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Writer's pictureRochelle Gridley

Family Ties


Family ties are sometimes broken through unavoidable or mistaken circumstances. One hundred years ago these circumstances could be sickness and death. In May of 1918, the Behrman family on Main Street was overjoyed to find their daughter, who was lost to them through a series of illnesses and deaths. After the birth of her daughter in 1892, Mrs. Behrman was so ill that her six month old Eleanor was sent to New York with her Aunt Leatta Johnstone. Mrs Johnstone died shortly after that and Eleanor was passed along to another, unnamed, aunt. That aunt lost her husband and was unable to care for Eleanor, and she was sent to live with a family named Curry. Eleanor lived with that family until she was six years old, when Mrs. Curry died. Eleanor was then adopted by the Curran family, who lived in Danville, IL. Perhaps during all these changes Eleanor was always moving closer to her parents in Bloomington, but she continued to live as the daughter of the Currans until she was an adult. At the age of 23 she moved to Bloomington and became friends with Mrs. Behrman. One day she said to Mrs. Behrman, "I wish you were my mother." Perhaps there was an exchange of confidences and the mother and daughter were truly reunited.

Another story of a lost child was told in the Pantagraph on August 12, 1914. Mrs. J B Fuhrman was the daughter of Harvey Blair, a Bloomington man. When Miss Blair was very young, her parents divorced. Her mother returned to France, leaving her children at the Illinois Children's Home. Miss Blair was adopted by a family from Louisiana and lived there all her life. Upon learning as an adult that she was adopted, Mrs. Fuhrman contacted the children's home and learned of her birth in Bloomington and her father's name. Mrs. Fuhrman was living in Milwaukee, but she and her father travelled to Chicago for a reunion at the Palmer House hotel.

A story in the September 25, 1911 Pantagraph reported the reunion of two sisters many years after separation. Katie, Margaret and Mary Doyle were orphaned in Bloomington in 1877. The youngest child, Mary, was sent to a family in Chicago and the other two were sent to the children's home in Metamora. That facility was operated by the Ursuline nuns. Margaret Doyle died at the orphanage and Katie was adopted by a family from Lincoln. When Mary was widowed, it occurred to her to seek out the sisters she had never met. She followed the clues and with the help of the priest in Lincoln, she found her sister living in the same city as herself -- Chicago.

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