GETS CHILDREN BACK.
For Some Time Mr. and Mrs. A. G. Adams
Have Been Trying to Secure Them From the Courts
Probate Judge Van B. Prather, who is also judge of the juvenile court in Kansas City, Kas., yesterday ordered that the four children of Mr. and Mrs. A. C. Adams, who were taken away from their parents by Judge Freeman last summer, be returned to them. It was alleged last summer that Adams had deserted his family and that Mrs. Adams was not a fit person to have charge of them. The children, who range in age from 8 to 13 years, were placed in charitable institutions for adoption, and all of them except the eldest child, Daisy, were adopted. Daisy was sent to the Soldiers' Orphan home in Atchison, Kas. and was in court yesterday.
It was proved yesterday that Mrs. Adams is a woman of good character and that Adams did not desert his family. He is now employed at the Swift packing house and went to Fort Worth, Tex., to enter the employ of that company last summer. The Adams family lives in Armourdale.
Last summer Adams went to Texas to work. During his absence, Festus Foster, Humane officer, found the four children in what he claimed was a filthy house in Armourdale, suffering for lack of food, and took them in charge. They were taken before Judge Winfield Freeman, of the juvenile court. Judge Freeman awarded the custody of the children to the Kansas Orphan society at Topeka to be placed in adoption.
October 8 Adams returned from Texas and immediately asked the juvenile court to give him back his children. During the course of the hearing, Adams became very angry and exclaimed: "Freeman, I'll have my children, if I have to get them at a point of a gun!"
After this outbreak Judge Freeman refused to listen to Adams further, and denied his application for the custody of his children.
Yesterday Mr. and Mrs. Adams appeared before the court, and proved to the satisfaction of the judge that they were able and willing to take charge of their children again. Both husband and wife denied that Adams' trip to Texas had been a desertion of the family, saying that he had simply gone there to make a living for them.
