Augusta Baisch LaPorte was just 3 or 4 when she was put on an orphan train in about 1904. She had rickets, a bone disorder caused by a lack of calcium, and wore braces. No one knows what happened to her parents or why she had been in a New York orphanage.

The precise story of how she found her loving family is another unknown. One story suggests that a Catholic priest told the Joseph Baisch family, who were living in Madison,Neb., that a trainload of orphans was coming. He asked them to consider adopting a child.

According to the other story, when the train on which Augusta was riding stopped, somewhere in Nebraska, Anna Mooney Baisch, Joseph Baisch's wife, noticed her. Anna had gone to the train station to accompany her sister, who wanted to take an orphan. Anna, a nurse, took pity on Augusta and brought her home, vowing to bring the child back to health, which she did.

Augusta was treated "like a goddess," by the family, which included three older boys. The family never told her that she was adopted. According to one story, they took her back to the orphanage to visit when she still was very little, perhaps trying to learn about her background. "She saw the bed she'd slept in; she hugged the bed and she cried," Mary Grocholl says.

Augusta married Charles Edward LaPorte when she was 29. They had two children and lived in Chicago. She worked as a public health nurse. She and her husband were foster parents.