Brief Reports of the Orphans

George Conlon was noted in the 1881 brief report table as a 14 year old orphan in Illinois. He is found in the 1880 census living with the Walter and Orphia Lowry/Loring family on a farm near Boone, in Boone County. The image above is of the 1900 census, where George's birthdate and age are incorrectly reported. Note, however, the response in the "relation to head of household" column: "Brought from Childrens Home New York when young." Here they have identified three orphans from New York as adults, still living with the Lowry/Loring family after many years. George and Kate had married in 1897 and this marriage ended either through divorce or death before 1905, when George married again, to Wilma Thomas, who was already the mother of two children. George and Wilma continued to live in and around Boone County until George's death on January 12, 1932. George worked as a farm laborer (1880 - 1920) and as a gas station attendant (1930).

No further report of George Powell could be found. I wonder whether he was related to the Frank Powell of Hutsonville, Crawford County, who was featured in an earlier posting. Frank came in 1886, a little later than George would have come, but some siblings came in different years.

Benjamin Faber (1868 - 1945) came to Illinois in 1878 and lived with Agatz & Wilhelmina Krollman in Limestone, Kankakee County in 1880. He was noted in that census as a servant living with the family. He married Jennie Williams in 1888 and with her had five daughters: Estella (Drephouse), Lilah (Brown), Edna, Mildred and Virginia. They lived in Streator in Lasalle County from 1900 to 1945 when Benjamin died June 21, 1945. He was a brick layer all his life, working even when he was 72 years old.

Joseph Grisich came to Illinois in 1878 and in 1880 he was living in the home of Lut and Francis Corliss in Aroma, Kankakee County and listed as their "adopted" child from the New York Juvenile Asylum. He married in 1896 to Eleanor A. Allen and gave the names of his parents as Thomas and Mary Jane Elwin Grisich. He remarried in 1914 to Katie Roggenbuck in Chicago, but continued to live in Kankakee, where he died May 11, 1968.