Cruel luck, hard times

I always knew my maternal grandfather (born 1886) had a shockingly hard childhood after he and his elder sister were orphaned in Chicago in the early 1890s, both parents dying within a month of each other.  My sister, who has bitten by the genealogy bug, figured out a while back that they had a maternal grandfather in California, and she always wondered why the family didn't hear what had happened and somehow take them in.  Instead, my grandfather ended up being hired out to do farm labor for other families while he was still quite young.  His sister went to an orphanage.  I knew that my grandfather, whom I never met, was a singularly hardened man in adult life.  He died when I was still quite young, so estranged from my mother (who predeceased him by a few years) that he didn't attend her funeral.

My sister has dug up an 1891 article from an San Diego newspaper that explains a little:

Asa White [my maternal grandfather's maternal grandfather], a well-to-do rancher living near Otay [California], died suddenly about one o'clock yesterday morning at the residence of his friend, John B. Palmer, at 1157 State street.

Mr. White had written for his daughter [my grandfather's mother] and son-in-law in Chicago to come to California. They were preparing to do so, when his daughter was run over by an omnibus in that city, from the effects of which she died. The husband then intended to bring the two children and come on, but was taken ill and died within twenty days after his wife's death. There being no relatives in Chicago, friends put the two children, a girl of seven and a boy of five years [my grandfather], on the train, and they came through, safely arriving [in San Diego] at 8 o'clock Monday night. They were met at the train by their grandfather, Mr. White, and taken to the residence of Mr. Palmer, an old friend, where the three were to pass the night and get an early start in the morning for home, where the children would find a home in the loving arms of tender hearted grandma. During the night Mr. Palmer heard a strange sound emanating from the room occupied by Mr. White, and entering, found him speechless and gasping, and he breathed but twice after Mr. Palmer's entrance. Dr. Magee was summoned, but of course could do nothing. The body was removed to undertaking parlors, where the post mortem and inquest was held at 10 o'clock. The verdict was death from heart disease. Mrs. White was notified, and is grief stricken over the sudden death of her aged partner, Mr. White being almost 70 years of age. They have another daughter married to one of the cooks at the Commado hotel. The funeral will take place on Thursday.

Who knows what happened then? What became of "tender hearted grandma," widow of the aged well-to-do rancher?  She was a second wife, no blood relation to the orphaned children.  Somehow the children ended up back in Kansas without a dime, where distant relatives or friends made some effort to provide for them. I don't know whether that happened right away, but it can't have been much more than a few years later, because by the age of 12 or so my grandfather was already a hired farm hand in Kansas and my grandmother was in an orphanage. We've never found out what became of her.

Mother, father, distant would-be rescuing grandfather, all dead within a month.  What those children must have thought!  These events cast long shadows in my family.