Andrew W. King, DeKalb County

Andrew King was born in Scotland in 1862 and was sent to DeKalb County, Illinois in 1876. Andrew was placed with the Bourcy family of Sycamore according to the 1877 Annual Report. No records of his time with the Bourcy family were found, however.

When King died in January 1940, it was front page news in the The Daily Chronicle (DeKalb). He had been an important dry goods merchant in the town and left a respectable estate of $12,500 in real estate in Sycamore, IL and a personal estate of $10,000 in Pinellas, Florida. His only heirs were his second wife and a sister in Massachusetts. He had never had any children with his wife Edith Sivright and he married his second wife after 1917. He had a sister, Harriette Tinker, and two nieces in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Mr. Bourcy reported that Andrew had resisted the temptation to run away when another boy urged him to do so. Running away from their employers was of course very common among the asylum boys. Other boys or even other farmers would tell the boys that they could make far more money by working for wages rather than serving out their indentures. Possibly some boys could have earned more in this way, but at the same time, an employer was not required to feed and board workers during times when there was little work, while a guardian was required to board and clothe a child until the end of the indenture

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