LIKE A ROMANCE.
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A Distracted Mother's Long Search For Her Children.
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AN INHUMAN FATHER
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The Sudden Death of the Mother Ends a Pitiable Story of Wrong.
Last Friday morning Mrs. Annie Gardner did not respond as usual to the call for breakfast. In the silent watches of the night the final summons from her Maker had come, and the poor broken soul was released from its tenement of clay. A jury was impaneled by Justice Beede and an inquest was held on the remains. It was the jury's solemn opinion that the death of the deceased was a "visitation of God" through natural causes. So the book of her life was closed. Not a word about the long weary years of patient suffering. An examination of her effects disclosed how much the fond mother and heartbroken wife had dwelt with loving tenderness and vain regret on a past that would rival in sadness and tender pathos the simple devotion of Evangeline, which Longfellow has immortalized by weaving the story in the measured and stately verse of his beautiful poem. Her trunk was carefully packed as if its owner were about to go on a journey. There were all kinds of articles of feminine attire which had apparently not been used for years. Small articles of children's attire and little trinkets which delight the baby heart; all so carefully and tenderly packed away. She had no other effects. Everything showed that this poor woman's life was wrapped up in sad memories of the past.
For a number of years Mrs. Gardner found a home in Harrisville. She endeavored apparently to smooth the pathway of those with whom she came in contact, and to so live that when the final summons came she would hear her Maker say, "Well done good and faithful servant enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." She has found a home for a few years past in the family of Jas. Morris, all of whom speak in the highest terms of her character and daily life. Her story is a sad one. It reads like a chapter from a romance. She would have been 46 years of age in May, but the bowed form and whitened locks gave her the appearance of greater age. The following from the Ottawa Daily Citizen, a copy of which, dated March 3, 1883, was found in her trunk, tells the story of her life. The Greenbush and Limerick mentioned are in Alcona county, which gives the story a more than ordinary local interest.
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Some nine years ago a man named William Gardner, at that time residing in the township of Clarence in the county of Russell, married a woman some years his senior. Gardner was a farmer, working for his father, who owned a large farm in the township named. His parents more especially his father, were much averse to his marriage, but notwithstanding, for some years he and his wife, a most estimable woman, lived very happily together.
Two children were born to them, a girl and a boy, and for a time all went well, the elder Gardner seeming to become reconciled to his daughter-in-law. The reconciliation however was but superficial, the old animosity lying underneath and only awaiting a favorable opportunity to burst out anew.
The Gardners (the younger) lived in a small cottage in the bush, at some distance from their nearest neighbors. William used to leave his home early in the morning for his father's farm and not return until late in the evening. In the summer of 1881, he began to absent himself at night also, sleeping at his father's house, where it is needless to say, every argument that could be addressed, was brought to bear upon him to excite a quarrel between him and his wife. The father succeeded only too well. On the night of the 16th of July, 1881, about ten o'clock in the evening, as Mrs. Wm. Gardner was sitting in her lonely cottage occupied in some housewifely cares, the children (the girl then aged six, the boy five), sleeping quietly in the adjoining room, a knock was heard at the door. On Mrs. Gardner opening it her husband entered, and without saying a word to her passed into the further room and awoke the children, ordering them to get up and put on their clothes. Half frantic, the mother threw herself before them, but in vain. The father still persisted in his inhuman purpose, and refused to answer her agonizing appeal. Suddenly a thought struck the mother. She rushed out and searched the back yard where, cowering behind a shed door, she found her father-in-law. She at once accused him of inciting her husband to take away her children, and the cowardly fellow had no reply to make. He followed her into the house and sat down without speaking. Meanwhile the younger man had got the children dressed, and the well matched pair, father and son, carried them off, leaving the poor mother fainting on the floor. In the morning the distracted woman ran to the house of the father-in-law, but found not trace of her recreant husband and children. From information gleaned in the neighborhood, however, she learned that he had probably taken them to some place in the neighbourhood of the Gatineau. She then came to Ottawa and sought advice from an eminent lawyer, who, however, could do but little to help her. Acting on his advice, she went to the Gatineau, and for days traveled over the entire district searching for news of the lost babes. At last she heard incidentally that the man was in Michigan, at the place of an uncle of his, and the children, presumably, were with him. After many difficulties the heroic woman reached Limerick, Michigan, the place where was supposed to be, and found that he had learned of her indefatigable pursuit, and had left for the Black Hills.
Nothing daunted, she set forth for the Hills, only to find that the object of her search had gone. Through a cousin of her husband's (a woman too) she was informed that he had gone further into the Hills, but, as she heard afterwards, this was a deliberate lie, told to put her off the track. By the merest accident she met a woman who kept a hotel at Greenbush Dock, who told her that the man with the children had started a few days previously for Bay City. This charitable woman told a pitiful story of the condition in which the wretched children were. They barely clothed, and both thin and weak from exposure and insufficient food. She said that the father did not appear to take the least interest in them, and had she not had compassion on their misery, they must have died on the voyage in the boat. Spurred to greater exertion, if possible, by this recital, the mother pushed on to Bay City, only to lose the thread, no further trace being found of husband and lost children. Heartbroken she returned to Clarance, having almost lost hope of ever again in this life seeing her beloved babes.
Last November a rumor reached her that her husband had been heard of working in Potsdam, N. Y. Faint as was the hope held out, it was enough to carry the deserted mother thither, and there a tale was told her sad enough to move the most strong heart.
It appears that in the month of September, 1881, Gardner went to the house of a farmer in Potsdam and asked for work. Work was plentiful then, and he was engaged. He represented himself as, or at least did not deny that he was, a single man. Nothing was said about his children until in November, 1882, he said he was going to leave Potsdam for a week or two. From Potsdam he went to Bay City, to obtain possession of his children, and bring them back to Potsdam with him. On the 26th November he returned, not alone. With him was his little girl, apparently in the last stage of consumption, and the corpse of his boy, who had died of diphtheria. Leaving the little shell at the depot and carrying the emaciated form of the girl, he arrived at his master's house. Although amazed at learning that her labourer was a married man, his mistress' motherly heart warmed to the poor sickly child, and every care was taken of it. On hearing of the dead child at the depot she persuaded her husband to get a permit for its burial, and the child's body was laid, not in the cemetery, but in the corner of a field.
The heartless father told his employer he was a widower, but on close cross-examination, he admitted that his wife was alive, but that he had been forced to take away his children on account of her continual ill usage of them.
Twelve days after her arrival the little girl followed her brother. The doctor said the actual cause of her death was diphtheria, but that had she not had that disease she must have succumbed to the severe inflammation of the lungs from which she was suffering, and which was brought on by exposure and neglect. Her body was laid beside her brother's in the same unconsecrated ground.
All these particulars were told to the heart-stricken mother on her arrival at Postdam by the kind-hearted woman who had befriended her child. She spoke in the highest terms of the sweet, loving disposition of the little girl, and sympathetic tears rolled down her cheeks as she told the sad, sad story of her death. Mrs. Gardner at once had the two coffins disinterred and laid in hallowed ground at Potsdam, and the little cemetery plot is tended carefully by the children of the farmer, whose name it is not necessary here to mention.
The villainous father left immediately after the death of his daughter and returned to Canada, and is supposed to have settled somewhere near Toronto.
Mrs. Gardner has recently been in the city, having only just returned from Potsdam, where she learned the particulars of the melancholy end of her unfortunate children.
The sympathy of the whole community will be extended to the noble, true-hearted long suffering woman, who braved so much for the sake of her helpless little ones. She has now returned to her bereaved home much shaken in health, and her only desire is to soon rejoin her murdered (for murdered they were) children.