Edward Conlon, Charles and Katie Powell Boone County

Edward Conlon (1868 - 1932) was sent to Illinois in 1877 and he lived with the Loing family near Bonus, Illinois. In 1885 Eliza Loing wrote a report to the asylum regarding Edward and two other children who had all been placed in her home. Eliza was the daughter of the Walter and Orpha Loing. Her father was from New York and her mother from Canada. They were a farming family in Boone County. Edward married Kate "Loing" in 1896. In 1880 the Loings had no daughter named Kate, but in 1907 when Mrs. Loing died two other orphans raised by the Loings were called by the name Loing in her obituary. Katie Powell came to live with the Loings in 1882 and it must have been Katie Powell who George married. Katie Powell Conlon died October 19, 1900 of consumption in Belvedere, Illinois. As was common at that time, Katie was identified only by the names of the men in her life -- George Conlon and Walter Loing. When she married she gave only the names of her adoptive parents.

By 1905 Edward married again, to Wilmet Thomas, a widowed or divorced woman with two children. Edward Conlon gave the names of his parents as James Conlon and Agnes Foster. No census revealed any children born during either of Edward's marriages. He continued to live in Belvedere, Illinois, where he worked as a salesman in a gasoline station. He died following an operation in the Rockford Hospital.

Charles Powell Loing (1870 - 1925) was the brother of Katie Powell, and he also came to Illinois in 1882. He also took the name Loing and in 1920 he appeared in the census in Belvedere, where he worked as a polisher in a sewing machine factory. He died in Chicago on November 16, 1925. He was working as a "yard clerk" in Chicago. He never married.

Fern Loing (1893 - ?) was mentioned in the Republican Northwestern, the

paper for Belvedere, Illinois. In 1916 she was a high school English teacher and was moving to Chebanse to teach there. According to various notices in 1915, Fern graduated the University of Illinois in 1915. In 1918 she married in Akron, N. Y. after working for three years as the principal of the high school at Chebanse. Oral and Fern met at the University of Illinois, but made their home in Washington D.C. where Oral worked with the Bureau of Statistics. (Her "aunt" Eliza Loing travelled to New York with Fern for the wedding.) Oral and Fern had one son, James McLaren Lansche, who became a doctor.

The 1900 census contains the entire adopted family: George Conlon, married to Katie Powell, Charles Powell and Fern Conyes. Fern was still living at the time of Eliza Loing's death in 1892 and was one of her heirs, along with her brother Robert Conyes. The Conyes may have been blood relatives of the Loings, because several members of that family were named in Eliza's will. Fern's mother died (in Bonus, IL) of tuberculosis when Fern was about one year old and when Fern's brother was an infant. Their father lived until 1954.