Ohio History Journal

OHIO STATE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL

SOCIETY

 

REVIEWS, NOTES AND COMMENTS

BY THE EDITOR

 

CATHERINE FAY EWING, ORIGINATOR OF

CHILDREN'S HOMES*

Children's Homes throughout the country have at-

tracted deserved attention as child-saving institutions.

They not only save life; they educate to usefulness.

The Ohio law is simple. It was enacted in 1866, and

in 1871 thirty-seven homes were organized under it.

They were established and conducted by counties and

intrusted to the care of three trustees by the county

commissioners. All neglected or destitute children, not

insane, imbecile, or affected by contagious diseases, are

received into them on proper certificate. The effort is

to make the homes for them all that the word implies.

From these homes they are committed to families. At

first when the children were placed in families the offi-

cers did not follow them with care systematically. Now

they inspect each child annually under an amendment

to the law made in 1889.

These beneficent homes originated with Mrs. Cath-

erine Fay   Ewing.  Mr. Fay, her father, in the early

history of Marietta College, moved with his family

from Westboro, Mass., where Mrs. Ewing was born.

 

* Reprinted from Report of U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1903,

Vol. II, pp. 1309-1310.

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242      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

He came to the neighborhood both to aid the struggling

college and to give his sons the benefit of its advan-

tages.

Miss Catherine Fay became a teacher and after a

time a missionary to the Indian Territory. She says

that in the fall of 1853, while laboring as a missionary

among the Choctaw Indians, a physician called upon

her and asked her to visit a poor family where the

mother, a New England woman of culture and refine-

ment, had died leaving five small children. These little

ones he had committed to his care, and he was trying

to find homes for them, their drunken father having

deserted them. He wished her to adopt a beautiful

little girl two years old, and she longed to do it; but she

was a poor teacher, hundreds of miles from home, and

it seemed impracticable. The little one was taken by

a man and his wife who soon after began to sell whisky

to the Indians. One day there was a drunken fight, and

the child was thrown down the steps of the house and

killed. This affected Miss Fay so deeply that the de-

termination was made in her mind to have a home of

her own where she could care for such orphan and

homeless children.  After this time every effort was

directed to that object; every dollar was laid away with

care for this purpose. She taught two years in Ken-

tucky, and with the money bought 15 acres of land

about 10 miles from Marietta. There was a house of

two small rooms on the land. About this time she re-

ceived two legacies, from an uncle and aunt, and began

at once to build a larger house. Her plan was to adopt

poor children and support them herself.  She went

to the county infirmary and found 26 children associ-

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Reviews, Notes and Comments     243

ated constantly with older people, many of them of the

vilest character.

This was more than she could bear. She wanted

to take them all, but she could not hope to support so

many by her own efforts. She went to the directors of

the infirmary and asked them to let her take them at

one dollar per week. The first few weeks were very hard

ones, and the trustees of the district school refused

to allow the children to attend school because they were

paupers, and they were unwilling to have their own

children associate with them, although after a lawsuit

she obtained permission to send them to school, but the

children were taunted and made unhappy by being

treated as poorhouse children. After the war for the

Union broke out many soldiers' children were added to

the number in her care.  At one time she had 35 of

these, and she felt that they deserved something better

from their country than had been provided, and became

exceedingly desirous that the effort might be entirely

separated in name and in fact from the poorhouse, and

have a distinct appropriation for its use.  In 1864 she

conferred with the commissioners about the expediency

of applying to the legislature to bring this change about.

The bill was presented that year, but failed. In 1865

it was again presented and rejected, but in 1866 it be-

came a law; so the plan which she at first thought of

only as a relief to her own Children's Home became in

the course of Providence the means of planting homes

in different counties of the State.

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