Lost Orphans

Scott Atkinson: FLINT, MI — Ermina Hagerman could not have known she was sending her children to die.

It was November 1885, and it was a desperate time. Her husband, Charles, had died just a month before. He had enlisted in the Civil War at 14, lying about his age, and had survived it all. But now at 34, he was gone, leaving Ermina — or Minnie, as she would be known all her life — alone with their four children. It would have been impossible in such a time for her not to think of how she should have had five children, had they not already lost Leo, one of her oldest twin boys, when he was small.

Minnie was 33 years old. The year 1885 was not a time when you would expect a woman with four…