Here is my mystery picture of what I guess may be a group of early city officials of Sullivan, Moultrie County, IL. Anybody with any information about this picture, please leave a comment and let me know!
They are standing on the front steps of the second city hall in Sullivan, which has since been torn down. I do not have a date for this photo, but it would appear to be from the 1890s sometime.

When Joe was five years old his mother died. After a time his father married a widow with children. This woman had no use for poor little Joe who was the youngest. She made it so unpleasant for him that he couldn’t stay at home. He was passed around among the relatives until he was ten. Then, his father found a place for him with a blind man. This man sold "McCornin(?)" products in the country and Joe drove the team for him, led him into the houses, dished his meals, cut up meat and did all the many things required of him. For this, he received his board and a very little money. He never told me how much, but this kept him out of school most of the time.

Finally, when he was eleven years old one of his step-brothers, a boy in his teens, came to work for us on the farm. One day he said "would you be interested in having my little step-brother come and help with the chores for his board?" We had no boys of our own so we said we would gladly have him come.

Poor little fellow! He was thin, tired, & dirty, and had only a few clothes, a pair of old, old overalls, a shirt besides the one he had on and a couple of pairs of sox and a handkerchief or two.

He was such a good little boy and so willing to help in every way he could. The wood-box was never empty. He fed the chickens, put hay in the mangers for the many horses we had, for we lived on a large farm, and did many other little things.

When he had been there a short time, word came that his father was very sick, and for him to come.

We cleaned him up as good as we could. Gave him some money and loaned him a pony to ride to town about 15 miles away.

When he returned about a week later, he climbed wearily down from his horse and I asked about his father. He cried and said, "Daddy died."

Then I said, "Don’t cry, Joe, we will take you for our boy if you will let us." He said, "I will be glad to stay for I have no other home."

When harvest was over we gave him money to get new clothes. My husband took him to town but my uncle wanted to help buy the clothes. So, now he was presentable and we sent him to school with our girls. He took good care of them, and a brother would not have been half as good and courteous as he.

We moved from one county to another in Oregon. We sent him to school and to High School where he was a favourite with teachers and schoolmates.

He grew up straight & tall and quite a handsome fellow. He worked on the farm in the summer. Then we sent him to college. How he did enjoy it there!

But world war was going on and he was subject to the draft. I had hoped they wouldn’t take him for his eyes were poor and he had to wear thick glasses.

He said he would wait until he was drafted so he could have something to which to come back.

In March, the notice came for him to Report. He came home, passed the test and was gone before we hardly knew it. Oh, what a sad and lonely time he had. He was one of the famous 91st Division.

Just the day before the Armistice was signed, a shell burst beside him and he was killed. He only lived a few minutes and didn’t care to talk.

It does seem that he had to give so much and had so little in life. But Thank God he was a Christian and will surely have a rich reward in Heaven.

* * * * * * *
The above was written by my great-grandmother, Daisy Loretta (Bryson) Scott, about the boy my Grandmother always referred to as her "adopted brother," although no legal adoption ever took place.

Willard Benjamin Britain and Katherine "Kate" Cook had five children, four sons and a daughter. After the death of Kate (and if anybody has any information about this lady beyond her name, please let me know), Willard for some reason felt himself unable to care for his daughter, Bertha. She was "adopted out" and eventually married a man named Myers and had two sons, Kenneth and Gerald.

Until a couple of days ago, that was all I knew about Great-Aunt Bertha. A couple of days ago, I sat down at my computer, plugged the name "Bertha Britain" into a search engine on Rootsweb, and hit a bulls-eye.

Bertha was adopted by a man named Marion Francis "Frank" Hoover and his wife, Samantha (Simmons). They had no children of their own. Contact of some sort between the Britains and the Hoovers continued; I have pictures of Bertha as a teenager or young woman and one of her as an adult. I also have pictures of her boys, including one of the boys, a man identified as "Frank Hoover" (that mystery now solved) and another man identified as "Dad Britain:"

Frank Hoover is the man in the car with the boys.

Bertha Britain was born around 1891 in Nebraska. The exact date is unknown. As I have yet to discover any sort of information about her mother, I also have no way of knowing just when she was adopted by the Hoovers. I was sent a picture of her with her adoptive parents in front of their farmhouse; I would guess that she is younger than ten in the picture, though it is hard to tell.

Bertha married Nevin Sanford Myers in 1910 in Rice County, Kansas. They had two children, Marion Gerald Myers (he was known as Gerald), who was born 11 April 1911, and Kenneth Willard Myers, who was born 4 March 1913.

Bertha Britain Myers died shortly after the birth of her second son, sometime in March 1913, presumably of childbirth complications of some kind. She is buried in Alden Valley Cemetery, Alden Kansas.
Both sons died of sudden heart attacks in their early 60s.

This is Gerald Myers, the older son.

And this is Kenneth, the younger boy.

Dates of photos unknown, but they look all grown up. These were in the family picture album, so there is pretty good evidence that some sort of contact continued for a while--someone sent Grandpa pictures of his nephews, apparently.

It is sad that Bertha died so young, but it would appear that in spite of a rough beginning to her life, she was well-loved while she was alive, and I can only imagine how much she was missed after she died. I am happy to have finally found out what happened to her, though. And her sons both married and had children, so we have more cousins out there somewhere.