A 10-year-old Girl
Runs Away from Raleigh and Lands in Winston
When the train from Raleigh arrived here yesterday afternoon
at 2:45, a pretty little girl 10 years old, brunette type, and bearing as her
only baggage a school satchel full of books, stepped off the train and in a
diffident, hesitating way asked if any one could tell her where her mother
lived. When asked her name and where she was from, she replied: “My name is
Lucy Reaves and I come from Raleigh.”
Then, as if she had just remembered it, she said, “No my
aunt’s name is Reaves, my name is Lucy Beidler, and mama lives here. She used
to live in Virginia when I went to my aunt’s to live. But she moved here, and I
got a letter from her after she moved here, and I have come to see her.”
No one could tell her where her mother lived, and she began
to cry. Conductor Guthrie comforted her and carried her to the Phoenix Hotel
lobby, where she was soon the center of an intensely interest group of drummers
and citizens.
Her story, as well as she could be induced to tell it
between sobs, is as follows. She has been living with her aunt, a Mrs. Reaves
at Raleigh and was a pupil at the Wiley school. She has lived with her aunt
since 1901. The name of her parents is Biedler. They lived in Culpeper, Va., in
1901, when they sent her to live with her aunt at Raleigh. She has not seen her
mother since, but received a letter from this city saying that she had moved
her, was staying in a millinery store and had 150 hens and was getting a lot of
eggs. It was about a year ago when she received the letter. Her father, she said,
was a farmer before she left home at Culpepper, Va.
When asked how she came to leave her aunt, she said, “I
wanted to see my mother. I had saved up some Christmas money and my aunt had
given me some, and I just made up my mind to come. I asked and somebody told me
how to come. I went to the depot and asked how much was the ticket to Winston
and the man told me $1.80. I had one dollar and eighty-five cents, so I brought
the ticket and got on the train.” She had just five cents when she reached the
city.
When asked about changing cars at Greensboro, she said a
nice old gentleman talked to her on the train from Raleigh and told her how to
do when she got to Greensboro.
No family by the name of Biedler is known in either Winston
or Salem or in the suburbs.
The little runaway lady is quite pretty, with dark hair and
eyes, and very intelligent. Her clothing was neat and warm. She wore a cloak
and little toboggan cap and nice shoes and stockings. She was evidently being
well cared for.
The books in her satchel bore the name Lucy Reaves and the
date 1904. She had evidently started to schools when she made up her mind to
come to Winston-Salem. She brought nothing but her little self, the satchel of
books and a nickel.
--Winston Journal
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