Biographies
An Uncrowned Champion — 41 Children Called Her ‘Mother’ -- Rears Orphans on Iowa Farm
STANTON, IA — Some place far away from southern Iowa, somebody picks a champion American mother every year. That somebody probably never heard of Mrs. Simon Applequist. Plenty of American mothers rear from one to a half dozen children. Mrs. Applequist has reared 41, not one of them her own. If you were to tell Mrs. Applequist she probably is a champion of motherhood champions, her freckled face would redden up into her blond hair. Her lips would spread in a smile, and her eyes would disappear in the deep crevass of her round cheeks and heavy brows. Mr. and Mrs. Applequist have lived 26 years on their big Montgomery county farm, about three miles southwest of here, and have sent from it 39 young folks that came to them as orphans from New York, N. Y. The Applequist’s, both Swedes, met at a little Swedish college in Kansas, and settled on a farm near McPherson, Kan., when they were married. Their home immediately became the summer vacation spot for all the city youngsters in there respective families, and the tradition of child care seemed started. 20 Orphans. In 1911, and agent of a New York children’s aid society appeared in McPherson with 20 orphans to place in the homes of anybody who wanted them. The children were taken quickly—all except a little 12-year-old German boy named Henry. By the time the Applequists heard about the orphans, Henry was the only one left, and they took him. Now bearing their name instead of his own, he lives on a farm near Essex, Ia.; the only farmer in his group of children the Applequists have reared. Moved to Iowa. The Applequists moved to Iowa in 1913, and agents of the New York society then were making annual trips to nearby Red Oak and Clarinda. Mr. and Mrs. Applequist kept taking orphan children from year to year as older ones left their home to go out in the world. At one time they had six boys on the farm—all of them going to the township school. They never intended to have so many, but they just kept accepting orphans and “didn’t realize” how many they were collecting. The Applequists never received money for these children, and always had the privilege of returning any child with whom they were not satisfied. They returned only one, a boy who had come to them from a reformatory and never was able to conquer the impulse that first got him in trouble. They have had to call a doctor only twice. Once was when a boy broke his arm leaping over a daybed. The other was last winter when little Dorothy May had scarlet fever. Dorothy May, incidentally, had the only case of measles in the Applequist home. One of the former Applequist children is an automobile salesman in Sacramento, Cal.; several live in Des Moines and other Iowa cities; one is a truck driver in New York; another a trained nurse in New York. Only one has died, a boy who went to Kansas City Kan., to take police training and was shot in the back while on a raid with older officers. Adopted 2 Children. The Applequists have adopted two children. They are Isabelle, 26, who came from New York when she was 9 years old, and Dorothy May, 9, who came to them from Des Moines when she was only eight months old. Dorothy May is the only child they took as a baby. When Isabelle left her brothers and sisters in New York, their mother had died and their father had left them. Children’s society rules do not permit orphans to communicate with their family once they left for homes elsewhere. Wrote to Sister. Isabelle’s oldest sister, however, sewed her address into the lining of Isabelle’s coat and told her to write when she was located in a permanent home. Isabelle found herself at Applequists where another sister Ruth had arrived only a short time before, and the girls wrote to Florence at once. Florence since has visited Isabelle at the Applequist farm. Beverly Diane Seymour, 5, now is living with Applequists. She is the daughter of Leo Seymour, whose home is in Red Oak, and who came to Applequists’ an orphan many years ago. Beverly’s mother and father are separated, her mother living in Chicago, Ill. The Applequists took all the children to church, and taught most of them to speak a bit of Swedish. Did they spank them? “Say.” Mr. Applequist says “when you have six boys all at once you have to lick them once in a while.” List of Children
Here is a list of the children the Applequists took in:
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