Mary Alice Smith Gray, the prototype of one James Whitcomb Riley's most famous poem, "Orphant Annie" (1885), on which the comic strip "Little Orphan Annie" was loosely based. Mary Alice Smith was born in 1850 in Liberty, Union County, Indiana. She joined the Riley household in the early winter of 1862 and lived until the following August. She then worked as a house servant for five years near Greenfield, Ind. In 1868 she married John Wesley Gray and moved to a house near Philadelphia. In the spring of 1915 she was "discovered," after a query appeared in a Questions and Answers column in the Indianapolis News. Calvin Oliver Power approached Mrs. Gray in the spring 1917, after a visit to the Riley home. He then "conceived the idea of presenting her to the public through the medium of my Riley programs." Mrs. Gray made several hundred appearances on Power's "program" in Ohio and Indiana. She died in Indianapolis in 1924.
From the description of Letters from Mary Alice Smith Gray to Calvin Oliver Power, 1918-1923. (Huntington Library, Art Collections & Botanical Gardens). WorldCat record id: 228769769
