In the end, on the frank advice of his lawyer—who saw which way the land lay—Theophilus had simply given the children up.
As she read those precious words, Elizabeth could barely believe it. She replied to them at once: “My fond heart is filled with joy.”33 And in this way, as she put it, “The mother’s battle was fought, and the victory won.”34
The water on Lake Michigan had never looked so blue. In the July sunshine, steamers sailed, taking day-trippers out on a wonderful adventure. Back on shore, people feasted on “pies, cake, strawberries and lemonade,”35 while a band played and children thrilled in games of “velocipede, running, jumping and sack races.”36 It was Saturday, July 3, 1869, and Chicago was already beginning to celebrate Independence Day.
Running parallel to the shoreline was the renowned Prairie Avenue, Chicago’s “finest residential area.”37 At number 1497, a mother called out to her children that it was time to leave for church. There was a chorus of voices and a thunder of feet, and as each child exited through the door, that mother counted out her train of stars.
Here came Arthur, a boy of ten, who, in contrast to his siblings, showed no especial flair for his studies. Then dark-haired George, now an impossible fifteen, closer to man than boy. And then there was Libby, a slim, sweet, and very kind woman of nineteen.
The reunited family: Mrs. Packard and all her children
Yet as Elizabeth counted out her not-so-young children, her train of stars did not end there. Three men came carousing through the door too, joining their siblings in the summer sun. Because when Elizabeth had returned to Chicago with her three youngest children triumphantly in tow, her three eldest boys had moved into her home too. They now all lived together as a family of seven. As Samuel, Isaac, and Toffy came out of their shared home, Elizabeth craned her neck back to see them: these strapping sons who were sun and moon and stars as well as so much more.
Together, the family walked as one to the nearby Methodist church.
And someone else walked with them: Theophilus Packard. He’d moved to Chicago when his children had, wanting to be sure his offspring were “safe.”38 Perhaps to his disappointment, he confided in his diary that they “got along living with their mother…comfortably well.”39 Ordinarily, he kept himself to himself at his boardinghouse a mile away, but on this night, perhaps because of the national celebrations, he’d chosen to join his family.
Relations between husband and wife were now cordial. “When he restored the children to my guardianship,” Elizabeth said, “although it was a mere act of compulsion on his part…I told him: ‘I am happy I can regard this act in the light of an act of restitution on your part so far as to allow me to treat you henceforth as a gentleman.’”40 When he visited the children—something Elizabeth freely allowed, though he’d never granted her the same gift—she would nod her head or exchange pleasantries but never anything more. He was just a “stranger gentleman”41 now, as far as she was concerned.
That summer evening, she acknowledged him politely, and the family began their slow stroll to church. To see her children walking around her, to hear their voices, to see their smiles…every moment still seemed impossible. Yet God had “kindly gratified the great desire of my maternal heart.”42
Against all the odds, she’d gotten her children back.
After church, as they walked home, the flashes of Fourth of July fireworks began exploding over their heads. Those vibrant colors and sounds of celebration joyously honored freedom and independence; they could not have been more apt. Because Elizabeth had won her freedom. She’d won her independence. And she’d done it all through her own endeavors: by standing up for herself and refusing to back down, by speaking her mind, no matter the consequences. And as well as gaining her own freedom through her fight, she’d secured the freedoms of others.
That was certainly something to celebrate.
Just a few weeks after Independence Day, Elizabeth gathered her family together once more. It was just before four on a sunny August afternoon, and the city was strangely busy. The seven of them stepped outside their house. Together with their neighbors, they stared up at the sky.
All across Illinois, other communities were doing the same. Even within the asylum in Jacksonville, the patients crowded to the windows, jostling for position, wanting their own postage-stamp square of sky to see.
It was a perfectly clear day. But even as they watched, that cerulean sky changed to purple, then descended into black. The temperature plummeted; spectators shivered. Yet this was no coming storm darkening their day—something to fear or run from.