Ephraim’s Orphan Train Daughter

Pictured far left is Margaret Louise Anderson and possibly her daughter, Betty. Matilda “Tillie” Valentine, proprieter of the Anderson Hotel (today’s condominums on Moravia Street), stands right. Tillie and her husband, Adolph Anderson, adopted Louise in 1915. Louise arrived in Green Bay by Orphan Train.

Organizations like the Children’s Aid Society created the Orphan Train Movement because there were no labor or safety laws to protect vulnerable children. The trains operated from 1854 to 1929, bringing over 200,000 children to the Midwest. Anderson family lore suggests that Louise married young and moved back to Norway. Recent sleuthing reveals a more nuanced story.

Louise, born May 22, 1910, was baptized at the Ephraim Moravian Church in 1915 at age five. She was a flower girl at her adoptive brother Everett Valentine‘s wedding to Kittie C. Nebel in 1919. Her adoptive brother Henry Anderson was the ring boy. In 1924, Louise earned her eighth grade certificate at the village schoolhouse.

She was also a strong swimmer, taking 3rd place in the 1921 Ephraim Regatta and 2nd place in 1922. Louise’s athletecism made front page news in July 2, 1925, when she swam across Eagle Harbor.

She and three friends had rowed out to Eagle Bluff. Two of them planned to swim back while the other two rowed alongside, but their boat capsized. Louise recognized the boys were in trouble and swam towards shore.

“It was a remarkable feat to swim that long distance,” wrote the Door County Advocate reporter, “and she covered it at a rate of speed that was astonishing … The rescued boys owed their lives to the heroism of Louise Anderson, the fearless young girl who had to swim a mile to obtain help.” One boy did not make it. Despite a fervid hunt for the fifteen-year-old boy by the Plum Island Coast Guard, and blasting dynamite to force movement, it took about a week before the body was recovered near Sister Bay, six miles north of where he went in.

Louise is mentioned for the last time in local newspapers eleven years later on March 27, 1936. “Mrs. H. Adolph Anderson spent several days in Chicago this week at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Gill. Mrs. Gill was formerly Miss Louise Anderson. This trip was made with Everett Valentine and family of Sturgeon Bay.” Everett was attending a Hotel Manager’s convention.

What happened to Margaret Louise Anderson Gill? Research is ongoing.