The Illinois Soldiers' and Sailors' Children's School (also known as ISSCS), founded by the State of Illinois as Illinois Soldiers' Orphans' Home (ISOH) for orphans of the Civil War, was a children's home located in Normal from 1865 until 1979.
Jesse Fell supported the foundation of the orphans' home by generous donations.
Originally known as the Civil War Orphans' Home, ISSCS was established in 1865 by an act of the Illinois State legislature as a home for the indigent children of Civil War veterans.[2]Jesse W. Fell, David Davis and other prominent residents of Bloomington and Normal pledged cash and land for the home.[3] The State of Illinois selected Normal as the site of the home in May 1867 and set up three temporary facilities in Bloomington and Springfield to serve the children during construction. The Illinois Soldiers' Orphans' Home (ISOH) opened its doors on June 17, 1869 with 180 children in residence and one main building. Mrs. Virginia C. Ohr, a widow of a Civil War veteran, served as the home's first superintendent. Her tenure was controversial and included accusations of mistreatment of the children.[2] A board of trustees operated the home and acted as legal guardian for the children.[4]
After the Spanish–American War
In 1899, following the Spanish–American War, the Civil War Orphans' Home was amended to allow the children of soldiers and sailors of the Spanish–American War[2][5] and the school began accepting children whose fathers had served in the army or navy during any war. From 1907-1924 dependent orphans who were not children of veterans also were admitted to the home when space was available. In the succeeding years indigent children of veterans of all wars became eligible for admission.[4]
Administration
Girls Cottages with the occupants in the foreground, approximately in 1907
ISSCS was initially operated by a Board of Trustees, its first president in 1867 was Gustav Koerner,[7] and inspected by the Board of State Commissioners of Public Charities created in 1869 to inspect and report upon the conditions in all state charitable institutions. The Board of Administration succeeded to these duties and retained executive and administrative control over the home until the creation of the Department of Public Welfare in 1917. While under the jurisdiction of the Department of Public Welfare the home's name was changed to the Illinois Soldiers' and Sailors' Children's School in 1931.[4] The department also was authorized to place veterans' indigent children in foster homes or in other child-care facilities. This responsibility was handled by Division of Child Welfare staff members working at the school.
It was finally transferred to the Department of Children and Family Service in 1963.[4] In 1916, the nearby Illinois State Normal University (ISNU) began administering the school's education programs which were held on-site until 1961 when ISSCS students began attending ISNU's University High School and Metcalf School.[2]
Following the opening of the home, numerous expansion projects began to fulfill the needs of the children. In 1872, construction was completed on a kitchen, laundry, boiler house, steam heating plant and school. A hospital was added in 1881, which would become an industrial training building for girls when a new hospital was constructed in 1899. More renovations followed in 1889, adding a chapel, dining hall, play rooms and bathrooms in the main building. An electric light plant and industrial education building would later be added. As studies began to reveal the benefits of a home-like environment for orphans, the Illinois Soldiers' Orphans' Home adapted, building five cottages for girls in 1904. Eventually, the home would include 25 cottages along Girls' Row, Boys' Row and the Children's Village. By 1937, all children at the home would live in the cottages under the supervision of housemothers and housefathers. These cottages allowed for more individualized attention in a family-like environment. Appearance also bolstered the children's personal identity when state-issued clothing replaced uniforms beginning in 1927, allowing the children some choice in their clothes.[2] By the late 1940s, as the numbers of children in foster care increased, the school began receiving higher numbers of delinquents and students with psychological or behavioral problems. In 1969, ISSCS celebrated its centennial and with it came new housing for the girls. The Y-shaped cottages allowed the children more privacy in a dorm-like atmosphere.[2]
Closure
Despite these changes, high per capita cost of care, building deterioration and the dwindling number of children caused the state to opt for alternative forms of care for dependent orphans. In 1979, the state closed ISSCS after 114 years in operation.[2] Today, many of the remaining buildings on the former campus have been converted to businesses or residences, while others remain abandoned.
Children who died while in the care of the school, were originally buried at a site on campus, but were later moved to a plot in the Evergreen Memorial Cemetery in Bloomington. There is a second plot for children who died after the move.
In July 2017 the ISSCS Administration Building was demolished by Stark Excavation. The owner of the property, Nicholas Africano, agreed with the Town of Normal to demolish the building for $500,000.[8]
Literature
Cobb, Ruth (2007). A Place we called home. Normal, Illinois: Illinois Soldiers' and Sailors' Children's School Historical Preservation Society. OCLC173484946.
Normal is a town in McLean County, Illinois, United States. As of the 2020 census, the town's population was 52,736. Normal is the smaller of two principal municipalities of the Bloomington–Normal metropolitan area, and Illinois' seventh most populous community outside the Chicago metropolitan area. Chris Koos has been Normal's mayor since 2003.
An old soldiers' home is a military veterans' retirement home, nursing home, or hospital, or sometimes an institution for the care of the widows and orphans of a nation's soldiers, sailors, and marines, etc.
The Indiana Soldiers' and Sailors' Children's Home (ISSCH) was a residential and educational facility near Knightstown, Indiana, in northwestern Rush County, Indiana.
During the American Civil War, Indianapolis, the state capital of Indiana, was a major base of supplies for the Union. Governor Oliver P. Morton, a major supporter of President Abraham Lincoln, quickly made Indianapolis a gathering place to organize and train troops for the Union army. The city became a major railroad hub for troop transport to Confederate lands, and therefore had military importance. Twenty-four military camps were established in the vicinity of Indianapolis. Camp Morton, the initial mustering ground to organize and train the state's Union volunteers in 1861, was designated as a major prisoner-of-war camp for captured Confederate soldiers in 1862. In addition to military camps, a state-owned arsenal was established in the city in 1861, and a federal arsenal in 1862. A Soldiers' Home and a Ladies' Home were established in Indianapolis to house and feed Union soldiers and their families as they passed through the city. Indianapolis residents also supported the Union cause by providing soldiers with food, clothing, equipment, and supplies, despite rising prices and wartime hardships, such as food and clothing shortages. Local doctors aided the sick, some area women provided nursing care, and Indianapolis City Hospital tended to wounded soldiers. Indianapolis sent an estimated 4,000 men into military service; an estimated 700 died during the war. Indianapolis's Crown Hill National Cemetery was established as one of two national military cemeteries established in Indiana in 1866.
Gustav Philipp Koerner, also spelled Gustave or Gustavus Koerner, was a German-American revolutionary, journalist, lawyer, politician, judge and statesman in Illinois and Germany, and a Colonel of the U.S. Army who was a confessed enemy of slavery. He married on 17 June 1836 in Belleville Sophia Dorothea Engelmann ; they had 9 children. He belonged to the co-founders and was one of the first members of the Grand Old Party, and was a close confidant of Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd, and had an essential role in his nomination and election for president in 1860.
The Hebrew Orphan Asylum of New York (HOA) was a Jewish orphanage in New York City. It was founded in 1860 by the Hebrew Benevolent Society. It closed in 1941, after pedagogical research concluded that children thrive better in foster care or small group homes, rather than in large institutions. The successor organization is the JCCA, formerly called the Jewish Child Care Association.
Confederate Memorial Park is an Alabama State Park located in Mountain Creek, in rural Chilton County, Alabama, United States. Its address is 437 County Road 63, Marbury, Alabama 36051. It is sometimes found with the same address in Verbena, Alabama 36091.
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Wartburg Mount Vernon Inc. is a non-profit, Lutheran organization located in Mount Vernon, New York that provides a continuum of care to older adults through residential and community-based programs and services. Wartburg was founded in 1866 as an orphanage and farm school and began serving older adults in 1898. As the foster care system took hold in the mid-1900s, Wartburg gradually phased out the orphanage and by 1979, its focus was solely on serving the elderly.
The Ohio Soldiers' and Sailors' Orphans' Home and sometimes abbreviated OS&SO/OVCH, was a children's home that was located in Xenia, Ohio. It is now home to Legacy Christian Academy, Athletes in Action, and other Christian ministries.
Richard Edwards was a Welsh American educator from Ceredigion (Cardinganshire). Emigrating to the United States with his family when he was a child, Edwards studied at the State Normal School in Bridgewater, Massachusetts and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. He then led a number of schools: the Boys' High School in Salem, Massachusetts (1853–1854); the State Normal School in Salem (1854–1857); the Normal School in St. Louis, Missouri (1857–1861); Illinois State Normal University (1862–1876); and Blackburn University(1891–1893). From 1887 to 1891, he served as the Illinois Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Sue A. Sanders was an American teacher, clubwoman, and author, who was prominent in charities and social circles. She served as national president of the Woman's Relief Corps, auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic, the largest charitable organization in the world in its day. She has the credit of being the originator of placing a flag in every school house, hers the first school to have a flag in McLean County, Illinois. The legislature changed the plan to putting it on the outside, which law was later repealed. She was the author of A journey to on and from the "golden shore" (1887).
John Williston Cook was a prominent educator during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States, specifically in Illinois. His work in education, specifically in association with the Herbartianism movement, had a lasting impact on the field at the time.
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Lelia P. Roby was an American philanthropist of the long nineteenth century. She was the founder of the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic. Thoroughly educated, she was a connoisseur in architecture and art, a linguist, and a well-read lawyer. She did a good deal of literary work under the pen-name "Miles Standish".
Lida Brown McMurry (1853–1942) was an American educator, author, YWCA founder, and prominent figure within American Herbartianism throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Lura Eyestone (1872-1965) was an educator and author. She both attended and worked at Illinois State Normal University. The Eyestone School in Normal, Illinois, honors her contributions to education.
Angeline ("Ange") Vernon Milner was the first full-time librarian hired at Illinois State Normal University. She was also an author and a founding member of the Illinois Library Association.
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