100 Years

Joe Kovac Jr.: On the evening of July 14, 1915, a couple went into the Southern Railway station in Macon and tried to give away a baby. The blond-haired, blue-eyed girl was almost 5 months old, and she wasn't theirs.

Salvation Army Capt. G.B. Austin was across the way at the Brown House hotel when someone told him. Austin hardly believed it, but he hustled to the station at Ocmulgee and Fifth streets. Built in the 1880s, the depot, replaced by Terminal Station a year later, featured a brick spire that overlooked the tracks.

On a bench in the waiting room, Austin saw a woman with a baby and sat down beside her. The man supposedly with her wasn't around. Austin told the woman what he had heard.

"I guess I am the one you are looking for," the woman said.

"Tell me about it," Austin said, according to an account in the Macon Daily Telegraph.