Clarence Waugh, Iroquois and Will County

Clarence wrote in 1895:

Clarence Waugh was still greatly influenced by the Asylum at the age of 21 when he wrote this letter in 1895. He stated an emphatic goal of being a minister and going to school, but he did not reach that goal in the end. He had written a letter in 1889, and expressed his shame that he had not stayed in his first home and expressed a desire to behave better and stay in his new home throughout his indenture. As he did in 1895, Clarence blamed himself rather than his circumstances for his failure.

Clarence eventually moved to Chicago and married a young woman there in 1905 -- Lula India Hiatt. They never had children and always made their home in rented apartments. In 1910 Clarence was working as a compiler in a directory office in Chicago, and India was working as a masseuse. In 1920 Clarence had risen in the world and was a bank clerk at the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank of Chicago and India was no longer working outside their home. He continued working at the bank at least until the time of the 1930 census. He died in 1942 in Chicago and was buried in Indianapolis, where his wife's family was.

He most likely had a high school education, given his employment at the bank, a level of education that orphan train riders did not often achieve, if only because it was common to stop schooling at the 8th grade level. However, with so little education, people were limited to casual labor or work as a tenant farmer. While the administrators of the asylum would most likely have been appalled if their own children had not completed high school and university, destitute children were not thought capable or deserving enough to aspire to the same heights. The orphan children were taught to merely try to appease those in authority and "do all in their power to please and satisfy them."