Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 February 1881 — A Long Lost Mother Found. [ARTICLE]

A Long Lost Mother Found.

For five years “Grandma” Hamilton had lived at the Home for the Friendless—blind and feeble and wanting to die. She was too good to go to the poor-house and had no money to go to the Old Ladies’ Home; so the management gave her a room and the fairies or the other good angels brought the old lady a comfortable rocking chair and other articles of furniture, and there she sat rocking and knitting life to its close. One day a lady, in sealskins and jewels, rang the bell and asked: “Is Mrs. Hamilton in?” No, they said. There was no Mrs. Hamilton there. The lady could not mean Grandma Hamilton? In all the five years gone noliody had called for her! But, yes; the richly dressed lady would like to see “Grandma” and while they went for her sat and soblied on tlie sofa. When they led the old lady in, the lady in sealskins and jew els buret into tears, and throwing her arms arpund her neck, sobl*ed out: “Mother, mother, don’t you know Louisa?” ' “Oh, no,” said the old lady, peering

with her blind Jeyes and shaking her head, “my daughters, Louisa and Lizzie, are both dead, and you cannot be L >uisa.” “But, indeed, I am; and Lizzie is living, too, and for a year I've been looking for you everywhere, and now I’ve found you,”—and while they wept on each other’s necks, Mrs. Grant, the superintendent, and Miss Bowman, the matron, withdrew and left them to talk it over. . This was only a short time ago, and next day the lady came in a carriage again, and “Grandma” having taken the night to “get berthings together,” bade a good-by to the Home and went away all wrapped in fur-lined robes, tn wait in ease and happiness till death comes to bid her ceas her rocking and her knitting. And the explanation of all is that fifteen years ago Louisa married and went to California; Lizzie staid in Ohio, and “Grandma,” with a little competence; came to Chicago. After a while, by one of those inexplicable combinations of mistakes that sometimes obtain in this mysterious world, they all caine to believe each other dead, and "Grandma,” having lived out her competence, drifted to the Home for the Friendless. Louisa’s husband grew rich in California, and hist summer there came to her the faintest whisper that "Mother” was not dead. She started to search for her, and, after going all through Ohio and Michigan where they bad lived—and where, by the way, she found Lizzie still living—she at length found a family in Englewood (a suburb of this city) who had seen "Grandma” Hamilton at the Home for the Friendless, and thus she'found her mother. —Chicago Journal, Feb. 1.