Daniel Mayor, Ford County

Daniel started life in Illinois in DuBois, Washington County, which is in the southern reaches of Illinois (information from the 1890 report). Apparently life with the John Schwind family did not work out and Daniel was moved to Ford County, where he was working for another elderly farmer -- August Buchholz -- near Peach Orchard in the 1900 census. Orphans were often moved from one home to another, in the search for a comfortable fit.

Daniel must have found Peach Orchard (his residence according to the census) a comfortable fit, because he continued to live there and owned a restaurant there for many years. He married in 1902 to Anna Beck. With her he had four children: Norine, Evelyn, Orrin and Carl. As seen in the announcement of Daniel's suicide in February of 1935, his son had become a doctor and Daniel must have derived some satisfaction from his son's success.

Whether the wounds of being an orphan train rider weighed too heavily upon Daniel or not can't be known. But the Depression was a hard time for everyone, whether an orphan or not.

His parents were Daniel Mayor and Anna Beck, and Daniel was living in New Jersey with them at the time of the 1880 census. His father was Danish and his mother English. Their name then was Mayor, as printed in the Annual Report of 1890. The family gradually adopted the name Meyers over the years. As noted in the letter from the asylum visitor, the children in this home attended the German school, where they would have learned and spoken German.

Emily Lentz could not be traced.