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“My god,” he said, “whose child is that that they are making so much fuss about?”

Mrs. Kendall said not a word in response. As the driver steered his carriage to Union Street, once again he took a circuitous route so that his passenger could not remember where Maria Halpin lived.

When Mrs. Kendall arrived home, Dr. King was waiting for her. She briefed him on what had happened. Then the good doctor informed her that it made sense for her family to get out of town.

“He was very anxious to have us leave Buffalo,” she said. Mrs. Kendall could not believe it. Dr. King was so eager to hasten their departure he announced that he had even found a job for his wife’s brother William Kendall—working for a railroad in Ontario, Canada, of all places. Dr. King could not wait for them to go. “He charged us over and over again never to tell what we knew about Maria Halpin’s child, and used all manner of means to intimidate us and compel us to keep the matter quiet,” said Mrs. Kendall. Still, the Kendalls vacillated. Then one day their apartment was burglarized. All their belongings were turned “topsy-turvy,” and when the Kendalls inventoried everything, they realized that the only items stolen were Baby Jack’s trinkets. These included the little booties Maria had sewn for him and the photo of Grover Cleveland with the words “Baby’s papa” written on the back. That did it. The Kendalls decided for their own personal security that it was time to go. They settled on moving to Concord, New Hampshire, where William and his sister Sarah King had grown up on the family farm. William had found employment there at a wool factory, and Minnie could work part-time at a Concord shoe factory.

Just before they left, Minnie Kendall and Sarah King got together for a final farewell. By now, the two sisters-in-law were barely speaking to each other. Minnie refused to even call Sarah by her first name; now she was simply “Dr. King’s wife.” Before they parted, Sarah said something that Minnie found haunting and truly unsettling.

“Maria Halpin has got that child now, but I will get him, and then she will never see him again.”

Sarah Kendall King was thirty-eight, and had recently suffered a terrible loss—the death of her daughter, Mary, at the age of ten, just seven months before Maria Halpin had given birth. Sarah was now childless. Though Minnie Kendall did not fully understand what was going on, she didn’t want to stay in Buffalo to find out. She wanted to get as far away from these people as she could.

5

THE ORPHAN

IT WAS A Friday afternoon, July 23, 1875, and Oscar Folsom was calling it a day. His wife, Emma, and daughter, Frances, were out of town, vacationing for the summer with Emma’s mother in Medina, New York. Just two days earlier, Frances had turned eleven.

Folsom climbed into his buggy. With him was his friend, the lawyer Warren F. Miller. Folsom steered his mare, White Cloud, down the river road and came to a stop when he reached the home of Charles E. Bacon, a wealthy Buffalo businessman. The trio spent about four hours socializing and drinking. Then, around eight at night, it was time to go.

Folsom climbed into the right-hand seat and took the reins while Miller got in from the other side. Lickety-split, Folsom drove up Amherst Street and was just turning the corner at Niagara when he saw a streetcar up ahead. A sensible man would have slowed down, but Folsom flicked White Cloud’s reins to try to pass the streetcar on the right. The buggy’s rear wheel hit a farmer’s wagon parked in front of a saloon, and Folsom was thrown from the buggy headfirst. When he landed, the rear wheel of his own carriage ran over his chest. Miller grabbed the reins, pulled White Cloud over, and jumped out. He ran to where Folsom was lying, unconscious, on the street. A few men from the large crowd that had gathered carried Folsom to the saloon while Miller got back in the buggy and drove as fast as he could to get help.

When Miller returned,