Kay Ellen Bragg Simpson
Our mother, Kay, was adopted in 1945, by Welton Houston Bragg, and Catherine Agnes Gray Bragg. The only thing she knew was, she was born at Hope Cottage in Dallas, Texas, March 1945. In the 1990s, she was ready to start the search for her birth mother. The first step was to petition the Court to get her records. This is where Cliff came in handy, and the records were obtained.
“Hope Cottage began in 1918 with the vision of one woman, Emma Wylie Ballard, who recognized a need to provide care for children abandoned on the streets of Dallas. She opened a small home to accept the babies, naming it Hope Cottage, and hired women to care for them.”
Welcome to the world, Baby Jane… Marsh?
From the Hope Cottage files
From the Hope Cottage files
The records from Hope Cottage, received in June of 1995, were exciting… and puzzling. In the majority of the papers, the signatures, and family history, the birth mother used the name “Barbara Marsh.” The name Leggo shows up here; on another document from Social Services "(“Mother might be known under name of Leggo”); and handwritten in pencil on the back of the hospital certificate. The Internet was yet to blow up, and what few genealogy records, or phone records, we could search did not reveal any Barbara Marsh, nor Barbara Leggo, from Beaver Meadows, Pennsylvania. Other record searches for Joseph Marsh and Anna Kowaval Marsh also came back negative. Barbara also said she had a brother named Joseph Marsh, another named Martin Marsh, and a sister named Anna Marie Marsh. (Before you OK Boomer us, pre-Internet, it wasn’t easy to re-request all the records with the name Leggo. You had to write for records and put them in the mail, fill out the forms, send them back with a check, and then wait for answers. It was a tedious, and expensive process, and it got put to the side.) It wasn’t until about 2000 that we learned her real name.
“Barbara said that she and the father met in San Francisco. The lived together for about six months. There was some discussion of marriage but he was opposed to it because he said he had his mother to support. Barbara learned she was pregnant after he had been transferred to San Diego. He had given her his mother’s address in Birmingham and she was to to her should she be pregnant. Instead Barbara went to San Diego. He was not interested in marrying her or helping her. Barbara does not know his present address and does not wish to communicate further with him.”
The only photo she ever sent home of a boyfriend
“Barbara is five feet, four inches tall and usually weighs around one hundred and nineteen pounds. Her eyes are gray and she has dark brown hair. Her complexion is fair. Barbara always looks very neat and clean and has a very pleasing appearance.
Barbara seems to be a quiet girl, not shy. She has a very pleasing disposition and manner and has presented no behavior problem. ”
A phone call to Beaver Meadows
In 2000, I got married, to a lawyer, and asked him to help in the search for Barbara Marsh. He could not locate Barbara Marsh, but said there were several Leggos in Beaver Meadows, and he called one. He asked, “Do you have a sister named Barbara Marsh?” The gentleman replied no, but said he once had a neighbor named that. “Do you have a brother named Joseph? A sister named Anna Marie?” About this time a very suspicious Martin Leggo asked what was going on, and was told what was happening. Could he have a sister who could have had a baby in Dallas? And he replied that it may have been his sister Rita. That there was to be a big family wedding that weekend, and he would ask the family what to do. At that time, Rita was in a nursing home. Could Kay fax a photo of him, to present to the family? She did, and she heard back a few days later that not only was there no doubt from her photo that she was related to the Leggos, but that the family was thrilled and wanted to meet her as soon as possible.
Rita was a coal-miner’s daughter
After the wedding, Martin Leggo got in touch with Kay, and the family welcomed her with open arms. She made a trip to Beaver Meadows, and met her family - Rita Nancy Leggo was the oldest of seven siblings: Joseph Jr, Martin, Marcella, Ann Marie, Raymond, Florence, and “Bobby” (her uncle, who was only thirteen months older than Kay!). Aunts, uncles, and cousins filled her in on family history and life in the coal country of Pennsylvania. Joseph Leggo had been a coal-miner and veteran of World War I. Rita’s brothers were also veterans of war.
Rita was in a nursing home, after suffering a series of strokes. She could not articulate her story, but the family could put the story together.
They told her they knew her secret, and that her daughter, Kay, wanted to meet her. It was a very emotional meeting for everyone - and everyone agreed that Rita seemed to understand what was happening, and was very happy.
“ Rita was ranked 3rd in her senior class, and was one of three students selected to go to work at the Pentagon after graduation. She did secretarial work there for about 8 months and developed pneumonia, and had to go back home for a while. When she got well, she moved to New York City and got a job. Joe visited her there; he said she had a one-room apartment, and right after his visit she got a job with Kaiser Shipyards as a traveling secretary. He said in this job, she traveled from New York to California. He thinks maybe Texas, too. Neither he nor his brother visited her in California, and that was the time she was out of touch with her family. ”
“During WWII, thousands of men and women worked in this area everyday, in very hazardous jobs. Actively recruited by Kaiser, they came from all over the United States to swell the population of Richmond from 20,000 to over 100,000 in three short years. For many of them, this was the first time they worked and earned money. It was the first time they were faced with the problems of being working parents—finding daycare and housing. Women and minorities entered the workforce in areas previously denied to them. However, they still faced unequal pay, were shunted off into “auxiliary” unions and still had to deal with day-to-day prejudice and inequities. During the war, there were labor strikes and sit-down work stoppages that eventually led to better conditions. As one African American Rosie commented about the progress of labor and civil rights during this time, while huge gains had to wait for the post-war civil rights movement, the Home Front did “begin to shed light on America’s promise.””
"Daddy's Gone to War": The Second World War in the Lives of America's Children By William M. Tuttle Jr.
Rita never told her family about her pregnancy, nor the baby she put up for adoption. In that day and age, Rita must have thought it would bring hardship and shame to her family. Her mother Anna, aged 43, had a baby of her own - Bobby, who was born in February of 1944. Kay says she always suspected that she might be product of a wartime romance, and it proved to be true.
In 1962, in San Francisco, Rita married Julio J. Lopez. They divorced in 1976, in San Mateo, California. She moved back to Hazleton, Pennsylvania, where she lived until her death in 2006.
Kay and Rita in Pennsylvania
But what about Marsh?
We had been told that Rita may have gotten the name “Marsh” from a childhood neighbor. However, in 2014 we were able to solve the mystery. A DNA test and connection with a cousin solved the mystery of Kay’s father - but that’s another story…