they usually fight about which color pom pom should go on which color
bunny. The fourth grade girls look forward to the outing every year.”
Over 250,000 children rode on the “Orphan Trains” that traveled all across the United States for 75 years. It stopped in Exeter, Neb. And records and family history list at least three members of the Exeter community who became residents after debarking a train from New York.
Audience members at the presentation were able to share the stories of
their family’s members who had been on the Orphan Train and were brought to
Exeter. Two came together, Thelma Bernhardt and Victoria Geyger, arrived
in Exeter in September of 1901. They were claimed through New York City
Foundling Home’s program through the Catholic churches.
Bernhardt became a member of the Michaely family, became a teacher and married
John Leif and eventually raised her six children near Exeter. Her family
members still live in the Exeter area.
Geyger was taken in by the Barkmeier family, which included seven boys and one
girl. Despite health setbacks and struggles she eventually found her
calling as a sister with the Dominican Sisters of St. Catharine of Siena in
Kentucky. She taught school all over the States. Geyger, later known as
Sister Mary Raphael Geyger, also has a number of relatives still living in the
Exeter area.
The third Orphan Train rider, Henrietta Maynard Weins, was adopted by the
Maynard family. They were an older couple and she was just five years
old. They had no children of their own but had raised a niece and nephew.
Weins had a wonderful childhood with them and went on to graduate from college
and teach for a time. She eventually found her birth mother discovering
that she herself had been born in Germany and come over on a ship with her
young widowed mother. Eventually Weins’ mother lost her sister who had been
caring for Henrietta and placed her in what she thought was a “Children’s
Nursery for Working Mothers.” She never did see her little girl again
despite an extensive search.
