Annie, Dennis, & Joseph Donovan, Knox & Bureau County

Annie Donovan (1878 - 1942) was sent West in 1891 to Knox County. She wrote to the Asylum in 1893 and was living with Ira Hall, an employer she would still be living with during the census of 1900. Her letter reveals that her father, James was still living and that her two brothers, Dennis and Joseph were also in Illinois. She had appeared in the 1880 census with these brothers and her father and mother, James and Ann. Her parents were from Ireland, and her father worked as a longshoreman.

Annie was in correspondence with her brother Joseph, who was living with an employer named F H Baldwin in Yorktown, Bureau County, a place about 70 miles north and east of Galesburg.

No trace of Joseph or Dennis, beyond the 1880 census, can be found. Annie married Frank Johnson at the Swedish Lutheran Church on March 18, 1903. Frank was a carpenter in the car shops of the railroad in Galesburg, Illinois. They had five children: Gladys, Lester, Herman, Earl, and Hulda. The 1940 census states that Annie had just a 4th grade education, despite the fact that the Asylum required that the guardians send her to school far beyond that level of education. She was widowed by 1940, but was living in her own home with her two sons, Herman and Earl, who both worked at the local refrigerator manufacturer. The men in the Johnson family worked in some of the biggest industries in Galesburg, the railroad and Maytag. They lived in a home that they owned, something that may not have occurred without that employment base in Knox County, which has, to a large extent, disappeared. A family website has a photo of Annie and her daughter Gladys (left) with a family car, which was probably another proud product of their family's success in Knox County.