Bits & Pieces
Lost Daughter Found - Father's Deathbed Confession Results in Reunion of Former Wife, and Daughter
Abducted when five years old, and finally finding her mother in the county, is the strange yet truthful life story of Mrs. Tannler, who is now visiting her mother at Ackley from which place the woman was abducted by the father years ago. This strange story is one that rivals romance.
Years ago there lived in Ackley a family name of Ibnes. Domestic troubles arose, and in a fit of anger, the father and husband left home, his whereabouts for a long time being unknown. Left alone the mother undertood the stern duty of rearing her family. Unknown to anyone in the town the father returned one day and stealing the five-year-old daughter mysteriously disappeared again. The father and daughter were traced to Marshalltown where all trace of them was lost. Years rolled by and the bereaved mother mourned the loss of her child. Later a divorce was secured and the mother married, her present name being Mrs. F. Hayunga. It remained for a deathbed confession to right the wrong done the family and far away on the Pacific coast, the father realizing that his end was near, confessed to his grown daughter that years ago he had stolen her from her mother. The daughter had grown to womanhood, the secret of her mother's identity being closely guarded by the father. The daughter finally married and when the deathbed forced from the lips of the father the secret of the woman's early life, she undertook to learn, if possible, the whereabouts of the mother she faintly remembered.
A year or so ago, officials at Ackley received letters of inquiry, the writer asking if people by the name of Ibnes still resided there, as the writer recalled the name "Ackley" as the trading place of the family of which she was a member of when a mere child. Older residents recalled the family and the quarrel and the resultant abduction of the child. Correspondence followed, and the mother and daughter, fearing that there might be a possible mistake decided on a meeting that put an end to all doubts. Thursday they were reunited after years of separation. The present reunion at the home of Mrs. Hayunga, in which Mrs. Tannler and her several children are happy participants, follows as a sequence to the restoration of the long lost child to her mother.
Source ~ Evening-times Republican; May 31, 1904
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