On the morning of Sunday, November 28, 1886, my great grandfather, John F Hampy went out to feed his animals. His chores were disrupted when he found that a baby had been left at his front gate. The baby was healthy and warm so he hadn’t been left for long.
John did not view the act favorably. In fact, he published this blessing on the infant boy, “May he live a long life, and grow up to be a man worthy of respect, and may he point fingers on those that cast their fruit to the roadside and to the bottom of the sea.
He also added his thoughts on the perpetrator of this abandonment:
“…we hope the guilty ones will have to stand to the rack and take what the world will give them; and hereafter remember to do to others as they wish to be done by.”1
This article was run in the Brownsville Herald on December 2, 1886. Brownsville would later be renamed Sweet Springs in central Missouri. We are lucky enough to have this copy of the clipping because the Brownsville Herald has not been found in any archive for this date. We did find a supporting article that ran one week later.
The Miami Weekly, from Miami, Missouri, published this follow-up to say that the infant had not yet been claimed on December 9, 1886.2
At this time, we haven’t found any information on the child and his life after his brief stay with my great grandparents. We would love to think that someone in the community offered to raise this child as their own.