s of prayerful consideration
she accepted, and in the fall of 1865 ten orphans were gathered
together in Indianapolis from various parts of the State from among
those who had no friends able or willing to care for them. In the
spring of 1866 they were removed to the Soldiers' Home near
Knightstown, where a small cottage and garden were assigned to
their use. In 1875, she placed the older boys in houses where their
growing strength could be better utilized, and moved with the girls
and younger boys to Spiceland to secure the benefit of better
schools. In 1877, all of the ten but one were self-supporting, and
have since taken useful and respectable positions in society. The
one exception was a little feeble-minded boy, who, with his
brother, had been found in the county poor-house; his condition and
wants very soon impressed her with the necessity for a State home
for feeble-minded children in Indiana, it having been found
necessary to send this boy to another State to be educated.
He is now in a neighboring State institution, and is almost
self-supporting. With her usual energy and directness, she went to
work to gather statistics on the subject of "Feeble-minded
Children" in this and other States, and to interest others in their
welfare. She at last found an active co-worker in Charles Hubbard,
the representative from Henry county in the legislature, and their
united efforts, aided by other friends of the cause, secured in
1876 the enactment of the law establishing the Home for
Feeble-minded Children, now in operation near Knightstown, Indiana.

Having seen all her children well provided for, she began to look
for further work, and soon conceived the idea of taking the
children from the county poor-houses of the State and forming them
into families. She offered to take the children in the Henry county
poor-house and provide for them home, food, clothing and education,
for the small sum of twenty-five cents per day for each child,
which her experience had proven to be the smallest sum that would
accomplish the good she desired; but the county commissioners would
only allow her twenty cents per day. She accepted their terms,
furnishing the deficit from her own means, and so earnest was she
and so completely did she demonstrate the superiority of her plan
for the care of these children, that she interested many others in
the work, and the result was the passage of a law by the
legislature of 1880-1881, giving to county c