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| to my Genealogy Page |
| This will be a heart wrenching story of a family in crisis in the 1950's. A family whose children suffered physical and emotional battery at the hands of immature and irresponsible parents and lived to tell the tale. It is also a story of how the Social Service system so often turns it's head and looks the other way when the picture is to ugly to witness. How so often, by the time help arrives it is far to late and the damage caused is nearly always irreversible. This is a story of strength beyond the realm of endurance of a young girl determined to make a better life for herself after the terrors of child abuse, neglect and abandonment. That girl is writing this story. |
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| Back row: Pearl, Mabel, Loren, Clarence, Alice, Lorene Seated front row: Robert, Mother Ella, Arthur |
| On this page I will tell you about my family history, including the names and locations I am researching. I, unlike most other individuals have two sets of parents and two families to track. Since I am an adopted child...the first would be my biological roots followed by my adopted family. My biological roots are Swedish, German, and English as far as I can tell. But there may be a little something else mixed in along the way as well. My father, Loren was a full blooded Swede. His father, Peter was born in Sweden and immigrated to this country as a young man. Peter's mother, Carrie followed when he earned enough money to pay for her passage. She was never married to anyone so my Grandfather was an only child. He was a farmer, a carpenter and a bridge builder. He married, Ella, also a full blooded Swede, who was born in Michigan of immigrant Swedish parents. Unlike my Grandfather, my Grandmother had seven siblings....2 sisters and 5 brothers. Together Peter and Ella had 8 children including a set of fraternal twins., one male, one female. My father was one of the twins. He was for the most part not a healthy child. He was weaker than the others both physically and emotionally. When he was ten years old, his father, my grandfather was killed in a horrible farming accident, when a pitchfork he was using near a threshing machine was caught, broken from it's handle and thrown.........the tines entering his head through one of his eyes. Needless to say, he did not recover. My grandmother, was left to raise 8 children alone, and she did. Karin Limberg...born in Sweden. ......unmarried Peter August Limberg...born Alfta, Sweden... married Ella Mary Sansen....born Ishpeming, Michigan.... Pearl Mable Alice Clarence Arthur Loren and Lorine (the twins) Robert Loren (my father) married Winifred Rodgers and to that union was born one daughter......my half sister Lorene. After they divorced........Loren began living with a woman who had come to town from the east coast. He met her while she was working as a waitress in a local cafe. Over a period of years they stayed together without the benefit of marriage. And to them were born 6 children. Loren.......... Sarah E. Kemp Mary Ella Daryl Edmund Eyla Jean (me) John Loren - died as an infant Dennis Julius Earl Allen - born after we were at the Orphanage. Neither Loren or Sarah were fit parents and these children suffered greatly, both physically and emotionally. In the fall of 1959 the state finally moved in and told Loren and Sarah to either, voluntarily relinquish custody or the children would be forcibly taken from them. Loren was for permanent custodial relinquishment but Sarah was not. She wanted the children placed temporarily somewhere.......but after they were gone, she decided with Loren that permanent abandonment was best. As I look back on it now, she was right. But at the time, a seven year old girl.....wanted and needed her parents no matter what kind of parents they were. I did not understand what was happening and I didn't want to. We were taken to a Catholic Orphanage where we stayed for a year before being placed for permanent adoption with a middle aged couple. Not until years later did I realize that we were not the only children abandoned by this woman. She left an immigrant Irish husband and five children in New York, and came to Iowa in 1948. Two sons and three daughters, the youngest of whom was 6 months old were left without a mother. There is a book in the works about this family and the heartfelt challenges endured by all of them. Through the pain of watching my siblings suffer, I have come to believe, that only the fittest truly survive. That can be interpreted many different ways simply by what you believe survival is....so if you disagree, you will not offend me. In my family and our circumstances, only the fittest survived, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. |
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| Mary Ella |
| Daryl Edmund |
| Dennis Julius |
| Eyla Jean |
| Loren & Sarah |
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| Graphics courtesy of .... |
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