This cache is with the 2015 CCGT Forgotten Clearfield County Geotrail. Use your CCGT passport to collect 25 codes found within each cache to redeem for your 2015 CCGT geocoin. In addition, if you have completed all five (5) years of the CCGT and you have your passport validated, a special trackable geocoin will be available in June. Visit www.visitclearfieldcounty.org/outdoors/geotrail for more information about the Clearfield County Geotrail, passports, geocoins and previous geotrails that are still open.
Clearfield County is full of old and historical locations, buildings, and remnants of by gone eras. Come and cache Clearfield County to learn about it's rich history through ghost towns, abandoned cemeteries Civil War uprising and it's rich Native American presence.
The Children's Aid Society was organized in October, 1890 as the first child welfare agency in Clearfield County. The society was created to place chldren in carefully selected suitable homes and prevent these orphaned children from spending their lives in the Poor House. In 1915 the Society rented a small house and equipped it to house 10-20 children. The small house was soon outgrown.
In 1917, benefactors Asbury Lee and John Wrigley anonymously built the Children's Home for the Society. The home was called the "Mystery House" while being constructed, as no one knew the builders or its purpose. The building was presented to the Society in July, 1918 with the stipulation that it always serve children.
The first use of the building was as an emergency hospital in 1918 during a flu epidemic of several months (at the request of the Board of Health). The first regular residents of the Children's Home moved in during May, 1919.
The Home often had forty or more children in residence and 20 or more in foster or adoptive homes. There were many adoptions over the years. Many boys were placed in Girard College or Hershey School, and many girls were placed in Carson College or Indiana Industrial School for Girls. Many of these children spent their vacations at the Children's Home in Clearfield. In the first 50 years, approximately 1,140 children were under the Society's care.
By 1979, the agency recognized the need to provide smaller bedrooms and to keep boys on the 2nd floor, and add a 3rd floor for the girls. This major project was completed in 1980. Shortly afterwards there was a national movement to move children from orphanages to foster homes, and by 1983, the children in the home had been moved to other homes. The board of directors faced a challenging decision of whether or not to dissolve the Children's Aide Society. Gratefully they had the courage and forsight to continue. Naturally, the firest interest was to become a formal adoption agency and help find loving families in need. A formal license application was submitted in 1985, and the first adoption happened in 1986. Currently the agency provides home studies for families in fourteen counties for private, special needs, international adoption, and locally child daycare services.
