Finds Long Lost Family

PHIPPS, MASON

Posted By: Marilyn Holmes (email)
Date: 3/9/2013 at 16:58:53

The Grinnell (IA) Herald; July 24, 1928

FINDS LONG
LOST FAMILY
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"Truth is stranger than fiction" re-asserts one of the widely read magazines of today and right here in our own town a strange story has lain hidden away for all these past thirty-five years.

It was a conincidence that Mr. and Mrs. James Phipps drove to Maplewood, Mo., on their vacation in the early part of June, but it was not a coincidence that Mrs. Phipps learned on this journey that the dear woman whom she had cherished all these years and was even at that time mourning in death, was not her mother as she had always believed.

The secret of her birth was revealed to Mrs. Phipps by a sister of her foster mother, Mrs. Josephine Mason. Mrs. Mason's own child died at birth at Arcola, Ill., at the same time that Mrs. Phipps' own mother died at her birth. Mrs. Mason took the motherless child and cherished her as her own and through all the years no intimation was ever made that Mrs. Phipps was not her own daughter.

Upon the discovery of this secret, Mrs. Phipps immediately wrote to the mayor at Arcola, Ill., where she was born. The letter was published in the newspaper and Mrs. Phipps is now in communication with a sister and a brother living at Decatur, Ill., and a sister at Charleston, Ill., and will go next Saturday to meet the brother and sisters whom she has never known. The father died two years after the mother's death. The brother and sisters remember the adoption of their sister, but as all were small children they lost trace of her and did not know her whereabouts until her letter was published in the Arcola newspaper. Thus, Fate, ever busy with tangling the threads of life, allows old Father Time to unravel the tangles.

Mr. and Mrs. Phipps with their two children, Virgil and Mary Louise, reside at 919 Pearl Street.