It all started with the report of a baby found on a porch at 1502 W Mason Street in Bloomington on January 27, 1913. Mrs. John Lesmeister told police that the baby had been abandoned on her porch.
Things were not adding up and the sheriff made an investigation. He discovered that Ralph Lesmeister, a fireman with the railway in Champaign, IL was the father of this unwanted baby. He had promised to marry the mother, Miss Dora Kimberley of Urbana, but had instead taken the ten day old baby away with a promise that his sister would care for it until they were married. He then went to Bloomington and married Lola Isenburg of Mason City rather than honor his promise.
The intention all along was to foist this baby onto the Baby Fold and thereby escape all responsibility for the child and its mother. Dora Kimberly was on the verge of nervous breakdown when she heard of the marriage of her lover and equally aghast to hear that her child had been given up to the Baby Fold.
Social pressure finally caused the Lesmeisters to take responsibility for the baby and tell Miss Kimberley that they would take it and raise it for their own. Ralph resigned his position with the railway and said that he and his wife would go somewhere their reputation and the story was not known and make a new life.
Thereafter Ralph and Lola Lesmeister effectively disappeared from the public record and the fate of the child is not known.