Troy Orphan Asylum was a refuge for many
The former Troy Orphan Asylum, now known as Vanderheyden, has been celebrating its 185th anniversary for the past year. But nobody knows its history better than 95-year-old Marion Manchester.
In an earlier era, it was known ominously as “the house on the hill,” an imposing brownstone Gothic mansion on Spring Avenue — a destination that became an oblique threat made by exasperated parents to misbehaving kids.
Children did not end up there by choice, though, or due to unruly behavior. Death, disease, industrial accidents, an unfit parent or grinding poverty were typical factors. The social safety net in the early decades of the 20th century, before President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, was thin and frayed. Many fell through.
The Troy Orphan Asylum was a place of last resort after a family became overwhelmed, financially or emotionally — unable to provide for one or more children.
Being dropped off there left a social
stigma, a shameful secret rarely discussed or buried for generations. Public events and celebrations to mark the 185th anniversary — including publication of a forthcoming book by historian Don Rittner — has helped erase lingering taboos.
Residents from long ago are beginning to open up.
Marion Manchester’s niece didn’t make the connection for most of the nearly four decades she worked at Vanderheyden. “It wasn’t talked about in our family,” said Beth Manchester. “I had no idea of my aunt’s story until recently.”
In 1928, Henry Trinemeyer dropped off his 5-year-old daughter Marion, her brother, Bill, and sisters, Annie and Pauline — the youngest an infant — at the Troy Orphan Asylum. A German immigrant who had few friends around Troy, Trinemeyer drifted south and eventually settled in Florida, where he worked as a janitor. He lived in the basement of the building he cleaned. He had no contact with his children for many decades and only returned in the final months of a terminal illness.
“Hewasn’tmuchofa father,” Marion Manchester said.
Her mother, Catherine, who had suffered multiple miscarriages, died shortly after her youngest child, Pauline, was born. Her story was not uncommon in that era.
“It was the Depression — my aunts could not afford to take us in and my father could not care for us,” Manchester recalled.
Regimentation became a way of life where 100 children, from infants to teenagers, were raised by stern matrons in a sprawling facility that included a school and chapel.
“I was the smallest one and we lined up by size, so I was always at the front of the line,” she said.
The boys were housed dormitory-style on one side of the building, the girls on the other. Babies and toddlers were kept in a separate area in the middle.
A bell would ring to signal the start of a meal. The children filed in and went to their assigned seats at long wooden tables. Grace was intoned in unison — Manchester can still recite the short blessing — before they sat down on cue and ate in silence, family-style, from large serving bowls passed around. If you were caught speaking to someone at your table, you lost your dessert.
“The food was OK. Nothing special,” Manchester said.
She slept on a narrow cot with a straight chair next to it — the only furnishings. The children had a bath every Friday night, when they were given a fresh change of clothes. Girls wore homemade gingham jumpers sewn by matrons, and had one fancy dress to wear to chapel for Sunday service.
Girls were given indoor chores, such as setting the tables and cleaning. Manchester’s job was mopping the playroom and polishing the stairway banister and scrollwork.
“We had an old matron who was very mean,” Manchester said. “We were happy when we got a young matron. She hugged us and kissed us good night for the first time.”
Children were allowed to have family members visit once a month. “I never had a visitor,” Manchester said.
She was never seriously mistreated and did not feel sad or depressed about her life at the orphanage.
“That was my normal. I knew nothing else,” she said.
They attended classes downstairs in the building and went on simple outings, such as weekend trips to nearby Frear Park. She enjoyed playing jacks and roller skating on the pavement around the building.
Video from the New York State Archives shows an outing from the 1930s in which State Police troopers served ice cream to children from the orphanage.
“I made some friends, but we eventually all got split up,” she said. Manchester and her siblings did not feel like a family unit, since they were in different age groups at the facility.
“I did not see my brother, Bill, much at all,” she said. “He was with the older boys.”
She recalled some of the older boys were “troublemakers” who climbed out of their second-story dormitory and went skylarking around the city in the wee hours. If they were caught, they were severely punished or expelled.
At 15, Manchester was adopted by a foster couple. Months later, all four siblings ended up with the same family. “We called her mother and she loved us,” said Manchester, thrilled to have a room of her own and her first piece of furniture, a dresser that she later gave to her daughter.
Manchester graduated from Berlin High School in 1941 and got married. Her husband, Hugh, was a World War II veteran. They bought farmland in Petersburgh, where they raised dairy cows and she baked bread and doughnuts, which she sold alongside Route 22. She grew vegetables and in the fall canned 100 quarts of tomatoes and the dandelion greens her husband loved.
“I love the country, and all the open space,” Manchester said. She still lives on the farm, in good health and independent in her mid-90s. Her husband died in 1997. She raised five children and has seven grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
“She was a wonderful mother who put her family first,” said daughter Karen Decarlo. “She let us splash in mud puddles barefoot. She raised us to be strong women and hard workers like her.”
“She never talked about growing up in the orphanage,” said daughter Kay Mishkin. “I am so grateful somewhere along the way she learned how to be a great mother.”
“Thank God Vanderheyden was there for her and so many other children. We like to say we change lives to save lives,” said Karen Carpenter Palumbo, president and CEO of Vanderheyden Inc. It changed its name from Troy Orphan Asylum to Vanderheyden Hall for most of its history but dropped the “Hall” recently.
Today, Vanderheyden serves more than 500 individuals and families in 50 locations throughout the Capital Region, with a residential campus in Wynantskill.
After a long career in state service, Carpenter Palumbo took over a financially troubled organization that nearly shut down. She is leading a $1.85 million capital campaign focused on the anniversary with a goal of building a new career center and young adult assisted-living apartments. “We are celebrating the past and imagining a bright future,” she said.
Manchester, who spoke about her experiences at the orphanage as part of its anniversary observation, gets a ride three days a week to the senior service center in Grafton. She loves the yoga class. She made friends with a woman at the senior center, and they talked for weeks before they discovered a shared secret: Both lived at the Troy Orphan Asylum in the ’30s.
“It’s nice to talk about it now,” said Manchester, who filled 10 pages of handwritten notes with memories.
I remarked on her lovely penmanship.
“The matrons taught us a lot of good skills,” she said.