This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: WILLIAMS, Hook, Rode, Rhode, Warren Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/Yl.2ADE/2658 Message Board Post: Suffering severe financial problems, my WILLIAMS grandparents family fell apart in Dubuque, Iowa-in late 1920s and in 1930. The children in my WILLIAMS family from Dubuque were placed in a Davenport orphanage late 1930, early 1931--sometime after the death of the grandmother Magdalena (Pauly-Wilms) WILLIAMS who died Sept. 29, 1930 in Dubuque. I am trying to discover what happened to my dad's brother, Walter, born about 1921, who died from gangrene from an injured leg---after trying to run away from the orphanage with his brother Donald. My dad, Arthur Joseph b 1914 always thought Walter died about age 7 or 8, but I think he was at least age 9 as I found him on the 1930 census living with his grandmother Magdalena WILLIAMS in Dubuque and in the household were his father Joseph Henry WILLIAMS and Walter's brother Donald, b 1916--as well as a lodger. Magdalena ran a rooming house in Dubuque. It was after Magdalena's Sept. 1930 death I think that the boys and other siblings were placed in the Davenport orphanage--and Walter very soon died. Some of the 7 children of Ivy Laura SKEMP WILLIAMS and her husband Joseph Henry WILLIAMS went to the Davenport orphanage and lived there until age 18. My dad lived with his aunt Hattie SKEMP AGARD and husband Charles, and Jeanette Louise, born 1924, was adopted or "fostered" by a WARREN family in Marshalltown, Iowa. Children who were in the orphanage either for a short time or until age 18 were: Catherine WILLIAMS b 1919; Barbara WILLIAMS, born about 1928; Donald Robert, born 1916, Walter, born about 1921, and possibly Jeanette Louise for awhile--born 1924. It was Walter that died I think in early 1931. I need to find some death information / burial information . . . . and any information in general on the orphanage. I don't know the name of the orphanage--and Catherine who grew up in the orphanage and who died last year in Delaware County-- where she lived from 1940 on--only knew that it was an orphanage in Davenport. After all this time, is it possible to obtain records? Another child, Dorothy b about 1926-27 I think, born to this family was given away by the mother, Ivy Laura, to a HOOK (married a TOOMER) and has been lost to the family since the 1940s when she was married Catheirne said to a RODE / RHODE (spelling?). All of these children are now deceased, (though we don't know what happened to Dorothy) --with the exception of Don, now very old and living in Des Moines. Thanks for any information . . .Audrey Williams Stanaland