I've made some wrong assumptions about the Allens

Just when you think you're making great progress, you have to go back and fix the things you mistakenly assumed along the way! I've thought for years that I had figured out some things about my orphaned grandmother and her parents. I had neat little stories worked out in my head about how things must have happened. Now I've got some new information and am having to backtrack on a couple of things. 

I have to admit that it has put a mild damper on my enthusiasm. My revised stories concern the following:

1. 1. My grandmother's supposed orphanage upbringing in Paris, Texas. 
2. 2. My grandmother's father and his famous horses. 

What I KNOW about my grandmother's childhood: 

• Her parents were Augustus Dozier Allen and Eva L. Bosworth. 
• Her given name was Ethelyn.
• She was born in July 1893 in either Illinois or Iowa (likely Illinois).
• They moved to Wichita, Kansas around 1900 during a real estate boom.
• Her father worked for the Kansas Bureau of Immigration, then B. D. Allen Real Estate.
• They had a family photo made around this time, which my grandmother kept all her life. 
• They were together in Wichita as a family in 1903 per the Wichita Eagle newspaper, along with her mother's brother, R. R. Bosworth and his family. 
• By 1904, her mother Eva was listed as a widow in the city directory. 
• Her father, A. D. Allen, married Emma Schindler in 1905.
• In 1907, A. D. Allen started a real estate company at 121 Douglas Avenue in Wichita.
• In 1909, A. D. Allen was president of the Wichita horse show. 
• A. D. Allen owned two American Saddlebred horses in the famous Rex Denmark line.
• From 1907 to 1910, R. R. Bosworth and three of his grown children died of TB. 
• In 1910, A. D. Allen made a trip to South Texas. 
• In 1911, Eva died in Fort Supply asylum in Woodward, Oklahoma (est. in 1908). TB?
• My grandmother changed her name to Teresa Marie at some point. (after a favorite nun?)
• Between 1912 and 1915, there is evidence that A. D. Allen lived in Tulsa, Dallas, & Fort Worth.
• In 1915, a personal ad sought A. D. Allen, last seen heading from Fort Worth to Canton, OK.
• In 1916, Teresa, with friend Maude, lived and trained as a nurse at St. Vincent's Sanitarium in Sherman, Texas.
• In 1917, A. D. Allen was declared insane by a judge in Wichita and committed to an asylum.
• A. D. Allen died two weeks after admission to Osawatomie State Hospital, Miami, Kansas.
• In 1919, Teresa put a want ad in the Wichita newspaper looking for her father. 
• In 1919, Teresa graduated from Paris Sanitarium school for Nursing in Paris, Texas.
• In 1920, Teresa worked as a nurse in Oklahoma City; lived in a boarding house with Maude.
• By 1922, Teresa was living in Waukegan, Illinois and working for an ENT, Dr. Jolley.
• In 1926, she married my grandfather, Horace Calvin Crofford.

My mistaken assumptions:

First of all, I thought all along that Ethelyn was sent by her father to an orphanage in Paris Texas since that is where she attended nursing school, though I wondered why he would send her so far away. I assumed it must have been the St. Joseph boarding school in Paris, Texas, run by the Sisters of Mercy and headed by Mother Theresa Muldoon. WRONG.

I recently ran across a doctoral thesis about the TB plague in Wichita and the social services involved in managing its effects on the city, including managing the many orphaned children. In this thesis, there is mention of a Sisters of Mercy Catholic Orphanage in Wichita that burned down in 1912. It would make SO much more sense that my grandmother would have been placed in this orphanage rather than so far away in Texas. I have not been able to learn anything more about this orphanage. More research is needed. The devastating fire is well-documented. By1912, my grandmother would have been 19 years old and probably no longer in any orphanage.

The second assumption I made was in identifying A. D. Allen's famous horses. A biography of A. D. Allen told of his ownership of two horses, Rex Denmark and Midnight Denmark. In very recent research (last week), I learned that A. D. Allen owned Rex Denmark, JR. (!), NOT the famous Rex Denmark who sired the most famous horse in Saddlebred history, Rex MacDonald. I had also mistakenly recorded the second horse as Midnight Rex, the grandson of Rex MacDonald, but it was actually Midnight Denmark, a totally different horse. They are all certainly related, I'm sure. 

I found a clue in a society column in the Wichita newspaper, in an announcement that in 1906, "Mr. and Mrs. A. D. Allen visited Mr. and Mrs. A. Hughes in Mexico" (meaning nearby Mexico, Missouri). Mexico happens to be where the most famous horse Rex MacDonald is buried and a statue erected in his memory. Rex MacDonald's owner was a Col. Hughes. It HAS to be connected.