Ella & Frank Lindig, Orphan Train Riders

Ella Lindig (1898 - 1980) lived in San Jose, IL with Leonard and Agnes Parker for the rest of her life. In the 1930 and 1940 census she was called Ella Parker and when the Pantagraph took note of her illnesses in the 1940s, she was called Ella Parker. The Parkers died in 1950 and 1942, leaving Ella alone for the first time.

Her brother may have been the Frank Lindig living in Moro, IL during the 1910 census -- a farmhand on the Theodore and Mary Dusey farm. He was born in 1890 in New York. Frank Lindig also appeared in the 1892 New York state census with parents Fred and Sarah Lindig. Fred was a foreman and was from Germany, and Sarah was a British woman. In 1900 the same couple was listed again with two daughters, Sarah and Esina (but three living children). Ten year old Frank Lindig was an inmate of the New York Juvenile Asylum that year.

Two graves are in the Green Hill Cemetery in San Jose, IL for Ellen Lindig (1898 - 1980) and Frank Lindig (1890 - 1950)

In 1900 the NYJA began taking a photo of each company going west and printing those photos in the annual report. Ella and Frank were in the group pictured below. Ella was seven and Frank was fifteen. In 1905 the asylum was transitioning to the cottage system and a system that would care for far fewer children. Girls would no longer be inmates of the asylum and actions were being taken to to transfer the girls to other institutions or to send them West. Earlier companies traveling west were made of more boys than girls, sometimes companies would be all male, but as the asylum made major changes, the movement of girls increased until there were no girls at the Asylum. Ella Lindig is one of the young girls in the photo below.