Thursday, March 16, 1918 . . . Richmond, Indiana. A weeks-old baby boy found alone and crying in a room at the Kelly Hotel. Hotel employees cannot locate parents who may have used a fictious name at check-in.
News of the abandoned baby made headlines in the morning edition of the Richmond Item and the evening edition of the Richmond Palladium. Both articles detailed the incident at the city’s Kelly Hotel, quoting the penciled note pinned to the abandoned infant that instructed he must be named “Glen Leslie.” Authorities took the healthy baby to the Home for the Friendless in Richmond.
Within two weeks, this wee one found a home with Ervin and Mae (Beeler) Pontius of rural Geneva. The young couple gave their adopted son a name of their own choosing, Robert Eugene. In later years, they shared with him what little they knew about his beginnings, including the contents of the note indicating the name his biological parents had chosen for him.
The details surrounding Robert’s birth and abandonment remained unknown throughout his 60 years. The family seldom spoke of the mystery, but it would seem the situation was never far from Robert’s mind as he and his wife Beatrice (Yoss) named their firstborn son Glenn Leslie. As far as the family knows, no probing into the circumstances surrounding Robert’s birth ever took place. But the story surfaced from time-to-time of Robert’s suspicion that, on at least one occasion, he was being followed at the Bluffton Street Fair. Could it have been someone from his unknown past keeping tabs on him?
Robert with first-born son Glenn Leslie Pontius.
After Robert’s death in 1978, his son Dick Pontius found the manilla envelope that for decades had protected the newspaper clippings and the paperwork that finalized his father’s adoption. Perusing the fragile documents reignited the decades-old questions. Dick and his siblings had grown up among many of his mother’s extended family who hailed from Adams County. But a big question mark hung over his father’s side of the family tree, and Dick assumed it always would.
In March of this year, Dick shared his father’s story with local writer and reporter, Jim Langham. Both my daughter and husband happened upon the front-page article in the Berne Witness before I did. And both shot me an urgent text message, insisting that I’d be interested in the story. They were right. Solving the mystery of my own foundling beginnings had left me thoroughly bitten by the genetic genealogy bug and that fascination kept me on high alert for opportunities to seek answers that only DNA could uncover.
Within hours of reading Jim’s article, I tracked down Dick. Would he be interested in my help to investigate this century-old mystery? He was indeed interested. He put me in contact with his nephew Neil, his sister Sandra’s son, a long-time genealogy enthusiast. I was elated to learn that Neil managed his mother’s DNA test results on Ancestry.com’s consumer testing site. Would he be open to sharing those results with me, so that we could dive into Robert’s DNA via his daughter Sandra’s test results? Neil readily agreed to invite me to view and sort his mother’s DNA matches, as the nearest relative to Robert who had tested. Next, I spoke with Dick’s niece Devin, a brother’s daughter, who shared Dick and Neil’s passion for solving the mystery of where and from whom the Kelly Hotel baby came. She too was eager to help, and now, the team was in place.
Hoping to finally solve the mystery . . . Robert’s son Dick Pontius with his niece Devin Fey.
But what had I gotten myself into? With two generations of the family now engaged and eager for answers, I worried I might have built up their hopes foolishly. In my five years of using genetic genealogy to determine biological family lines, this was the oldest mystery I’d tackled. And I’d hoped for closer DNA matches than the second-cousin-level match that topped the list of relatives. I decided to push aside the nagging concern that the answers had been buried for too many decades, and I reminded myself that I liked challenges. Armed with an entire free afternoon, a continuous supply of Diet Coke, and a go-get’em attitude, I dove in, mentally prepared for a long (weeks, months?) search.
I reviewed the content of the penciled note left with the infant. I sensed both desperation and youth in the plea to care for the baby boy, “a priceless treasure.” I felt the anguished emotions oozing from between the lines, depicting a young couple caught in a frantic situation. The fact that the note indicated “for a time, at least, I am forced to give him up,” highlighted the naïve hope that the parents would be able to reunite with their child in the future.
I tucked the name “Glen Leslie” in a side pocket of my brain and began to explore Sandra’s DNA results and build a family tree for the matches. Several hours into this first session, I discovered a Glenn Leslie (first and middle name) born in 1897 in the Anderson, Indiana, area. Could this then twenty-one-year-old man be Robert’s father? I argued with myself that noting the father’s name would have been too obvious, leaving the parents likely to be discovered and then prosecuted for abandoning their child. But the technologies that make such searches common place today didn’t exist a century ago. And, while I noticed the spelling discrepancy of “Glen” versus “Glenn,” I’d discovered many searches ago that spelling was of much less importance in days gone by than it is today. It was truly a different era.
I took a break, vowing to return the next day with fresh eyes to further confirm or deny what could be the discovery of Robert’s biological father. Some twenty-four hours later, when I retraced the clues that pointed to this Glenn Leslie, I came to the same conclusion. The evidence? Glenn’s brother’s granddaughter and a grandson matched Sandra at the second-cousin level. That granddaughter’s son matched at the second-cousin-once-removed level. Also, Sandra’s DNA matched both Glenn’s mother’s and father’s lines. These DNA connections, paired with the name in the note, built a strong case. This was likely as close as we were going to get. According to archived records, Glenn had fathered only one other child, a son who died of pneumonia at fourteen months. That would make confirmation via a closer relative of Glenn’s—a child or grandchild–impossible.
I shared the news of a highly probable father identification with the “team.” Their excitement fueled my enthusiasm to dig further into the DNA results in search of Robert’s mother. The matches on this side were fewer, further removed, and seemed less connected to each other. Days turned into weeks with only minimal progress and most of that in the form of elimination. While Glenn had been married multiple times, none of those wives appeared to be Robert’s mother.
Three weeks after embarking on this journey, I had lunch with Dick and his niece Devin. Together we gingerly examined the century-old adoption papers declaring that “Glenn Leslie,” referring to the infant by the name indicated in the note, would henceforth be known as “Robert Eugene Pontius.”
I shared photos of the elder Glenn Leslie generously given to me by the second-cousin DNA match who had cozied up to the intriguing mystery and lent his detective skills to the search. Although he’d never met the brother of his grandfather, he knew him by way of family stories and his own genealogy research as the “unofficial family historian.” He promised to poke around a bit and make inquiries among his cousins. But the extended passage of time meant that few folks still living had even met Glenn, who passed in 1958 at the age of 61.
Until a decade ago when consumer DNA testing became a reality, none of this would have been possible. But thanks to companies like Ancestry, 23andMe, and My Heritage, and more recently, the work of genetic genealogy pioneer CeCe Moore, discoveries like this have become everyday occurrences. Who would have ever imagined that a teaspoon of saliva could provide information to populate unknown branches of a family tree?
While we’ve not yet uncovered the identity of Robert’s mother, the team has not given up. New DNA matches come in almost daily, and I’m hopeful that soon a match will provide the link to the final piece of this puzzle. In the meantime, we tread lightly, mindful that the riddle we’re longing to unravel contains secrets that Robert’s parents took pains to hide, for reasons we will likely never know. I can’t help but wonder whether they ever tried to find the son they felt forced to abandon. While he didn’t live to see the unveiling of his biological family tree, Robert’s remaining children and grandchildren are excited to learn about the ancestors whose DNA they carry.
Beth Steury, Author 