Provided by Rose Heritage
This article was written by my grandmother, Anna Bea Gruber McDaniel Chancellor. I have copied it just as she has it written.
Happened 50 years ago in 1898
Last Saturday night July 16th the whole neighborhood around Mr. Patees farm, 5 miles northwest of Canton Mo was hunting for Bea Gruber, the lost child of Mr and Mrs Andy Gruber living in Canton. Mrs Gruber had taken their three small children Saturday to the country home of Mr and Mrs Pete Gruber and about three o'clock in the afternoon the little 3 year old girl wandered away from the rest of the children and could not be found. About seven thirty Sunday morning Pete Gruber found her in his brother John's hog pasture about 1 and ½ miles from his home. She had a little flower in one hand and a little stick in the other, was bareheaded and barefooted but didn't seem to be at all alarmed at her surroundings although she was delighted to see her uncle and told him she was hungry because she had not had any supper or breakfast and she was returned to her distressed parents with injury.
Part 2 Friday July 16th 1948
Mrs Bea McDaniel,
I am the same little girl that was lost 50 years ago and in my minds imagination I can see my uncle Pete riding up to me on the old brown horse and ask me where I was going and said. "Hello Bea." I said, "Hello". and told him I was going home and he took me up on the horse in front of him and we were soon at his home where a large lady "Mrs Patee" took me up on her lap, (She was Alvie Patee's mother.) and she fed me a glass of milk with some sugar cookies in it that my aunt had made. There were about 75 men stayed out all night trying to find me and they tracked me across cornfields and through 3 hedge fences and lost my track after I left the plowed field. I fell asleep in a little ditch. and an awful storm cloud came and blowed away without any rain so I slept until morning undisturbed and when I awoke I remember pulling a little white flower that was very hard to break off of a bush and I picked up a little dead crooked stick about like a little wren would use to build her nest with and I tho't I had something nice to bring to my mother and she pressed the flower and kept it for many years. I told them I had climbed upon a fence and looked over into a large pond and they knew where it was and I was in the pasture where many hogs were running and would have been in great danger but a dead cow was there and they had eaten all they wanted and didnt bother me. I remember passing by a pig and touching it on the back. I wandered on and a large heard of fat steers belonging to Dave Long were in his pasture across the fence from me and when the saw me they went on a stampeed. I told them about seeing a cabin made of logs and going up to the window and looking in I saw a family of colored people around the table eating and they said there were no log house anywhere in the neighborhood and it had to be that I dreamed it. I would like to hear from someone who remembers this as it happened 50 years ago.
Mrs Bea McDaniel - Canton Mo.