Adoptive parents of the 'Hatbox Baby' had a short-lived marriage (2024)

Adoptive parents of the 'Hatbox Baby' had a short-lived marriage (1)

If you're just joining us, this is Chapter 4. You'll get more out of this story if you start from the beginning. Read Chapter 1 here.

See the previous part, Chapter 3, here.

The people who gave Sharona home

On July 18, 1986, Faith Morrow filed a motion in Pinal County Superior Court, asking a judge to unseal the adoption records in the 55-year-old case of the Hatbox Baby.

“I am now 83 and my daughter will be 55 in December,” she wrote in a shaky hand. “I feel I could better tell her she is adopted than to have some other person (well-meaning or otherwise) tell her after I am gone.”

Faith told the judge how two years earlier while undergoing treatment for breast cancer, the radiation burned the lining of her heart, almost killing her. She had also fallen and broken a hip and undergone hip-replacement surgery.

She felt her own mortality closing in on her, and she wanted to tell her daughter the secret she’d kept from her for more than half a century.

It was even more urgent because her daughter was thinking of moving to Mesa, and Faith was afraid she might accidentally stumble across the story of her birth there.

In six months, Faith would be dead.

In her motion, Faith described how, years earlier,she and her husband, Henry, desperately wanted to have a child but that she had not been able to carry a baby to term.

“Following yet another miscarriage…I was beginning to think I would never have a baby of my own,” she wrote.

“When I heard the news on the radio (Christmas morning) we turned off the oven on the turkey and drove right to Mesa to see the baby. You should have seen her — so perfect and so perfectly adorable.

“We requested the right to adopt her. I was told they had 200 applications.”

I had introduced the Hatbox Baby in a 1988 story as Sharon Elliott, a retired aerospace worker from Southern California. For the first 55 years of her life, she never knew she was adopted, much less the subject of a longstanding Arizona mystery.

I found Faith’s motion in Sharon’s adoption records after I filed my own motion in Pinal County Superior Court in November to have them unsealed. Faith’s motion had been successful, but for some reason, the records had been resealed.

I had some items from the original file, but I wanted to make sure there weren’t other clues that we might not have known were relevant 30 years ago, well before anyone thought of DNA testing for the Hatbox Baby.

Adoptive parents of the 'Hatbox Baby' had a short-lived marriage (2)

In my court hearing on Dec. 5, Pinal County Superior Court Judge Stephen McCarville told me he’d read the file and didn’t think there was much in there that I didn’t already have. Hegranted my motion to unseal the file.

Then he wished me luck.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for,” he said.

He was right. I knewmost of what was in the file, but there were a couple of things I didn’t: Faith’s five-page handwritten motion, and a transcript of her testimony in the Feb. 10, 1932, adoption hearing for the Hatbox Baby (who was known at the time as Baby Marian, named for the Virgin Mary because she was found on Christmas Eve).

After she was adopted, her new parents changed her name to Mary Elizabeth. Sharon didn’t remember when exactly her name had changed again, but she always thought it had something to do with the Rose of Sharon, a flowering vine that is mentioned in the Bible, and the fact that Faith’s father was a minister.

The adoption documents helped me flesh out a picture of Faith, a complicated woman who led a complicated life. While she was the only mother Sharon ever knew, Sharon never had much to say about her other than what a normal upbringing shehad had and what a good mother Faith was to her and her stepbrother.

But in digging into Faith’s life, I found things out about her that Sharon never knew, including a marriage and a divorce, and Faith’s apparent use of aliases in at least two sets of public records.

Who was Faith Morrow?

Faith Lillian Amelia Soderstrom was born in Minnesota in 1903, the youngest child of an itinerant Swedish-born preacher. By age 7, her family had moved to Alamogordo, N.M., and by 16 she was living in a Los Angeles boarding house with her mother, who worked as a housekeeper for a woman who had lived in Arizona.

Less than a year later, Faith was living near Prescott, possibly to be with her sister, whose husband, a World War I veteran,was being treated at Fort Whipple. The posthad a large Army sanatorium that treated soldiers for tuberculosis or complications from mustard-gas exposurein the trenches.

Fort Whipple was founded in 1864 during what were known as the Indian Wars, and actually served as Arizona’s first territorial capital before a more permanent seat of government was established two miles south in Prescott. The fort was active through the Spanish American War, protecting the capital as well as the gold mines that dot the area.

Adoptive parents of the 'Hatbox Baby' had a short-lived marriage (3)

The fort was decommissioned in the early 1900s, then recommissioned during World War I.

Soon after she arrived in Prescott, Faith went to work as a clerk typist and stenographer for the Veteran’s Bureau at Fort Whipple, and in 1925, at the age of 22, she married a man named Sigmund Ingersoll, who also worked at the fort and was nearly 10 years her senior.

The marriage didn’t last. Less than three years later, in March 1928, she would divorce him, citing non-support and the fact that he didn’t want children.

Sharon Elliott never knew about that divorce until I found a copy in the state archives and asked her about it. The news didn’t seem to faze her. Compared to finding out she was the Hatbox Baby, that surprise was pretty minor, she told me.

In Faith’s divorce complaint, she alleges that “for more than one year last past (Ingersoll) has neglected and failed to provide…the common necessaries of life, he having the ability to provide the same but has failed by reason of his idleness, profligacy and dissipation,” even though he was a “strong, able-bodied man, able to provide a living for himself and is now earning more than $150 a month.”

“I worked all the time we were married and gave him practically every penny I made,” she said.

Ingersoll never bothered to answer the complaint or show up in court.Faith said it was probably because he was afraid he’d be hit with the court costs.

By the time her divorce was granted in March of 1928, Faith had already moved to Phoenix. The 1928 Phoenix City Directory shows a woman named Ingersoll working as a typist at the Veteran's Bureau, but she is listed as Fanny, not Faith.

Who was Sharon's adoptive father?

Adoptive parents of the 'Hatbox Baby' had a short-lived marriage (4)

On Oct. 25, 1928, Faith would marry Henry Stieg in Los Angeles. She could not legally marry in Arizona because not enough time had elapsed since her divorce.

Stieg was an up-and-coming grocery executive who would go on to become one of the Valley’s movers and shakers. Stieg was one of the founding directors of the A.J. Bayless grocery chain, which was an Arizona mainstay for 60 years until it was absorbed in the grocery consolidations of the 1990s.

Stieg's was a rags-to-riches story, the kind that gave Phoenix a reputation as a place where anyone could stake a claim to a fresh start and succeed beyond their wildest imagination. Born in poverty in rural southwesternOhio, he attended school only through sixth grade.

His father was a farmer and a “coal burner,” the tough, grimy job of making charcoal, which was commonly used for heat. His mother, who had divorced his father, worked as a housekeeper, and when Henry was old enough to work, she sold him into virtual servitude, an arrangement where she was paid for the work he did for a neighboring farmer.

As a teenager, he began selling fruits and vegetables in Hamilton, Ohio, near Cincinnati, and parlayed it into a going concern. By his early 20s, he was buying quarter-page advertisements in the Hamilton newspaper on a weekly basis.

Like Faith, Henry Stieg had a failed marriage in his past. He’d married at 19 and had a son. They moved to Arizona sometime between 1925 and 1927, when she moved back to Ohio.

Four years later, Stieg would testify at Sharon’s adoption hearing that he divorced his wife on grounds of desertion, but it’s unclear whether she could have sued him on grounds of infidelity.

“She knew I carried on and she went back to Ohio and I wouldn’t go back. I was in business here…and she wouldn’t stay … because it was too hot in Arizona and I wouldn’t go back to Ohio, so we separated."

Both Henry and Faith told the judge that they were happily married and had never discussed or even contemplated divorce.

They told Green they lived in a house on two and a half acres on McDowell Road just east of the city limits. They said the house and the property were worth $5,500 and they only owed $1,000 on it. Henry also testified that he had 600 shares of A.J. Bayless stock and made $45 a week plus a bonus.

It was just two years after the stock market crash of 1929, when unemployment was 17 percent, and Henry Stieg, at the age of 29, was making 25 percent more than the average American.

'Let it rest as a miracle'

While news reports at the time said that as many as 200 couples had wanted to adopt the Hatbox Baby, only two showed up. Heavy rains that week had made travel difficult.

The other couple, a 45-year-old employee of Hayden Flour Mill and his 36-year-old wife, already had a 14-year-old adopted daughter.

Court transcripts from the Feb. 10, 1932, adoption hearing show a fairly routine procedure, but Faith’s own account years later, along with that of Arizona Republic reporter Oren Arnold, bend toward the dramatic.

“The judge called them first, and the woman didn’t say anything but the man said, 'We have one adopted daughter and I’ll say right here she’s been raised in the fear of the Lord, and I don’t believe in sparing the rod and spoiling the child,'" Faith wrote in her 1986 motion, recounting the testimony of the other couple. “I prayed — Dear God don’t let that man have my baby!”

At the end of the day, Judge Green allowed the Stiegs to adopt the Hatbox Baby because they did not have a child while the other family did.

Thirty years later, Arnold wrote in the Christmas1952 issue of Desert Magazine that he too was in the courtroom that day and that Faith had begged the judge to “Never tell where Marian is. Let her grow up without publicity, not as a freak found out on the desert. Please never tell.”

Arnold closed his piece by saying he had been in contact with Faith and that the Hatbox Baby was well and happy.

“It has all been so wonderful,” Faith told him. “People are so kind. Let it rest as a miracle. Please never tell who she is or where she is.”

A short-lived marriage

Faith and Henry finally had the baby they’d always wanted. But their domestic bliss wouldn’t last, and there are indications it was just fiction anyway. Just seven months after they adopted Baby Marian, Henry Stieg filed for divorce. His wife had already moved back to Prescott at the time.

In his petition, Henry accused Faith of “cruel treatment,” saying that for more than a year, “she constantly and without reason found fault with and quarreled with (him), both in private and before his friends and acquaintances.”

She also mocked his “manner of speech” and “lack of education,” causing him “constant discomfort, annoyance and mental pain and anguish.”

Lastly, Henry said that Faith “consistently disturbed (his) peace of mind and the enjoyment of his home, by constantly urging and insisting” that Henry quit his job and move to California, where she preferred to live.

The divorce was granted. Henry agreed to pay Faith $1,500 in monthly installments of $50 for her share of the house and gave her a 1929 Buick sedan. She also got to keep her Singer sewing machine, the couple’s dishware — and their baby.

Their settlement called for Faith to have sole custody and control of the baby, now identified as Mary Elizabeth Stieg, and in return, she agreed to forgo any alimony or child support.

Henry Stieg went on to become a prominent Phoenix citizen. He ran a number of businesses, including a bar and restaurant and a meat-packing company that was accused by a disgruntled business partner — charges never proven— of selling horsemeat to the Scottsdale schools while his third wife served on the school board.

His third marriage would come 10 years after his divorce from Faith, and he and his new wife would adopt four children together.

If he ever saw Sharon after the divorce, she had no memory of it.

Faith becomes a widow

After her divorce from Henry, Faith returned to the Veteran’s Bureau at Fort Whipple, and less than 20 months later, she married for a third time, this time to a tuberculosis patient named Charles Francis Cook, a second lieutenant from New York who had fought in World War I.

Adoptive parents of the 'Hatbox Baby' had a short-lived marriage (5)

Cook was a widower. His wife had died of tuberculosis several years earlier, leaving behind a young son, Jack. Almost a year to the day after he and Faith married, Charles Cook died, leaving Faith with a daughter and a son, and, after a fight, his veteran’s pension.

Prescott city directories from the late 1930s show Faith Cook, and Jack and Sharon, living in a home owned by a music teacher, Vera Morrow, and her brother Arthur, who is listed as a house painter.

Arthur, who was four years older than Faith, was tall and thin, with blue eyes and brown hair. On March 7, 1939, a marriage license was issued in his name in Yuma. He married a woman named “Esther Cook,” whose age and birthplace match Faith’s.

A year later, Faith Cook is listed in the 1940 Census as a widow, living in Los Angeles with her children, Jack Cook and Sharon Stieg; along with Vera and Arthur, who was listed as a carpenter.

His World War II draft registration card lists him as working for Airesearch, an aerospace company in Inglewood, Calif, where he spent the rest of his career, helpingraise Sharon and Jack. Hewould give Sharonaway at her wedding.

In her 1986 court plea to have Sharon's adoption records unsealed, Faith mentions that she was divorced from Henry, but says that she and Arthur were married for 40 years. She doesn't mention the marriage to Charles Cook at all.

Arthur Morrow died in 1979, the only father Sharon ever knew.

NEXT:Chapter 5 — A clue pointing to a possible birth mother

Reach the reporter at john.danna@arizonarepublic.com. Follow him on Twitter at @azgreenday.

Adoptive parents of the 'Hatbox Baby' had a short-lived marriage (6)
Adoptive parents of the 'Hatbox Baby' had a short-lived marriage (2024)

FAQs

Adoptive parents of the 'Hatbox Baby' had a short-lived marriage? ›

A short-lived marriage

What are the stages of adoption grief? ›

Adoptive parents' grief and loss: the five stages
  • denial,
  • anger,
  • bargaining,
  • depression,
  • and the oh-so-sweet but seemingly elusive stage of acceptance.
Aug 2, 2023

Who found the hatbox baby? ›

To their dying days, Ed and Julia Stewart maintained that their car really did break down seven miles west of Superior on Christmas Eve of 1931, and that they really did stumble upon an abandoned baby in a hatbox. From the beginning, they felt the authorities had pointed an accusatory finger at them.

What is adoption trauma called? ›

Adoption Begins with Disruption

The body processes this disruption as a trauma, which creates what may be called an “attachment wound.” Nancy Newton Verrier declares that what she calls the “primal wound” is universal when mother and child are separated.

What are the 5 stages of adoption process? ›

The five stages (steps) in the adoption process are: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation and confirmation.
  • Knowledge. During this stage the individual is first exposed to an innovation but lacks information about the innovation. ...
  • Persuasion. ...
  • Decision. ...
  • Implementation. ...
  • Confirmation.

What are the 7 core stages of adoption? ›

These seven core issues are loss, rejection, guilt/shame, grief, identity, intimacy, master/control. Understanding these core issues, and how they impact your life, can be validating and help us all to better understand the lasting effects of the adoption experience.

What are the stages of adoption to change? ›

Enterprises aiming to expedite change adoption must concentrate on five pivotal stages:
  • Team transition and preparation.
  • Clear communication.
  • Initiate the change.
  • Change implementation and onboarding.
  • Continuous support, review, and management.
Jul 25, 2024

How do you heal adoption trauma? ›

Consider therapy approaches such as talk therapy, trauma-informed therapy, or EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy, which can be particularly effective for processing trauma.

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