Little Orphant Annie

     The account of this story comes primarily from original
source materials written by James Whitcomb Riley himself and
draws upon Riley's great body of children's poetry and prose.
To James Whitcomb Riley, Annie wasn't just some ordinary
hired orphan girl who worked for "board and keep." Annie was
an elf child.
     History reveals that Annie's mother died when she was
very young and her father when she was ten. After that Annie
was on her own until her uncle, John 
Rittenhouse, found her in the hills around 
Liberty, Indiana and took her to his home
near Greenfield. Then he put her out to 
work dressed in black
the way orphans dressed.
     And that's how she came to live with 
the Riley family
in town.
     The mother in the Riley family needed 
PHOTOGRAPH OF THE REAL    the help. She had four living children 
"LITTLE ORPHANT ANNIE"    and memories of the baby, Celeste, who
                          died so very young. Frontier American 
life was very hard. The new baby, Alex, they called "Hum," was a 
little chunk of
shavers and sick so much and the tiny six year old girl, Elva
May, clung close to her mother day in and day out. People
couldn't believe how cheerful Elizabeth, the mother, always
was. The older boy, John, was in his teen-aged years and was
a printer's devil for the newspaper where Uncle Mart worked
too.
     Bud, at eleven, was left to himself a lot.  He usually
wore a little blue roundabout and a soft white felt hat with
no banding  or lining.  His hair was very light and cut
short.  His eyes were big and blue and his face freckled. He
was small in size and found it hard to compete with the other
boys in athletic contests and games.
     When Annie came, the Rileys called her their "guest"
and came to love her as a member of the family.
     Bud and Annie became fast friends. They shared
mischievous ways and bright laughter. Annie wasn't like a
nanny but more like an older sister and friend. She was older
than Bud all right but not so bossy. She didn't give a fig if
Bud crowded down his food too fast or sipped his soup so
awful loud. She never complained about being an orphan girl
nor crawfished back into her past. Her world was peopled by
fairies, giants and wunks, dwarfs, squidgicums and goblins.
     Annie's life was different because she had her work to
do. Her chores were done mainly in the kitchen and her place
was to be near the hearth. All the cooking for frontier
Hoosier families before the Civil War was done in a large
open fireplace.  As Annie sat in a corner of the room by the
fire she was often covered with ashes.  You could sometimes
hardly tell she was a slender little wan-cheeked teenaged
girl dressed in black. She wasn't just a teenaged girl
though. Her elf spirit shone just as light gleams even on a
cloudy day. She always spoke kindly if mysteriously and she
always promised both Bud and herself, "Someday, I will go
home."
     For many years nothing was known about Mary Alice
(Smith) Gray who was the "hired girl." This was Annie's real
name. The name itself is a source of confusion. The girl was
not married and named Mary Alice Smith when she worked
for "board and keep" at the Riley home. The family called
her "Allie." The name was shortened from Alice. In fact the
original name of the orphan of the famous poem was "Little
Orphant Allie" as published in the INDIANAPOLIS (IN) JOURNAL
newspaper of November 15, 1885 under the title, "The Elf
Child." Subsequenly Riley changed the name of the poem to
"Little Orphant Annie," and it was under that name that the
poem became the most popular American children's poem of all
time and helped establish for Riley the title of "Children's
Poet" for the United States as Riley's friend Rudyard Kipling
was the "Children's Poet" for the British Empire.
     Riley himself fueled the interest in locating Mary Alice
Smith. He published a famous article in the INDIANAPOLIS (IN)
JOURNAL of September 30, 1882 entitled "Where is Mary Alice
Smith?" Apparently her married name escaped him if he had any
memory of it at all due to his young age when the marriage of
"Annie" to Wesley Gray took place.
     When found, Mary Alice (Smith) Gray simply did not
realize that she was the famous subject of the poem.  She
did, however, become a popular character in the American
national scene after Riley brught her to the stage of the
Grand Opera House in Indianapolis (IN) in January 1888 during
one of Riley's famous readings. On that occasion, Riley
repeated the whole story of the little slender orphan girl
dressed in black who was dropped off at the Riley Home and
told the children so many stories of goblins, wunks and
elves. The audience welcomed "Little Orphant Annie" to the
stage with great applause.
     The recognition of "Little Orphant Annie"  did not
change her lifestyle in the least. Although she was in great
demand as a visitor to schools, she did so merely to inform
the enthralled children about her work at the Riley home and
tell stories about the famous poet. She recalled Riley as a
"tease" and said he drew ugly pictures of his playmates to
annoy them. No amount of publicity affected her and she
always returned to the log cabin built by her husband, Wesley
Gray, where she lived and raised her many children.
     The tale of "Annie" was adopted by many other artists
and writers after Riley's death.  Among the "Annies" is the
Raggedy Ann doll, America's most popular children's doll
during much of the Twentieth Century. The name derived from a
combination of the names of two of Riley's most popular
children's poems, "Little Orphant Annie" and "The Raggedy
Man." The originator of the doll, Johnny Gruelle, whose
artist father had been a friend of James Whitcomb Riley, also
turned "Annie" into a comic strip character.  The comic strip
artist Harold Gray, however, used "Annie" in a much longer
running nationally syndicated comic strip of the same name.
"Annie" has appeared on Broadway in New York City several
times commencing in the play, "Homefolks" (1918), "Little
Orphant Annie" (1935), and the more recent "Annie" (1977).
The movie version of "Annie," a Columbia Pictures release,
continues to enjoy wide audiences.  Based upon this cycle, I
would expect "Annie" to reappear any time. The poem "Little
Orphant Annie" remains in print in many, many publications.
     I must include a note of apology. In my heart I wished
so to footnote this text. A "sugar" tree to Hoosier pioneers
was the sugar maple tree. The farmers of frontier days
"cradled" grain to harvest it. Few readers will have tried to
climb a sycamore tree as Bud proposes in his tale about the
bear. Pioneer children would have known how slick such a tree
would be to climb.
     As to James Whitcomb Riley, his life was one of great
homelessness, loneliness, and poverty until roughly his late
middle-aged years when his fame resulted in greater wealth
from book sales than that of any poet before or since. I
have outlined this life on the basis of Riley's own cryptic
autobiographical poem, "The Flying Islands of the Night," in
the book JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY: THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF
THE NIGHT in most libraries nationwide.
     Riley's friend Rudyard Kipling knew where his American
friend's heart rested.  The noted poet of the British CHILD'S
GARDEN OF VERSES, wrote of Riley:
                          TO J.W.R.
           "Your trail runs to the westward,
            And mine to my own place;
            There is water between our lodges,
            And you cannot see my face.
            And it is well - for crying
            Should neither be written nor seen,
            But if I call you Smoke-in-the-Eyes,
            I know you will know what I mean."
Riley ached for the lost child in himself and expressed to
his audience the great lessons of living and loving humbly
and presenting oneself to the world and the God of that world
in innocent lifestyle as a child.