Theresa Keppler Bright
Theresa Keppler Bright's story, as told by her daughter-in-law, Lillian Bright of Marengo
Theresa was 12 when she came on an orphan train to Boone County in about 1882. Her mother had died when she was very young. When her father remarried, he placed Theresa in a New York City orphanage. The stepmother did not want the child, Lillian Bright says.
The girl was taken by the Seymore Fox family of rural Garden Prairie. The couple's three daughters were grown and they took the child as a kindness. Theresa was happy with her new family. She graduated from Belvidere High School. Shortly after that, the Foxes died.
Theresa had become an accomplished seamstress, but wanted to become a tailor. She returned to New York, both to study tailoring and to search for her father. She never found her father - and from that point she put that part of her history behind her.
She returned to Belvidere, where she met Thomas Bright, a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin. The couple decided to marry, but Theresa wouldn't set the date until she also had attended college. She went. to Wheaton College and they were married in 1906. They had three children, including Lillian Bright’s husband, Thomas. One son was a fighter pilot who died during World War II.
Theresa kept in close contact with the Fox daughters. Before her death in 1958, she directed choirs at Beividere's St. John's Episcopal Church and Garden Prairie's Congregational Church.
