Henry Sadorus
(1783 - 1878)
The history of the Sadorus family echoes the development of Champaign
County, Illinois. In 1817 Henry "Grandpap" Sadorus, who was born in
Connecticut before the adoption of the federal constitution, traveled
west to central Illinois by flatboat with his wife, Mary Titus
and family. In 1824 he built
a cabin at the head of the O'Kaw river, an area that became known as
Sadorus Grove. Henry was the first permanent European settler in Champaign
County.
William Sadorus
(1812 - 1899)
The family lived on public domain until 1834, when Henry's twenty-two
year old son William entered the land on public record. William was an active member
of the community who was respected for his church work and
his "handsome competency" for farming. He also owned one of the town's
first stores. The town of Sadorus was named for him.
G. W. B. Sadorus
(1838 - 1911)
His son, George William Bacon, "G.W.B." was one of five children
born to William Sadorus and Mary Ann Moore. After the civil War, G.W.B., a captain
of the 125th Illinois Volunteers, returned to settle on a 104-acre farm east
of town. He married Phoebe Brown and they had six children,
five of whom lived to adulthood. Enos and Warren each married and had
one child; Mary, Elmer, and Frank remained to help their parents run
the farm.
Frank Sadorus
(1880 - 1934)
Frank Sadorus was a self-taught amateur photographer. His photographic
equipment and supplies, as well as newspapers, books, and magazines,
were mail-ordered from St. Louis. They were delivered by the Wabash rail line
that served the town of Sadorus. Frank photographed life on the farm,
leaving a body of work that included 150 mounted prints and 700 glass
plate and nitrate negatives.
During his brief,
but intense, period of experimenting with photography, Frank used a
view camera to photograph the family working and harvesting the fields,
relaxing, reading, playing cards, or playfully posing for one of his
experimental double exposures. He made family portraits, self-portraits,
and still lifes of favorite objects, as well as landscapes of Sadorus
Grove. He
meticulously recorded exposures, time of day, weather conditions, and
often, personal comments on the backs of prints that he signed by hand
or with hand-made stamps. He called himself an artist, a photographer
of nature's majesty, and an artistic pictorialist.
Frank pursued
photography from 1907 to 1912, when his life changed drastically and
he gave up photography. His father. G.W.B., died in 1911. When the estate was settled, the family decided
to move into town and sell the farm. Frank moved to a small house on
the outskirts of town. This was the first time in his life that Frank lived alone. Three months after the sale of the farm, the family had Frank commited to the Kankakee
Mental Asylum in 1917. Frank had
been suffering for one week from "delusions and hallucinations
with pronounced tendency to worry — primarily concerned that someone
was trying to harm him."
Frank lived at
the asylum for seventeen years, occasionally visited by family members.
In a sketch book, he made simplified drawings that referred to life
on the farm, created lists of polysyllabic words, and wrote ambiguous,
poetic statements. On Christmas Day of 1934, he died of tuberculosis
at the age of fifty-four.
Frank's mother,
Phoebe, died three months after Frank. Elmer and Mary continued living
in the house in town until they entered a nursing home in 1954. Elmer
died several months later, and Mary lived there until her death in 1969
at the age of 82.
Related Activity:
Family Tree (html)
(pdf)
Coming of Age (html)
(pdf)
