Joseph Alexander, Iroquois County

Joseph Alexander (1891 - 1934) was sent west in May of 1898, aged 7 or 8 years old and became the ward of Theodore and Louise Koester, a farming couple near Buckley, Illinois. Theodore and Louise were German immigrants and had another orphan in their home -- Katie, who only used the name Koester. By 1910, the Koesters (with Katie) had moved to Peoria County, which is adjacent to Tazewell County where Joseph found his wife.

If Joseph's later official records are any indication, Joseph felt a strong bond with the Koesters. When he registered for the draft during the Great War, he gave his name as Joe Koester. When he was admitted to the Dayton, Ohio veteran's hospital, he was registered as Joe Koester. His death certificate however, showed that his name was Joseph Alexander and that the names of his parents were unknown. Theodore Koester died in 1934 according to the records of the church, and the only family at his funeral was his wife, Louise.

Joseph married Bessie Seaman in Tazewell County and lived with her in Peoria County where he worked out as a farm laborer in 1920. In that census it was noted that he was an orphan and did not know where his parents were from. In September of 1930 Bessie died of unknown causes, and at the time of the census, Joseph was living in the Danville Soldier's Home. He was not completely disabled and had a job there as an elevator operator. In 1936 Joseph died of tuberculosis in Dayton, Ohio. There was no indication that Joseph and Bessie had any children. Bessie was buried with her family in Onarga, and Joseph was buried at the veteran's cemetery in Dayton.

In his letter Joseph says that he is five feet tall, short even for those times. I wish now that I had begun by noting the height of the children as they reported their height and weight, which they frequently did. Was Joseph's growth stunted by poor nutrition in his early life? What patterns would I find if I recorded all of these records? In 1900 a physical anthropology study of 1000 children in the New York Juvenile Asylum was made, but the focus of this study was concentrated on so called physical abnormalities between whites and blacks and Americans vs. other European nationalities. Two tables compared the height of asylum children and children from the Boston schools -- which was thought to be weighted toward American and German children rather than a more widespread demographic.