JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.COM
LITTLE ORPHANT ANNIE VISITS THE RILEY HOME IN GREENFIELD AS AN OLD LADY
When the real "Little Orphant Annie," Mary Alice Gray, (lady in black) was about seventy five years of age, she re-visited the James Whitcomb Riley birthplace in Greenfield, Indiana where she had been brought as an orphan of fourteen to work and "earn her keep.". She came at the invitation of the poet's nephew Edmund Eitel.
Several pictures of her were taken which exist today. Like all old ladies of the time (1922) she was dressed in black and wore a black hat. Also in one of the pictures are three of the five Nelson sisters who were relatives of the occupant of the Riley Home at the time. This occupant was Riley's sister in law Julia Riley. After Riley's death in 1916, the home was left for Riley's brother John and his wife Julia to live in until they no longer wished to live in it. After John Riley died, his wife Julia, lived on in the home with one or more of her sisters.
As Little Orphant Annie approached Greenfield in Edmund Eitel's automobile, she recalled the historic places of Philadelphia. There was the "Counterfeiters' Nest," "The Traveler's Rest" (an inn), and the famous "Black Swamp," an always wet spot on the National Road where wagons of old often floundered and robbers took advantage of helpless travelers.
Little Orphant Annie recalled that it was sixty years since she had been in the Riley Home. She had been married to John Wesley Gray and lived south of Philadelphia, Indiana. Looking at the beautiful curved stairway she remarked, "It was (civil) War time when I was here. Children in play carried broom sticks as guns and beat the dishpans for drums in their play."
As she came down the Riley Home stairs, she said she never could resist counting the stairs, but "I'm not going to slide down the banister as I did then."
As Edmund Eitel took his leave from Mrs. Gray that day, she quoted for him the words of the Hoosier "Cicero" of her time, Daniel Voorhees, "No one ever dies all forgotten, and no one wholly perishes from the face of the earth."
Certainly Little Orphant Annie never has.