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Lorain County Ohio Ghosts and Hauntings - Gore Orphanage and Swift Mansion


 

Swift Mansion - (Gore Orphanage)
Light and Hope Orphanage
Amherst, OH 44001

There was an orphanage in Lorain County on a piece of land along Gore Road built from the Johnathon Swift Mansion and a few surrounding farms. It would become the home of the Wilber family for about thirty-five years. Later, it caught the eye of John Sprunger, a wealthy industrialist/builder, and his wife, Katie.
A capitalist at heart, Sprunger had founded the Light and Hope Missionary Society in 1893 along with the Light and Hope Orphanage. Around 1903, Sprunger purchased the Hughes farm in Amherst along with three other neighboring farms, including the Howard’s farm and buildings to house children and establish a printing shop and publishing company under the guise of an orphanage trade training center for children. The children, aged seven to seventeen, were indentured servants—forced to do free work providing services in the printing company and working the farm. Sprunger also rented the children out for agricultural work as hired hands to surrounding farms.
His scheme was not new—children had been bought from Victorian workhouses and overworked without wages in exchange for board and food as pauper apprentices in England since the 17th century. To the public eye, he posed as a saint; his undertakings had all the appearances of a training facility where teachers taught boys a trade and girls learned domestic sciences. In reality, the children were victims of Sprunger’s capitalist greed with the deceptive outward appearance of evangelism and charity. The boys lived at the Hughes farm, and the girls dwelt at the old Howard farm. The children’s overseers lived at the Swift Mansion. The Light and Hope Orphanage encompassed over 500 acres.
A 1910 U.S. census shows 45 people were living on the property, including 27 children, Katie and John Sprunger, and fifteen helpers and assistants. But sources state there could have been 125 children on the property. The caretakers were not caregivers but wardens/overseers for the laboring children. Sprunger treated children like slaves and got rich off their labors. From the onset, the complaints and investigations of abuse and slave labor at the farms plagued the orphanage. It came to a head in 1909 when children began to run away and tell local, empathetic Amherst townspeople about their abuse. It got so bad that nearby townspeople established an underground railroad for escaping children.
Beatings were a common form of punishment to the children by both overseers, the Sprungers, and local farmers when they worked. The Sprungers also forced their slave labor to eat spoiled food. Bedbugs, lice, and rats were commonplace in their cots at night. A sick cow found dead in a field was used for the children’s meals. Instead of a doctor’s care and medicines, they called upon prayer for healing. A litter of bunnies was strangled in front of the children by a teacher to threaten the boys and girls. The orphanage, by judge ruling, was placed into different hands.
So it was true that a cruel man ran the orphanage. There was also a fire when authorities investigated the orphanage over allegations of abuse—in 1910, a boxcar filled with oil and printing supplies burned. It was a three-story building completely destroyed used for the printing of the Sprunger’s Light and Hope Magazine. It exploded so heartily that flames filled the sky. There is no mention in newspapers of children killed during the explosion or fire, nor is there mention that there was an investigation by local authorities held to check for foul play or deaths. Records of the number of children at the orphanage were poorly kept and rarely accurate.
Although the considerable fire that killed hundreds of children may not be confirmed, there are ghosts of its past and plenty of them. The orphanage stayed open until 1916. The old mansion was burned down in 1923 by some homeless taking up residence. People did die here—two of the initial owners, the Swift children, are buried in the Gore Orphanage/Andress family cemetery. There are probably a few settlers who died here in Ohio’s early days. At least one little orphan boy was killed nearby, ‘coasting’ on the back of a car. And those old, disturbing memories still linger of cruelty on the property to sad little orphans who may have returned to the place to haunt Old Man Sprunger and his hired hands for their beatings and slavery. 

 

Gore Orphanage - Lorain County Ghosts and Hauntings

 

Gore Orphanage - Lorain County Ghosts and Hauntings

Gore Orphanage - Lorain County Ghosts and Hauntings

The old Swift Mansion/part of Gore Orphanage before it was destroyed. Look at the far right and the concrete pillar. That is a hitching post and about all, but concrete pads, that remains today.

Gore Orphanage - Lorain County Ghosts and Hauntings

You can see it just behind and to the left from my son.