John, Charles, Bertha, Louisa & Elizabeth Albrecht, Orphan Train Riders
John (b. 1878) and Charles were sent to Illinois in 1888. They were part of a company that visited Sterling, Illinois and were place with farmers there. Despite the fact that we know the names of the farmers who initially took these boys, none of the children listed in this newspaper article could be located in a census. (Charles is listed as Fred) Of course, tracing children sent during the 1880s is complicated by the missing 1890 census. Although the Asylum reported very few deaths among the children, once a child ran away or went out to work for wages, he was dropped from the list of active children and was no longer included in the statistics. Also, girls tended to marry very young and if the marriage license is not preserved, tracing the girls is challenging. John wrote the following letter in 1898. John and Fred appeared in the 1880 census with their mother, Catherine, in New York. A family tree places John in Wisconsin in 1910, after marrying Theresa Lelle in Jo Daviess County, Illinois. They had five children: Katharine, Frederick, Edward, Theresa and Mildred. John died January, 1950 in Washington State. This family history does not have any census or marriage records for Frederick, but the family history recognized his orphan train past and an occupation of circus clown!
Update: On April 2, 1887 twelve year old Charles Albrecht appeared in New York City, seeking his father and two sisters -- he had been sent West by the New York Juvenile Asylum after living there for two and a half years. He had been indentured to a farmer near Joliet, but claimed that he was mistreated there. He road freight cars to New York, earning money on the way by selling newspapers or other odd jobs. On his return he was unable to find his parents and was arrested for begging for alms. He was then entrusted to the Humane Society and apparently returned to the New York Juvenile Asylum. (New York Times, April 2, 1887)
In 1896, the sisters of John and Charles were sent west by the asylum. Bertha (b. 1889), Louisa (b. 1883) and Elizabeth were initially placed in homes very close to one another in Cooksville, Illinois, but when the girls had to be placed in new homes, they were no longer as close to one another. Bertha was born about 1890 and wrote a letter in 1900, criticizing herself for having a bad nature. She was very fortunate in her home in Leonard, Illinois, where the family made it possible for her to attend school nine months of the year! Louisa was able to stay in her first home a longer period than her sisters, who had moved to different homes within a year.
The family tree mentioned above pointed me to the marriage of Bertha in Iroquois County, where Bertha could be traced to the William Hoover family where she worked in the house at the age of 11 in 1900. She married John William Sims in 1909 and they continued to live in Iroquois County until Bertha's death March 9, 1948. Bertha had five children: Josephine, Leona, William, Una and Francis.
Louisa lived in Blue Mound in 1900 in the home of the Speer Solomon family. She married John H. Ritzman and moved frequently in Illinois and then to Wisconsin. She died in Spring Valley, Wisconsin in 1982, leaving six children: Ester, Ruby, Donald, Lawrence, Chester and Edna.
Elizabeth married Theodore Peck or Pax and lived in Cady, Wisconsin, a place where brother John also lived. Elizabeth and Theodore had seven children: Theresa, Nicholas, Bertha, Theodore, Elizabeth, Philip and Marie.
