Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 March 1877 — A Young Man Finds His Mother After Eighteen Years of Separation. [ARTICLE]

A Young Man Finds His Mother After Eighteen Years of Separation.

In the ups and downs of this world it not infrequently happens that very near relatives become separated, and thereafter lose all light and track of each other. Every few weeks we see in the newspapers some account of the sudden reunion of such lost ones—a father finds his missing boy, a daughter Is r restored to her parents, and lovers .meet at Strait who had thought each other dead for a score of years. A young St. Louisan, the hero of this sketch, has recently eclipsed a majority of such cases. He has discovered—himself. That ditto say, he went through the trials and tribulations of tops, marbles and tho multiplication table, on through the long years of base ball and Latin lexicon; on through the swift years of incipient uahhood, believing himself to be out person; and now all at once he discovers that he is sofnebody else, that he is not himself at all. At the age of twenty-one years and sundry months he has been born again.. In order to make this truthful sketch as clear as possible it has been divided into three chapters. * CHAPTER I. Borne eighteen years ago there died in Chicago Mr. William McMillan, Grand Lecturer of the Grand Lodge oMllinois Masons, leaving a widow and two young children, a boy of three years and a girl of five. Through the influence of Garden City Lodge No. 141, the boy, Louis Shirley McMillan, was adopted by a Mr. James Clarkson, at Chicago. Boon after, Mr. Clarkson suddenly removed from Chicago, and all efforts on the part of Mrs. McMillan to discover the whereabouts of her son failed. She soon retired with her daughter to the home of her relatives in Peoria, 111., subsequently remarried, moved to Newport, Ky., and again became a widow. CHAPTER n. When Mr. Clarkson removed from Chicago he went to Piqua. Ohio. Here,.with young McMillan, now renamed Louis N. Clarkson, he lived five years. Subsequently he lived four years in Columbus, Ohio, and again in Wheeling, Ya., some seven years, the boy growing to manhood in the firm belief that Mr. Clarkson (then editor of the Wheeling Regitter ) was his father, and that his mother had died when he was a babe. In young Clarkson left home and settle in St. Louis, accepting the position of chief bookkeeper of the ScottisbCam • merci&l Insurance Company (in the Chamber of Commerce building), which position he holds to-day.

CHAPTER HI. —THE DISCOVERT. During his boyhood young Clarkson had several times made inquiries of his fathe. concerning his mother, but was always met with a complete rebuff. Being of a somewhat affectionate disposition, he desired to know the circumstances of the death of the mother he could not remember, her maiden name and the whereabouts of her relatives. The complete refusal, of his father to tell him anything at all made him suspicious. He pondered the matter for many months, and finally, last December, wrote to h{B adopted father,!arid:entreated and demanded particulars, and threatened to use all the money as his command to discover his mother’s relatives. He received then the information that Mr. Clarkson was not. his own father, that his real name was McMillan, bat that Mr. Clarkson had never seen Mrs. McMillan, and knew nothing of her whereabouts, or her maiden name; also that bis real father had been a prominent Chicago Freemason. On this slender cue alone —of McMillan and Masonxy—youpg Clarkson went to Chicago in January and spent many days tiring -to get information of himself in Masonic records, and meeting, of course, with . many rebuffs. The parties to' his adaption seemed to have all died or mewed away, and the records were destroyed in the great fire. One of these partied, Mr. Hurd, he eventually traced to Michigan, and induced him to come down to Chicago and join him in the search for his relatives. Thus accompanied, partly by luck and partly by perseverance, he at length met Mr. Thomas Shirley, the old particular friend of the departed McMillan, and the very man for whom the orphaned boy (Louis Shirley McMillan) had been named. From Mr. Shirley he leartfed that his mother was indeed dead; that his sister had married and gone to California, and that for further particulars he must go to Peoria, 111. He went to Peoria and found numerous relatives; found, shat his mother still lived in Newport, Ky., and that his sister was with her. He hastened to Newport. Before he had a chance to introduce himself to his mother (Mrs. Montfort) she recognized him as her longlost son, from his resemblance to his father. There was of course the greatest mutual joy, and the third chapter closed in the State of Daniel BoOne with colors flying and calcium lights. Mr. Clarkson has since returned to St. Louis, and expects soon to bring his mother and sister (of whom he is very proud) here to live. He has also discovered two own cousins in Bt. Louis —Mrs. Belle Hatcher and Miss Nellie Gregg. Having also found himself, he has resumed his original name, ana is now Louis Shirley McMillan. — St. Louis Republican. ?