Cora and Winnie Childs

In 1882 a two-story frame house with a belfry was built at the top of the hill in Dayton. It served as the schoolhouse until it burned in 1890. The first teachers in that building were Cora and Winnie Childs, the daughters of Franklin P. Childs and Margaret Price.

They were born in Marshall county, Illinois; Cora in 1860 and Winnie in 1863. In 1864, their parents moved to Ottawa to take advantage of the better educational opportunities for their daughters. Cora graduated from Ottawa Township High School in 1879 and Winnie in 1881.

Cora completed the two year program at Wesleyan Female College in Cincinnati in one year, graduating in June 1880. She taught at several other La Salle County schools and after Winnie graduated in 1881 they came to Dayton together in 1882.

They taught there for two years, until their father moved the family to a farm near Morris, in Grundy county. Cora applied for and was granted a position teaching in the Morris junior high school.

The two years spent in Dayton made many opportunities to get to know the Dayton people, and Cora and Winnie kept up friendships with many of the Green family and others into later life. One of these friendships ended in the marriage of Cora Childs and Harry Green on February 22, 1888. They lived in Morris, where Harry had a bakery and restaurant. After that building burned, they returned to Ottawa where he went to work for the Standard Brick Company, where his brother-in-law, C. B. Hess, was a partner.

In 1892 they moved to Chicago where Harry established himself as an electrical engineer. Cora was very active in various patriotic organizations. She held a number of offices with the DAR, including many years as regent. She was the first regent of the Chicago chapter of the DAC, the Daughters of the American Colonists; was a member of the Daughters of 1812 and many other similar organizations. Cora died February 1, 1951 and is buried in Ottawa, Illinois.

Winnie never married and spent most of her life on the farm near Morris or in the Chicago area. She worked at various times as a stenographer, a reporter and a music teacher. She became an invalid following a fall in1940 and in 1950 was in a private nursing home in Morris. In 1958 she was in Chicago with her niece, Mabel Greene Myers, where she died February 11, 1958.