Mystery Locale: Can You Identify? -UPDATED

I have been contacted to help identify a location. All the person has is a photo from about  1950 the building reads "Libbey Hall" and "Children's Home".   The children are brother and sister and your help would be appreciated.  Leave a comment if you have information.

 "My brothers and I were in a children's home in Oklahoma between 1949-1952.  Can you confirm if we were at St. Joseph's.  Wesley John Stevens; Sharon Lynn Stevens, Edward Price Stevens.  The two older children would have been there in 1949; the youngest would have joined us in Jan 1952.  Attached is a picture of the two older children on the steps of what I've always believed to be the home.  I have checked with the Baptist's Childrens home and they have no record of us."

We have a message from the woman who had the photos saving she had identified the location. It is the  "Methodist Children's Home" est. in 1927 in Newton, KS.  It associated with two new works which grow out of that early facility. One is Ember Hope and another reader informed us that the Children's Home , in 1960, become Methodist Youthville.

Youthville is a large service helping children and families. Libby Hall (pictured above) was constructed in 1929.

Oklahoma Orphanage Plans Reunion

Here is an invitation for all Former Residents and Staff of St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Bethany, Oklahoma

"Did you hear about the reunion...?"

and St. Joseph’s Children’s Home in Oklahoma City. 

REUNION - SAVE THE DATE - SPEAD THE WORD

A reunion of former residents and staff members of St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Bethany, Oklahoma, and St. Joseph’s Children’s Home in Oklahoma City is being planned for Saturday, June 1, 2013.  Arrangements are pending. 

If you ever lived or worked at the orphanage or children’s home and would like to receive information about this reunion, please mail, e-mail or phone your contact information to Jane Moon, Catholic Charities, 1501 N. Classen Blvd., Oklahoma City, OK 73106, jmoon@catholiccharitiesok.org, 405-526-2308.

The home was opened in 1912 in Bethany, Oklahoma and later moved to Oklahoma City.

PREACHER GIRL OF HEALDTON, OK

Many strange stories recount the simplicity and innocence of an earlier day. Some underscore the things accomplished since and some seem to remind of the things lost in the swelling tidal wave called progress. South Central Oklahoma was a hive of change as the oil industry boomed and Healdton would become known as the birthplace of noted television personality, Rue McClanahan.

There was a female of note there much earlier however. Meet Miss Annie Browne Dollar, ten-year-old daughter of a carpenter in Healdton, Oklahoma. For twelve days in 1918, she had suffered from some malady that had her in a rigid state, talking only in a whisper. Then one day she was perfectly fine and restored to normal physical activity. There was, however, a new light in her eyes as she shared she had “talked with Jesus” and the “Angles.” Soon she requested a Bible and was soon preaching on the streets, going were the “Spirit” directed.

Reading aloud from the scriptures, far above her known reading ability, she would bolding preach the Word of God, and then lapse into the mystery of “unknown tongues”. She seemed very concerned for the soldiers on the battlefield in those days of WWI and felt certain the war would be the last followed quickly by the end of the world.

The era was also one that saw a plague sweep across the globe and thousands became ill with Influenza. Searching for more on this amazing story it was learned that Annie Dollar, in 1920 along with a Willie and Vernon Dollar, was an inmate of the Oklahoma Methodist Orphanage in Oklahoma City. It can be assumed that she, like so many other children in this period, lost her father to this illness.