Henry Rice, Stephenson County

Henry Rice (b. 1868) was sent to Illinois in 1876 at age seven. He was placed with Lewis and Georgianna Moses near Buckeye Center in Stephenson County. This could have been one of the luckiest incidents in Henry's life because the Moses family seems to have taken a special care of Henry and truly welcomed him into the heart of their family.

When Henry came to live with the Moses' family they were a small family-- with just one daughter and John Moses, the brother of Lewis. The Moses family continued to grow throughout the 1880s, while Henry was growing up.

No report of Henry came until he had been in Illinois for nine years. Lewis Moses' report of Henry was printed in 1885. Henry was not attending church as often as his guardian would have liked, but he was doing well in school and in his farm work. Henry was especially good at math and spelling. Henry was enjoying good health as well.

The Moses family faced many adversities in 1887 and 1888. Two of their children died in 1887 and another died in 1888. Henry does not mention the deaths in his letter of 1887, but reviews his own conduct. He states in his letter that he has lived with the Moses family since he was seven years old. He had runaway when he was just thirteen, but when he returned was welcomed back. Now more mature and nineteen years old, he recognized that he had always been treated with kindness and that he was happy in his home.

The children from the asylum did not always enjoy the best health. They had been exposed to life on the streets, disease in crowded conditions in the tenements and malnutrition. Perhaps as a result, Henry developed health problems later in life. In 1889 Lewis Moses wrote that Henry had been having trouble with his hearing. Despite having lost three little children in the past two years, Moses was giving serious attention to Henry's problem. The trouble had begun in 1888, and Mr. Moses had reported to the asylum that he planned to send Henry to Milwaukee for treatment. In 1889 Henry had spent eight weeks in Milwaukee under the care of a specialist at a cost of $10 per week to absolutely no avail. When he returned, he became ill with inflammatory rheumatism and was laid up in bed for three weeks, then unable to do anything at all for another six weeks. Mr. and Mrs. Moses' apparent patience and generosity is truly gratifying and restores one's faith in humanity.

In 1890 Henry was twenty one and able to leave his indenture. Mr. Moses had put Henry's money ($100) in the bank for him, and it was Henry's plan to seek further education. He had advanced well in the common schools in the area (grade schools) and Mr. Moses thought it would be good for Henry to do a bookkeeping course. He did not think that Henry would make a farmer, because Henry was"just a little fellow" and weighed just one hundred and twenty pounds. Moses thought that Henry would continue to be industrious and avoid bad company and drink as he had been taught. "We are all sorry to have him leave us, and our little girls love him as a brother."

In 1900 Henry Rice was living in Chicago and working as a mail collector. He had married to Josephine Laughlin in 1896 and had two daughters: Lillian and Florence. They continued to live in Chicago in 1910 and their daughters were noted as Lillian, Elsie and Florence that year. In 1920 Henry and Josephine had moved their family to Hamill, South Dakota, where Henry owned his own farm and a fourth daughter was added to the family -- Genevieve.

In 1930 Henry, Josephine and Genevieve were once again living in Cook County with their daughter Lillian (Raditz) and her husband and children. In 1940 Henry, Josephine, Josephine (Dau) and Genevieve were living in Forest Park. Henry was 69 years old and working as a mail carrier once again.

Henry's identity is confirmed in the obituary of Lewis Moses in 1924, where he is noted as a member of the family living in Hamill, South Dakota. No death record was found for Henry and he was not buried in any cemetery recorded on FindaGrave. Social notes in the Freeport newspaper indicate that when Henry and his family returned to Cook County they were visited by the Moses family in the thirties and forties. Thus the relationship between Henry and his guardian family continued long after he left them and the death of the patriarch.