Author Description

Robie was adopted at the age of three, from an orphanage in Sydney Australia. Her adoptive parents were from Boston Massachusetts. Her father was very kind to her, but her mother treated her with disdain. Her given name was really Florence; she never knew why her father called her "Miss Robie", for that was their family name. When Florence was eleven, her father died suddenly of a heart attack. He was a missionary and away from home at the time. Florence was in a boarding school. After the funeral was over Florence's mother did a very strange thing she took Florence to a barber shop and had him cut her hair into a boy's bob. Next they went shopping for boy's clothes even boy's underwear, all the way to boy's socks and shoes. Florence was screaming in protest, to no avail. When they returned home, all of her pretty, feminine clothes were boxed up to be given to charity. As her mother was driving her back to the boarding school she told her the reason for this strange behavior. She said, "You are now going to be the boy I wanted to adopt down there in Sydney Australia. Remember the little boy that was clinging to you and crying? He was your twin brother. I wanted to adopt him, not you! His name was Francis, I'll call you Frank' from now on." it was one of the hard things Florence had to deal with in her young life. As she grew into a lovely, young, intelligent woman and had graduated from Vassar College, her mother died of cancer. Flo was then free to do what she wanted. Her mother had left their home to her. She sold it and with the large sum of $3,000 she left Poughkeepsie, via a boat on the Hudson River, to live closer to New York City. She wanted to find a challenging job. First, she needed to buy women's clothing and learn how to wear them. Then, she obtained a clerical hob at the Westchester Country Court House in White Plains, N.Y. then she found a boarding house where she was the only woman boarder. She was twenty-five; had never wor