Christopher and Nellie Hogan

Some guardians were truly benevolent toward the children and tried to help them get a good education. Nellie Hogan came to Macon County in 1868 at age 13 -- which was when her brother came to Illinois. Christopher lived in Livingston County with the Charles Phillips family for five years and wrote a letter to the Asylum in 1892 giving his and his sister’s history.

Nellie lived in Macon County with Mr. and Mrs. Charles Cramp, a very prosperous farming couple. After Christopher's guardians gave up farming and no longer needed him, the Phillips found him a place to work for a machinist, because he had an interest in machinery. When that employer fell on hard times and lost his business, Christopher came to live with the Cramps for a few years as well.

The Cramps moved to Bloomington when Nellie was the age for attending University -- so that she could pursue an education. The Cramps gave large sums of money to the Illinois Wesleyan University during the 80s and 90s and were known to have aided several young women who needed educational assistance over the years.

In 1892 Christopher was living in Chicago and working as a railroad engineer. Christopher visited his old guardians, the Cramps, in 1891. He found them to be quite elderly and frail. He let them know that Nellie had died in Kansas on May 18, 1890, where she had gone after her marriage. Nellie had married Augustus Lawrence in Macon, Illinois on March 5, 1878. They moved to Bloom, Kansas, where they had two daughters, but four days after the birth of their only son, Nellie died. Her infant son died as well.

The Cramps assured Christopher that he would be remembered in their will and that they wanted to leave him a bequest. Mr. Cramp died five years later and his $100,000 estate was left to his wife, with bequests to various churches, but none to Christopher Hogan were mentioned in the Pantagraph.

In 1870 Nellie was not the only child living with the Cramps. Also living in the home were three other children from New York: Charles Rhodes, Emily Marshall and John Lash. None of these children could be traced any farther and none wrote letters to the asylum that were printed. They could, however, be the ancestors of as yet unidentified OTR descendants!