Click directly on the photo of the house at right, to read further history pertaining to the John Boylan house and farm.
*****+~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+++~~~~~*WEBER*~~~~~+++~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+*****
*****+~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+++~~~~~O'BOYLAN~~~~~+++~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+*****
Son of John & Eva (Weber) Boylan. Husband of 1) Helen "Nellie" Manning, m. abt 1906 - 1912 ?, & 2) Clara Magdalene Wilhelm, m. abt 1917.
Arch Boylan was first married to Helen "Nellie" Manning in an unknown year between approximately 1904 and 1912, when he would have been 16 to 24 years old, probably closer to 1912. Nellie's father Bernard Manning was a firefighter who had died in the line of duty putting out a Peoria icehouse fire in 1900. Helen delivered their first baby, a little girl, in 1912, but sadly the baby died sometime in 1913. Nellie no doubt was devastated, but the loss of an infant was not an uncommon occurrence, and life would go on if one were lucky and hardy. But poor Nellie was not lucky - in 1914 she died of pneumonia. According to family oral history, Nellie and her baby were buried together, and indeed they share a beautiful joint headstone that Arch obviously spent quite a bit of money on. Arch's mother Eva Weber also died around this same time, despite the fact that the last photo of her shows a woman who appears quite healthy. Perhaps Eva contracted the same pneumonia as her daughter-in-law.
Arch remarried in 1916, to a girl he knew well from the neighborhood. He and his second wife Clara Magdalene Wilhelm had five children : John "Johnny" Anthony, Marjorie Frances, Mary Magdalene, Paul Anthony, and Josephine Lucille. One baby, reputed to be Mary, was delivered on the Boylan farmhouse kitchen floor when Clara suddenly went into labor while frying chicken for a wheat harvesting crew (called "thrashers"). When the last baby Josephine arrived in January of 1926 the town Catholic priest, Fr. Martin J. Spaulding, was 35 years old. He was the young pastor of St. Edward's Catholic Church in Chillicothe. Fr. Spaulding baptized all 5 of the children of Clara and Arch, and his 39 year old sister Henrietta Williams served as a godmother to the youngest child Josephine.
Shortly after mother Eva Weber Boylan's death before 1915, her youngest son Arch married a granddaughter, Clara Magdalene Wilhelm, of Catholic German immigrants (Nicholas & Magdalena Mueller Wilhelm). At the time of their 1916 wedding, Arch's German-born maternal grandfather Andrew Weber (Eva's father) had not been gone long, and Clara's German-born paternal Wilhelm grandfather Nicholas "Old Nick" was still living in his late 80's -- these two German men probably knew each other well, as members of the same Catholic parish in Chillicothe, which was St. Edward's.
Certainly then, one of the reasons Arch and Clara were attracted to each other was because of their common German cultural background. Clara's grandfather Nick Wilhelm was also a life-long friend of Arch's father John Boylan, 18 year old John and his brothers and father Patrick Boylan having been the first neighbors young Nick knew when he arrived in Chillicothe in 1855 as a 21 year old immigrant who spoke no English.
Arch however, as the baby of the family, barely knew his own Irish clan, as his grandfather Patrick Boylan had died when he was 2, his father John Boylan died when he was just 15, and his two uncles Thomas and Charles Boylan died when he was 18.
But Arch had to have known his father John's friend "Old Nick" Wilhelm fairly well, and was probably able to converse with him in some basic German that he had learned from his mother Eva and her parents (Andrew and Gertrude Weber). Old Nick was a pallbearer at John Boylan's funeral in 1903.
In 1916, the year of Arch and Clara's marriage, Old Nick's 59 year old son Anton Wilhelm was Clara's well-off father, the oldest son in a family largely comprised of girls, who had inherited Old Nick's original 160 acre land purchase of 1855. Throughout the prior years of the 1890's, Anton had been a smugly self-satisfied, arrogant man, exactly 20 years younger than his Irish neighbor John Boylan who owned double the acreage of Anton's farm. John had a son ten years younger than Anton, William Boylan, but he left to attend a medical college by 1888-90 and never returned to farm life. There was a farm recession in the 1890's that hurt many farmers so badly that many sold their farms. Young husband and father Anton was likely insulated from the recession by a very large extended family (he had 11 siblings) and by the productive peach orchard that his father Nick had planted in the early years when he first arrived from Germany. In 1892 Anton was only 35 years old. His German mother Magdalena was able to help with childcare, and his father Nick was 58 and still robustly healthy. Yet despite the falling prices of grains, the much more challenged John Boylan was able to keep his farm intact in its entirety. By 1892, John was already 55 years old, but was raising four young boys ages 12 and under who he had had in the 1880's with his second wife Eva Weber. His Irish mother Mary had been gone for years, and his father Patrick had just died in 1890. Of the five children from his first marriage to Christina Holihan, his four daughters 17 to 25 years old were still at home, but his oldest son William had become a medical doctor in 1891 and left Illinois for Kansas and then Nevada. John's two older brothers Thomas and Charles, also both lacking sons who were able to take over, would both sell their farms before 1900. Finally decades of hard labor took their toll, and in 1903 John died of heart disease at the age of just 66. His four boys were now in their late teens, and they and their mother Eva were left to farm the land alone. Oldest daughter Ella and her husband John Staab owned a farm next door.
Anton's two daughters had been a valuable source of unpaid farm labor for a decade prior to their marriages in the same year of 1916. Frances and Clara spent hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours picking peaches in order to enrich their father throughout their childhoods and teen years. But Frances was later allowed to attend high school, and was either given or demanded more freedom as the eldest. Clara was forbidden from attending high school, and was used as maid, mopping floors and preparing dinners for household members. In the desperation of a young girl, she poured out her heart of misery in a diary she kept.
It is no mystery then why Anton and his sour, embittered wife Mary Thome Wilhelm disapproved of Clara's marriage - they were losing a "slave". But they were also likely fearful that the Boylans had lost so many family members - with Arch's parents both gone, there were no Boylan grandparents to help with childcare.
Arch and Clara then essentially eloped, although they were married by a priest in the Catholic cathedral in Peoria, but with only two wedding guests and the priest in attendance.
Old Nick Wilhelm on the other hand seemed to have wished the couple well, offering his granddaughter Clara an entire houseful of beautiful marble-topped antique furniture as a wedding present. Clara was unable to accept the gift however, because she was now living in the Boylan farmhouse which had its own rich collection of furniture. Clara's grandmother, Magdalena Mueller Wilhelm, Old Nick's wife, was still living at the time as well. But since Magdalena had 45 total grandchildren to keep track of, Clara was lost in the shuffle, and never spoke of any significant relationship with her paternal grandmother.
Several grandchildren were born to Clara before Old Nick died in 1922. With the arrival of these "Wilhelm-Boylan" children, the Wilhelm and Boylan families had known each other an amazing 67 years, since the time of Old Nick's arrival in Chillicothe in 1855 as a single 21 year old, who had walked across a field and introduced himself to his 18 year old neighbor John Boylan and his parents Patrick Boylan and Mary Branigan Boylan. The German immigrant Mueller family had just arrived in the neighborhood as well, and within a short time Nick married one of their daughters. Who knew at that initial meeting of Nick and John that in 61 years Nick's granddaughter would marry John's youngest son ?
Arch and Clara had a few precious good years together. For their honeymoon, Arch packed up a Ford touring automobile and drove Clara all the way from Illinois to Colorado for a vacation, taking along his unmarried half sister Rose Boylan. Clara was a good cook, making special treats like scalloped oysters, and lemon meringue pie, and many other fruit pies. Sadly though, Arch and Clara would never enjoy their grandchildren and their older years together. After 17 years of marriage, Arch died at the age of just 43, in August 1933, of a mosquito-borne viral infection, which was called in retrospect St. Louis encephalitis (related to the West Nile virus), having started as an epidemic in St. Louis, Missouri in 1932 or 1933, and then spreading out along the river towns.
He left behind 5 children, ranging in age from 7 to 14. Four of those children produced many descendants, some of whom remain in Arch's hometown of Chillicothe, Illinois in 2015.
*****+~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+++~~~~~O'BOYLAN~~~~~+++~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+*****
*****+~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+++~~~~~*WEBER*~~~~~+++~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+*****
*****+~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+++~~~~~O'BOYLAN~~~~~+++~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+*****
Son of John & Eva (Weber) Boylan. Husband of 1) Helen "Nellie" Manning, m. abt 1906 - 1912 ?, & 2) Clara Magdalene Wilhelm, m. abt 1917.
Arch Boylan was first married to Helen "Nellie" Manning in an unknown year between approximately 1904 and 1912, when he would have been 16 to 24 years old, probably closer to 1912. Nellie's father Bernard Manning was a firefighter who had died in the line of duty putting out a Peoria icehouse fire in 1900. Helen delivered their first baby, a little girl, in 1912, but sadly the baby died sometime in 1913. Nellie no doubt was devastated, but the loss of an infant was not an uncommon occurrence, and life would go on if one were lucky and hardy. But poor Nellie was not lucky - in 1914 she died of pneumonia. According to family oral history, Nellie and her baby were buried together, and indeed they share a beautiful joint headstone that Arch obviously spent quite a bit of money on. Arch's mother Eva Weber also died around this same time, despite the fact that the last photo of her shows a woman who appears quite healthy. Perhaps Eva contracted the same pneumonia as her daughter-in-law.
Arch remarried in 1916, to a girl he knew well from the neighborhood. He and his second wife Clara Magdalene Wilhelm had five children : John "Johnny" Anthony, Marjorie Frances, Mary Magdalene, Paul Anthony, and Josephine Lucille. One baby, reputed to be Mary, was delivered on the Boylan farmhouse kitchen floor when Clara suddenly went into labor while frying chicken for a wheat harvesting crew (called "thrashers"). When the last baby Josephine arrived in January of 1926 the town Catholic priest, Fr. Martin J. Spaulding, was 35 years old. He was the young pastor of St. Edward's Catholic Church in Chillicothe. Fr. Spaulding baptized all 5 of the children of Clara and Arch, and his 39 year old sister Henrietta Williams served as a godmother to the youngest child Josephine.
Shortly after mother Eva Weber Boylan's death before 1915, her youngest son Arch married a granddaughter, Clara Magdalene Wilhelm, of Catholic German immigrants (Nicholas & Magdalena Mueller Wilhelm). At the time of their 1916 wedding, Arch's German-born maternal grandfather Andrew Weber (Eva's father) had not been gone long, and Clara's German-born paternal Wilhelm grandfather Nicholas "Old Nick" was still living in his late 80's -- these two German men probably knew each other well, as members of the same Catholic parish in Chillicothe, which was St. Edward's.
Certainly then, one of the reasons Arch and Clara were attracted to each other was because of their common German cultural background. Clara's grandfather Nick Wilhelm was also a life-long friend of Arch's father John Boylan, 18 year old John and his brothers and father Patrick Boylan having been the first neighbors young Nick knew when he arrived in Chillicothe in 1855 as a 21 year old immigrant who spoke no English.
Arch however, as the baby of the family, barely knew his own Irish clan, as his grandfather Patrick Boylan had died when he was 2, his father John Boylan died when he was just 15, and his two uncles Thomas and Charles Boylan died when he was 18.
But Arch had to have known his father John's friend "Old Nick" Wilhelm fairly well, and was probably able to converse with him in some basic German that he had learned from his mother Eva and her parents (Andrew and Gertrude Weber). Old Nick was a pallbearer at John Boylan's funeral in 1903.
In 1916, the year of Arch and Clara's marriage, Old Nick's 59 year old son Anton Wilhelm was Clara's well-off father, the oldest son in a family largely comprised of girls, who had inherited Old Nick's original 160 acre land purchase of 1855. Throughout the prior years of the 1890's, Anton had been a smugly self-satisfied, arrogant man, exactly 20 years younger than his Irish neighbor John Boylan who owned double the acreage of Anton's farm. John had a son ten years younger than Anton, William Boylan, but he left to attend a medical college by 1888-90 and never returned to farm life. There was a farm recession in the 1890's that hurt many farmers so badly that many sold their farms. Young husband and father Anton was likely insulated from the recession by a very large extended family (he had 11 siblings) and by the productive peach orchard that his father Nick had planted in the early years when he first arrived from Germany. In 1892 Anton was only 35 years old. His German mother Magdalena was able to help with childcare, and his father Nick was 58 and still robustly healthy. Yet despite the falling prices of grains, the much more challenged John Boylan was able to keep his farm intact in its entirety. By 1892, John was already 55 years old, but was raising four young boys ages 12 and under who he had had in the 1880's with his second wife Eva Weber. His Irish mother Mary had been gone for years, and his father Patrick had just died in 1890. Of the five children from his first marriage to Christina Holihan, his four daughters 17 to 25 years old were still at home, but his oldest son William had become a medical doctor in 1891 and left Illinois for Kansas and then Nevada. John's two older brothers Thomas and Charles, also both lacking sons who were able to take over, would both sell their farms before 1900. Finally decades of hard labor took their toll, and in 1903 John died of heart disease at the age of just 66. His four boys were now in their late teens, and they and their mother Eva were left to farm the land alone. Oldest daughter Ella and her husband John Staab owned a farm next door.
Anton's two daughters had been a valuable source of unpaid farm labor for a decade prior to their marriages in the same year of 1916. Frances and Clara spent hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours picking peaches in order to enrich their father throughout their childhoods and teen years. But Frances was later allowed to attend high school, and was either given or demanded more freedom as the eldest. Clara was forbidden from attending high school, and was used as maid, mopping floors and preparing dinners for household members. In the desperation of a young girl, she poured out her heart of misery in a diary she kept.
It is no mystery then why Anton and his sour, embittered wife Mary Thome Wilhelm disapproved of Clara's marriage - they were losing a "slave". But they were also likely fearful that the Boylans had lost so many family members - with Arch's parents both gone, there were no Boylan grandparents to help with childcare.
Arch and Clara then essentially eloped, although they were married by a priest in the Catholic cathedral in Peoria, but with only two wedding guests and the priest in attendance.
Old Nick Wilhelm on the other hand seemed to have wished the couple well, offering his granddaughter Clara an entire houseful of beautiful marble-topped antique furniture as a wedding present. Clara was unable to accept the gift however, because she was now living in the Boylan farmhouse which had its own rich collection of furniture. Clara's grandmother, Magdalena Mueller Wilhelm, Old Nick's wife, was still living at the time as well. But since Magdalena had 45 total grandchildren to keep track of, Clara was lost in the shuffle, and never spoke of any significant relationship with her paternal grandmother.
Several grandchildren were born to Clara before Old Nick died in 1922. With the arrival of these "Wilhelm-Boylan" children, the Wilhelm and Boylan families had known each other an amazing 67 years, since the time of Old Nick's arrival in Chillicothe in 1855 as a single 21 year old, who had walked across a field and introduced himself to his 18 year old neighbor John Boylan and his parents Patrick Boylan and Mary Branigan Boylan. The German immigrant Mueller family had just arrived in the neighborhood as well, and within a short time Nick married one of their daughters. Who knew at that initial meeting of Nick and John that in 61 years Nick's granddaughter would marry John's youngest son ?
Arch and Clara had a few precious good years together. For their honeymoon, Arch packed up a Ford touring automobile and drove Clara all the way from Illinois to Colorado for a vacation, taking along his unmarried half sister Rose Boylan. Clara was a good cook, making special treats like scalloped oysters, and lemon meringue pie, and many other fruit pies. Sadly though, Arch and Clara would never enjoy their grandchildren and their older years together. After 17 years of marriage, Arch died at the age of just 43, in August 1933, of a mosquito-borne viral infection, which was called in retrospect St. Louis encephalitis (related to the West Nile virus), having started as an epidemic in St. Louis, Missouri in 1932 or 1933, and then spreading out along the river towns.
He left behind 5 children, ranging in age from 7 to 14. Four of those children produced many descendants, some of whom remain in Arch's hometown of Chillicothe, Illinois in 2015.
*****+~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+++~~~~~O'BOYLAN~~~~~+++~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+*****
Click directly on the photo of the house at right, to read further history pertaining to the John Boylan house and farm.
*****+~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+++~~~~~*WEBER*~~~~~+++~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+*****
*****+~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+++~~~~~O'BOYLAN~~~~~+++~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+*****
Son of John & Eva (Weber) Boylan. Husband of 1) Helen "Nellie" Manning, m. abt 1906 - 1912 ?, & 2) Clara Magdalene Wilhelm, m. abt 1917.
Arch Boylan was first married to Helen "Nellie" Manning in an unknown year between approximately 1904 and 1912, when he would have been 16 to 24 years old, probably closer to 1912. Nellie's father Bernard Manning was a firefighter who had died in the line of duty putting out a Peoria icehouse fire in 1900. Helen delivered their first baby, a little girl, in 1912, but sadly the baby died sometime in 1913. Nellie no doubt was devastated, but the loss of an infant was not an uncommon occurrence, and life would go on if one were lucky and hardy. But poor Nellie was not lucky - in 1914 she died of pneumonia. According to family oral history, Nellie and her baby were buried together, and indeed they share a beautiful joint headstone that Arch obviously spent quite a bit of money on. Arch's mother Eva Weber also died around this same time, despite the fact that the last photo of her shows a woman who appears quite healthy. Perhaps Eva contracted the same pneumonia as her daughter-in-law.
Arch remarried in 1916, to a girl he knew well from the neighborhood. He and his second wife Clara Magdalene Wilhelm had five children : John "Johnny" Anthony, Marjorie Frances, Mary Magdalene, Paul Anthony, and Josephine Lucille. One baby, reputed to be Mary, was delivered on the Boylan farmhouse kitchen floor when Clara suddenly went into labor while frying chicken for a wheat harvesting crew (called "thrashers"). When the last baby Josephine arrived in January of 1926 the town Catholic priest, Fr. Martin J. Spaulding, was 35 years old. He was the young pastor of St. Edward's Catholic Church in Chillicothe. Fr. Spaulding baptized all 5 of the children of Clara and Arch, and his 39 year old sister Henrietta Williams served as a godmother to the youngest child Josephine.
Shortly after mother Eva Weber Boylan's death before 1915, her youngest son Arch married a granddaughter, Clara Magdalene Wilhelm, of Catholic German immigrants (Nicholas & Magdalena Mueller Wilhelm). At the time of their 1916 wedding, Arch's German-born maternal grandfather Andrew Weber (Eva's father) had not been gone long, and Clara's German-born paternal Wilhelm grandfather Nicholas "Old Nick" was still living in his late 80's -- these two German men probably knew each other well, as members of the same Catholic parish in Chillicothe, which was St. Edward's.
Certainly then, one of the reasons Arch and Clara were attracted to each other was because of their common German cultural background. Clara's grandfather Nick Wilhelm was also a life-long friend of Arch's father John Boylan, 18 year old John and his brothers and father Patrick Boylan having been the first neighbors young Nick knew when he arrived in Chillicothe in 1855 as a 21 year old immigrant who spoke no English.
Arch however, as the baby of the family, barely knew his own Irish clan, as his grandfather Patrick Boylan had died when he was 2, his father John Boylan died when he was just 15, and his two uncles Thomas and Charles Boylan died when he was 18.
But Arch had to have known his father John's friend "Old Nick" Wilhelm fairly well, and was probably able to converse with him in some basic German that he had learned from his mother Eva and her parents (Andrew and Gertrude Weber). Old Nick was a pallbearer at John Boylan's funeral in 1903.
In 1916, the year of Arch and Clara's marriage, Old Nick's 59 year old son Anton Wilhelm was Clara's well-off father, the oldest son in a family largely comprised of girls, who had inherited Old Nick's original 160 acre land purchase of 1855. Throughout the prior years of the 1890's, Anton had been a smugly self-satisfied, arrogant man, exactly 20 years younger than his Irish neighbor John Boylan who owned double the acreage of Anton's farm. John had a son ten years younger than Anton, William Boylan, but he left to attend a medical college by 1888-90 and never returned to farm life. There was a farm recession in the 1890's that hurt many farmers so badly that many sold their farms. Young husband and father Anton was likely insulated from the recession by a very large extended family (he had 11 siblings) and by the productive peach orchard that his father Nick had planted in the early years when he first arrived from Germany. In 1892 Anton was only 35 years old. His German mother Magdalena was able to help with childcare, and his father Nick was 58 and still robustly healthy. Yet despite the falling prices of grains, the much more challenged John Boylan was able to keep his farm intact in its entirety. By 1892, John was already 55 years old, but was raising four young boys ages 12 and under who he had had in the 1880's with his second wife Eva Weber. His Irish mother Mary had been gone for years, and his father Patrick had just died in 1890. Of the five children from his first marriage to Christina Holihan, his four daughters 17 to 25 years old were still at home, but his oldest son William had become a medical doctor in 1891 and left Illinois for Kansas and then Nevada. John's two older brothers Thomas and Charles, also both lacking sons who were able to take over, would both sell their farms before 1900. Finally decades of hard labor took their toll, and in 1903 John died of heart disease at the age of just 66. His four boys were now in their late teens, and they and their mother Eva were left to farm the land alone. Oldest daughter Ella and her husband John Staab owned a farm next door.
Anton's two daughters had been a valuable source of unpaid farm labor for a decade prior to their marriages in the same year of 1916. Frances and Clara spent hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours picking peaches in order to enrich their father throughout their childhoods and teen years. But Frances was later allowed to attend high school, and was either given or demanded more freedom as the eldest. Clara was forbidden from attending high school, and was used as maid, mopping floors and preparing dinners for household members. In the desperation of a young girl, she poured out her heart of misery in a diary she kept.
It is no mystery then why Anton and his sour, embittered wife Mary Thome Wilhelm disapproved of Clara's marriage - they were losing a "slave". But they were also likely fearful that the Boylans had lost so many family members - with Arch's parents both gone, there were no Boylan grandparents to help with childcare.
Arch and Clara then essentially eloped, although they were married by a priest in the Catholic cathedral in Peoria, but with only two wedding guests and the priest in attendance.
Old Nick Wilhelm on the other hand seemed to have wished the couple well, offering his granddaughter Clara an entire houseful of beautiful marble-topped antique furniture as a wedding present. Clara was unable to accept the gift however, because she was now living in the Boylan farmhouse which had its own rich collection of furniture. Clara's grandmother, Magdalena Mueller Wilhelm, Old Nick's wife, was still living at the time as well. But since Magdalena had 45 total grandchildren to keep track of, Clara was lost in the shuffle, and never spoke of any significant relationship with her paternal grandmother.
Several grandchildren were born to Clara before Old Nick died in 1922. With the arrival of these "Wilhelm-Boylan" children, the Wilhelm and Boylan families had known each other an amazing 67 years, since the time of Old Nick's arrival in Chillicothe in 1855 as a single 21 year old, who had walked across a field and introduced himself to his 18 year old neighbor John Boylan and his parents Patrick Boylan and Mary Branigan Boylan. The German immigrant Mueller family had just arrived in the neighborhood as well, and within a short time Nick married one of their daughters. Who knew at that initial meeting of Nick and John that in 61 years Nick's granddaughter would marry John's youngest son ?
Arch and Clara had a few precious good years together. For their honeymoon, Arch packed up a Ford touring automobile and drove Clara all the way from Illinois to Colorado for a vacation, taking along his unmarried half sister Rose Boylan. Clara was a good cook, making special treats like scalloped oysters, and lemon meringue pie, and many other fruit pies. Sadly though, Arch and Clara would never enjoy their grandchildren and their older years together. After 17 years of marriage, Arch died at the age of just 43, in August 1933, of a mosquito-borne viral infection, which was called in retrospect St. Louis encephalitis (related to the West Nile virus), having started as an epidemic in St. Louis, Missouri in 1932 or 1933, and then spreading out along the river towns.
He left behind 5 children, ranging in age from 7 to 14. Four of those children produced many descendants, some of whom remain in Arch's hometown of Chillicothe, Illinois in 2015.
*****+~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+++~~~~~O'BOYLAN~~~~~+++~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+*****
*****+~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+++~~~~~*WEBER*~~~~~+++~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+*****
*****+~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+++~~~~~O'BOYLAN~~~~~+++~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+*****
Son of John & Eva (Weber) Boylan. Husband of 1) Helen "Nellie" Manning, m. abt 1906 - 1912 ?, & 2) Clara Magdalene Wilhelm, m. abt 1917.
Arch Boylan was first married to Helen "Nellie" Manning in an unknown year between approximately 1904 and 1912, when he would have been 16 to 24 years old, probably closer to 1912. Nellie's father Bernard Manning was a firefighter who had died in the line of duty putting out a Peoria icehouse fire in 1900. Helen delivered their first baby, a little girl, in 1912, but sadly the baby died sometime in 1913. Nellie no doubt was devastated, but the loss of an infant was not an uncommon occurrence, and life would go on if one were lucky and hardy. But poor Nellie was not lucky - in 1914 she died of pneumonia. According to family oral history, Nellie and her baby were buried together, and indeed they share a beautiful joint headstone that Arch obviously spent quite a bit of money on. Arch's mother Eva Weber also died around this same time, despite the fact that the last photo of her shows a woman who appears quite healthy. Perhaps Eva contracted the same pneumonia as her daughter-in-law.
Arch remarried in 1916, to a girl he knew well from the neighborhood. He and his second wife Clara Magdalene Wilhelm had five children : John "Johnny" Anthony, Marjorie Frances, Mary Magdalene, Paul Anthony, and Josephine Lucille. One baby, reputed to be Mary, was delivered on the Boylan farmhouse kitchen floor when Clara suddenly went into labor while frying chicken for a wheat harvesting crew (called "thrashers"). When the last baby Josephine arrived in January of 1926 the town Catholic priest, Fr. Martin J. Spaulding, was 35 years old. He was the young pastor of St. Edward's Catholic Church in Chillicothe. Fr. Spaulding baptized all 5 of the children of Clara and Arch, and his 39 year old sister Henrietta Williams served as a godmother to the youngest child Josephine.
Shortly after mother Eva Weber Boylan's death before 1915, her youngest son Arch married a granddaughter, Clara Magdalene Wilhelm, of Catholic German immigrants (Nicholas & Magdalena Mueller Wilhelm). At the time of their 1916 wedding, Arch's German-born maternal grandfather Andrew Weber (Eva's father) had not been gone long, and Clara's German-born paternal Wilhelm grandfather Nicholas "Old Nick" was still living in his late 80's -- these two German men probably knew each other well, as members of the same Catholic parish in Chillicothe, which was St. Edward's.
Certainly then, one of the reasons Arch and Clara were attracted to each other was because of their common German cultural background. Clara's grandfather Nick Wilhelm was also a life-long friend of Arch's father John Boylan, 18 year old John and his brothers and father Patrick Boylan having been the first neighbors young Nick knew when he arrived in Chillicothe in 1855 as a 21 year old immigrant who spoke no English.
Arch however, as the baby of the family, barely knew his own Irish clan, as his grandfather Patrick Boylan had died when he was 2, his father John Boylan died when he was just 15, and his two uncles Thomas and Charles Boylan died when he was 18.
But Arch had to have known his father John's friend "Old Nick" Wilhelm fairly well, and was probably able to converse with him in some basic German that he had learned from his mother Eva and her parents (Andrew and Gertrude Weber). Old Nick was a pallbearer at John Boylan's funeral in 1903.
In 1916, the year of Arch and Clara's marriage, Old Nick's 59 year old son Anton Wilhelm was Clara's well-off father, the oldest son in a family largely comprised of girls, who had inherited Old Nick's original 160 acre land purchase of 1855. Throughout the prior years of the 1890's, Anton had been a smugly self-satisfied, arrogant man, exactly 20 years younger than his Irish neighbor John Boylan who owned double the acreage of Anton's farm. John had a son ten years younger than Anton, William Boylan, but he left to attend a medical college by 1888-90 and never returned to farm life. There was a farm recession in the 1890's that hurt many farmers so badly that many sold their farms. Young husband and father Anton was likely insulated from the recession by a very large extended family (he had 11 siblings) and by the productive peach orchard that his father Nick had planted in the early years when he first arrived from Germany. In 1892 Anton was only 35 years old. His German mother Magdalena was able to help with childcare, and his father Nick was 58 and still robustly healthy. Yet despite the falling prices of grains, the much more challenged John Boylan was able to keep his farm intact in its entirety. By 1892, John was already 55 years old, but was raising four young boys ages 12 and under who he had had in the 1880's with his second wife Eva Weber. His Irish mother Mary had been gone for years, and his father Patrick had just died in 1890. Of the five children from his first marriage to Christina Holihan, his four daughters 17 to 25 years old were still at home, but his oldest son William had become a medical doctor in 1891 and left Illinois for Kansas and then Nevada. John's two older brothers Thomas and Charles, also both lacking sons who were able to take over, would both sell their farms before 1900. Finally decades of hard labor took their toll, and in 1903 John died of heart disease at the age of just 66. His four boys were now in their late teens, and they and their mother Eva were left to farm the land alone. Oldest daughter Ella and her husband John Staab owned a farm next door.
Anton's two daughters had been a valuable source of unpaid farm labor for a decade prior to their marriages in the same year of 1916. Frances and Clara spent hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours picking peaches in order to enrich their father throughout their childhoods and teen years. But Frances was later allowed to attend high school, and was either given or demanded more freedom as the eldest. Clara was forbidden from attending high school, and was used as maid, mopping floors and preparing dinners for household members. In the desperation of a young girl, she poured out her heart of misery in a diary she kept.
It is no mystery then why Anton and his sour, embittered wife Mary Thome Wilhelm disapproved of Clara's marriage - they were losing a "slave". But they were also likely fearful that the Boylans had lost so many family members - with Arch's parents both gone, there were no Boylan grandparents to help with childcare.
Arch and Clara then essentially eloped, although they were married by a priest in the Catholic cathedral in Peoria, but with only two wedding guests and the priest in attendance.
Old Nick Wilhelm on the other hand seemed to have wished the couple well, offering his granddaughter Clara an entire houseful of beautiful marble-topped antique furniture as a wedding present. Clara was unable to accept the gift however, because she was now living in the Boylan farmhouse which had its own rich collection of furniture. Clara's grandmother, Magdalena Mueller Wilhelm, Old Nick's wife, was still living at the time as well. But since Magdalena had 45 total grandchildren to keep track of, Clara was lost in the shuffle, and never spoke of any significant relationship with her paternal grandmother.
Several grandchildren were born to Clara before Old Nick died in 1922. With the arrival of these "Wilhelm-Boylan" children, the Wilhelm and Boylan families had known each other an amazing 67 years, since the time of Old Nick's arrival in Chillicothe in 1855 as a single 21 year old, who had walked across a field and introduced himself to his 18 year old neighbor John Boylan and his parents Patrick Boylan and Mary Branigan Boylan. The German immigrant Mueller family had just arrived in the neighborhood as well, and within a short time Nick married one of their daughters. Who knew at that initial meeting of Nick and John that in 61 years Nick's granddaughter would marry John's youngest son ?
Arch and Clara had a few precious good years together. For their honeymoon, Arch packed up a Ford touring automobile and drove Clara all the way from Illinois to Colorado for a vacation, taking along his unmarried half sister Rose Boylan. Clara was a good cook, making special treats like scalloped oysters, and lemon meringue pie, and many other fruit pies. Sadly though, Arch and Clara would never enjoy their grandchildren and their older years together. After 17 years of marriage, Arch died at the age of just 43, in August 1933, of a mosquito-borne viral infection, which was called in retrospect St. Louis encephalitis (related to the West Nile virus), having started as an epidemic in St. Louis, Missouri in 1932 or 1933, and then spreading out along the river towns.
He left behind 5 children, ranging in age from 7 to 14. Four of those children produced many descendants, some of whom remain in Arch's hometown of Chillicothe, Illinois in 2015.
*****+~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+++~~~~~O'BOYLAN~~~~~+++~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+*****
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