The Orphan Train Movement is a supervised welfare program that brings orphaned and homeless children from the bustling East towns of the United States to build homes mostly located in rural areas of the Midwest. Orphan trains operated between 1854 and 1929, relocating about 200,000 orphaned, displaced, or homeless children.
Three charities, Children's Villages (founded 1851 by 24 philanthropists), Child Support Institutions (founded 1853 by Charles Loring Brace) and later, New York Foundling Hospital, are trying to help these children. These institutions are supported by wealthy donors and operated by professional staff. The two institutions developed a program that placed city children homeless, orphaned, and abandoned, who numbered about 30,000 in New York City alone in the 1850s, in orphanages across the country. The children were transported to their new home on a train labeled "orphan train" or "baby carriage". The relocation of these children ended in 1920 with the commencement of organized children's careers in America.
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The first orphanage in the United States was reportedly founded in 1729 in Natchez, MS. But institutional orphanages rarely occurred before the beginning of the nineteenth century. Relatives or neighbors usually raise children who have lost parents. Arrangements are informal and rarely involve the courts.
Around 1830, the number of homeless children in big cities in the East like New York City exploded. In 1850, there were about 10,000 to 30,000 homeless children in New York City. At that time, the population of New York City was only 500,000. Some children are orphaned when their parents die in epidemics of typhoid, yellow or flu fever. Others are left out of poverty, disease or addiction. Many children sell matches, cloths, or newspapers to survive. For protection against street violence, they unite and form a gang.
In 1853, a young minister named Charles Loring Brace became concerned with the fate of street children (often known as the "Arab street"). He founded the Children's Aid Institute. During the first year, the Children's Aid Foundation primarily offers children's religious guidance and vocational and academic instruction. Finally, the public established the country's first shelter, the House of the Tukang Koran, where the homeless boys received cheap rooms and boards and basic education. Brace and his colleagues are trying to find jobs and homes for individual children, but they soon become overwhelmed by numbers that require placement. Brace about the idea of ​​sending groups of children to rural areas for adoption.
Brace believed that street children would have a better life if they abandoned the poverty and debauchery of their lives in New York City and were raised by a morally upright farming family. Recognizing the need for manpower in developing countries, Brace believes that farmers will accept homeless children, take them to their homes and treat them as their own. His program will turn out to be a pioneer of modern parenting.
After a year of sending individual children to farms near Connecticut, Pennsylvania and the New York countryside, the Children's Relief Society boarded the first large-scale expedition to the Midwest in September 1854.
Maps Orphan Train
The term "Orphan Train"
The phrase "orphan train" was first used in 1854 to describe the transportation of children from their home area by train. However, the term "Orphan Train" is not widely used until long after the Orphan Train program ends.
The Children Relief Society refers to the first relevant division as the Department of Emigration, then as Department of Home Search, and finally, as the Department of Care. Then, New York Foundling Hospital sent what is called a "baby" or "grace" train.
Organizations and families generally use the term "family placement" or "external placement" ("out" to distinguish it from the placement of children "in" orphanage or psychiatric hospitals) to refer to orphan train passengers.
The widespread use of the term "orphan train" probably dates to 1978, when CBS aired a fictional miniseries entitled The Orphan Trains. One of the reasons the term is not used by placement agencies is that less than half of the children on the train are actually orphans, and as many as 25 percent have two living parents. Children with both parents who live end up on the train - or at an orphanage - because their families have no money or desire to raise them or because they have been abused or abandoned or run away. And many teenage boys and girls go to orphans to train sponsor organizations just to find jobs or free tickets out of town.
The term "orphan train" is also misleading as the large number of children placed do not bring trains into their new homes and some do not even travel far. The country that receives the largest number of children (almost a third of the total) is New York. Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania also receive a large number of children. For much of the orphan era, the Children's Aid bureaucracy does not distinguish between local placements and even the most distant ones. They are all written in the same notebook and, on the whole, run by the same person. Also, the same child can be placed once in the West and next time - if the first house does not work - in New York City. Decisions about where to place a child are made almost entirely based on which alternatives are most readily available when the child needs help.
The first Orphan train
The first group of 45 children arrived in Dowagiac, Michigan, on October 1, 1854. The children had been traveling for days in uncomfortable conditions. They were accompanied by E. P. Smith from the Relief Society of Children. Smith himself has let two different passengers on a river boat from Manhattan adopt boys without checking their references. Smith added a boy he met on the railroad track in Albany - a boy who claims to be an orphan Smith had never bothered to verify. At a meeting in Dowagiac, Smith played with the sympathy of his audience while pointing out that the boys were useful and the girls could be used for all kinds of household chores.
In a report on trips published by the Children's Aid Institute, Smith said that in order to get a child, the applicants must have a recommendation from their pastor and peace justice, but it is unlikely that these requirements are strictly enforced. At the end of the first day, fifteen sons and daughters were placed with local families. Five days later, twenty-two more children were adopted. Smith and eight other children went to Chicago where Smith put them on a train to Iowa City where Pastor C. C. Townsend, who runs the local orphanage, took them in and tried to find them a host family. This first expedition was considered so successful that in January 1855, the public sent two more homeless children to Pennsylvania.
Orphan Train Logistics
Leading local community committees are organized in cities where orphan trains stop. These committees are responsible for arranging the site for adoption, publicizing events, and arranging lodging for orphan train groups. These committees are also requested to consult with the Child Help Institution about the suitability of local families who are interested in adopting children.
The Brace system puts its faith in the goodness of strangers. The Orphan train chickens are housed at home for free and are expected to serve as a pair of additional hands to help with the tasks around the farm. Families are expected to raise them as they would for their natural born children, providing them with proper food and clothing, "general" education, and $ 100 when they are twenty-one. Older children placed by Children's Aid agencies should be paid for their work. Legal adoption is not required.
According to "Statement of Boys Placed at Home," children under the age of twelve will be "treated by applicants as one of their own children in school, clothing and training," and boys, twelve to fifteen years old. should be "sent to school part of each year." Representatives from the public should visit each family once a year to check the conditions, and children are expected to write back to the public twice a year. There are only a handful of agents to monitor thousands of placements.
Before they boarded the train, the children were dressed in new clothes, given the Bible and placed in the care of Child Support agencies who accompanied them to the west. Some children understand what's going on. Once they do, their reactions range from the excitement of finding new families to anger and resentment for being "put out" when they have relatives at home.
Most of the children on white trains. Attempts were made to put non-English speaking speakers with people who spoke their language. German-speaking Bill Landkamer rode the orphan train several times as a preschooler in 1920 before being accepted by a German family in Nebraska.
Babies are easiest to place, but finding homes for children older than 14 is always difficult due to concerns that they are overly regulated in their ways or may have bad habits. Children who are physically or mentally handicapped or sickly are hard to find home for. Although many siblings are sent together on an orphan train, prospective parents may choose to take an only child, separating siblings.
Many orphan train children who live with families place orders to determine age, sex, color and hair and eyes. Others were paraded from the depot to the local theater, where they were put on stage, so the origin of the term "for adoption." According to the exhibit panel of the National Orphan Train Complex, children "take turns giving their names, singing small little songs, or" saying a piece. "According to Sara Jane Richter, professor of history at Oklahoma Panhandle State University, children often have an unpleasant experience." People come and push them, and see, and feel, and see how many teeth they have. "
The press accounts convey the spectacle, and sometimes like the atmosphere of the auction, attend the arrival of a new group of children. '' Some boys are booked, others are girls, some are lightweight babies who are liked, others are dark, and orders are filled properly and every new parent is happy, '' reports The Daily Independent of Grand Island, NE at May 1912. '' They are as healthy and beautiful as anyone has ever seen. ''
Brace raised money for the program through his writings and lectures. The rich sometimes sponsor children's trains. Charlotte Augusta Gibbs, wife of John Jacob Astor III, had sent 1,113 children to the west on the train in 1884. The train discounted the children and the agents who took care of them.
Orphan Train movement coverage
The Children Help Agency sends an average of 3,000 children by train annually from 1855 to 1875. Orphan trains are shipped to 45 states, as well as Canada and Mexico. During the early years, Indiana received the largest number of children. At the beginning of the Orphan Children Aid Society train program, children were not sent to the southern states, as Brace was a passionate abolitionist.
In the 1870s, the New York Foundling Hospital and New England Home for Little Wanderers in Boston all had their own orphaned train programs.
New York City's New York Foundling "Mercy Trains"
The New York Founding Hospital was founded in 1869 by Sister Mary Irene Fitzgibbon of the Sisters of Charity in New York as a refuge for abandoned babies. The Sisters worked together with the Imams throughout the Midwest and South in an effort to place these children in Catholic families. The Founding Hospital sent infants and toddlers to pre-arranged Roman Catholic homes from 1875 to 1914. Parishioners in the destination areas were asked to receive children, and parish priests applied to approved families. This practice was first known as "Stroller", then "Mercy Train". In the 1910s, 1,000 children a year were housed with new families.
Challenges faced by passengers and the Orphan Train family
Linda McCaffery, a professor at Barton County Community College, explains the experiences of Orphan Train: "Many are used to being a rugged laborer, but there are stories, wonderful children's stories end up in the kind families who love them, love them, [and] educate them. "
The Orphan train boys face obstacles ranging from the prejudices of classmates because they are '' training kids '' to feel like outsiders in their family throughout their lives. Many rural people look upon the orphaned children with suspicion, as drunk children and irreparable prostitutes.
The criticism of the orphan train movement focused on concerns that early placement was made in haste, without proper investigation, and that there was not enough follow-on on the placement. The charity is also criticized for not tracking down children who are placed under their care. In 1883, Brace approved an independent investigation. It was found that local committees were not effective in screening foster parents. Oversight is weak. Many older boys have fled. But the overall conclusion is positive. The majority of children under the age of fourteen lead a satisfying life.
Applicants for children should be screened by committees of local businessmen, ministers, or doctors, but screening is rarely very thorough. Ministers, judges, and other small local leaders are often reluctant to reject prospective foster parents because it is not feasible if he or she is a friend or customer.
Many children lose their identity through forced-name and repetitive movements. In 1996, Alice Ayler said, "I am one of the more fortunate because I know my legacy, they take on the identity of young riders by not allowing contact with the past."
Many children are placed in the west on the streets of New York, Boston, or other major eastern cities and are generally not the obedient children many families expect. In 1880, Mr. Coffin of Indiana editorialized, "Children who are thrown out of the city are the source of much corruption in the country where they are thrown... Very few such children are useful."
Some placement locations allege that the orphan carriage is dumping unwanted children from the East in Western communities. In 1874, the National Prison Reform Congress charged that these practices resulted in an increased cost of socialization in the West.
Older boys want to get paid for their work, sometimes ask for an additional fee or leave a placement to find a higher payment placement. It is estimated that young men start 80% change of placement.
One of the many children on the train is Lee Nailling. Ms. Lee died of illness; after his death, Lee's father was unable to take care of his children. Another child of an orphan train named Alice Ayler. Alice takes the train because her only mother can not provide her children; before their journey of life from "berry" and "green water."
The Catholic priest stated that some charities deliberately placed Catholic children in Protestant homes to change their religious practices. The Damaged Roman Catholic Children's Protection Society in New York City (known as Protect) was founded in 1863. The Protectory manages the orphanage and places programs for Catholic youth in response to the Protestant Brace-centered program. Similar allegations of conversion through adoption are made about the placement of Jewish children.
Not all orphans are righteous orphans, but made orphans by the forcible transfer of their biological families to be placed in other countries. Some claim this is a deliberate pattern intended to divide the families of Catholic immigrants. Some abolitionists oppose the placement of children with Western families, seeing indentureship as a form of slavery.
Orphan trains are the targets of lawsuits, generally filed by parents looking to reclaim their children. Clothes are sometimes filed by receiving parents or family members who claim to have lost money or been harmed as a result of placement.
The Minnesota State Board of Trustees and Charities reviewed the placement of the Minnesota children's railroad between 1880 and 1883. The council found that when children were placed in haste and without proper investigation into their placements, only a few "disabled" or abused children. The review criticizes local committee members who are affected by the pressures of rich and important people in their communities. The board also shows that older children are often placed with farmers who expect to profit from their work. The Council recommends that paid agents replace or add to local committees in investigating and reviewing all applications and placements.
A complicated lawsuit arose from the 1904 Arizona orphan Territory train placement in which the New York Foundling Hospital sent 40 Caucasian children between the ages of 18 months and 5 years to be given to the Catholic family in the Arizona Territory parish. Families approved by local priests for placement are identified in subsequent litigation as "Mexican Indians." The nuns who escorted these children were unaware of any racial tension between Anglo and Mexican groups, and placed Caucasian children with Mexican Indian families. A group of whites, described as "just short of the lynch mass," forcibly took children from Mexican Indian homes and placed most of them with Anglo families. Some of the children were returned to the Founder Hospital, but 19 remained with the Anglo Arizona Region family. The Foundling Hospital filed a habeas corpus order seeking the return of these children. The Arizona Supreme Court states that the best interests of children require that they stay in their new home in Arizona. On appeal, the US Supreme Court found that a habeas corpus order seeking the return of a child was an improper use of the text. The Habeas corpus paper should be used "only in cases of arrest and imprisonment under color or claim of a legal order," and should not be used to obtain or transfer custody of children. These events were well publicized at the time with newspaper stories entitled "Baby Sold Like Lamb", telling readers that the New York Foundling Hospital "had for years sent children with car loads all over the country, and they are given and sold, like cattle. "
End of Orphan Train movement
When the West has settled, the demand for adopted children has declined. In addition, cities in the Midwestern such as Chicago, Cleveland, and St. Louis began to experience the problems of abandoned children experienced by New York, Boston, and Philadelphia in the mid-1800s. These cities are beginning to look for ways to care for their own orphan population.
In 1895, Michigan passed a law prohibiting children outside the state from local placements without payment of bonds that ensure that children placed in Michigan will not become a public fee in the State. Similar laws passed by Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, and Nebraska. Negotiated agreements between one or more New York charities and some western states allow for the placement of children in these countries. The agreement includes large bonds as collateral for the children placed. However, in 1929, the agreement expired and was not renewed when the charity changed their child care support strategy.
Finally, the need for orphaned train movements decreases when legislation is passed to provide family support at home. The charities are beginning to develop programs to support poor and needy families that limit the need for interventions to place children.
Legacy program
Between 1854 and 1929, about 200,000 American children traveled west by train to find new homes.
Child Aid agencies assess the transplanted wards to succeed if they grow into "credible members of society", and often reports documenting success stories. A survey in 1910 concluded that 87 percent of children sent to rural homes had "worked well," while 8 percent had returned to New York and 5 percent had died, disappeared or were arrested.
Brace's idea that children are more cared for by families than in institutions is the most fundamental principle of today's care.
Organization
The Orphan Train Heritage Society of America, Inc. founded in 1986 in Springdale, AR retains the history of the orphan train era. The National Orphan Train Complex in Concordia, KS is a museum and research center dedicated to the Orphan Train Movement, various participating institutions, and children and agents riding the train. The museum is located at the restored Union Pacific Railroad Depot in Concordia listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The complex maintains the archives of riders' stories and houses of research facilities. The services offered by the museum include rider research, educational materials, and photo collections and other memorabilia.
A forwarding institution
Some children taking trains come from the following institutions: (partial list)
Media reference
- Big Brother by Annie Fellow-Johnson, a children's fiction book of 1893.
- Extras! Additional! Orphan Train and Newsboys of New York by Renà © e Wendinger is a complete nonfiction resource book and a pictorial history of an orphan train. ISBN 978-0-615-29755-2
- Good Boy (Little Orphan at the Train) , Norman Rockwell's painting
- "Eddie Rode The Orphan Train", a song by Jim Roll and discussed by Jason Ringenberg
- "Last Train Home: An Orphan Train Story" a historical novel by 2014 RenÃÆ'Â © e Wendinger ISBNÃ, 978-0-9913603-1-4
- Orphan Train , a 1979 television film directed by William A. Graham.
- "Orphan Train Riders", a song by David Massengill
- Orphan Train , 2013 novel by Christina Baker Kline
- Placing Out , a 2007 documentary sponsored by the Kansas Humanity Council
- Toy Story 3 , 2010 Pixar animated movie Orphan Train is referenced briefly in bookmarks 00:02:04 - 00:02:07 Orphan Train
- Joe Aillet
- John Green Brady
- Andrew H. Burke
- Henry L. Jost
- Children at Home - a similar program in the UK
- Clarke, Herman D. (2007). Kidder, Clark, ed. Their Orphans and Their Precious Cargo: The Work of Pastor H. D. Clarke's Life . Westminster, Md.: Inheritance Book. ISBN: 978-0788417559.
- Creagh, Dianne. "The Baby Trains: Catholic Foster Care and Western Migration, 1873-1929", Journal of Social History (2012) 46 (1): 197-218.
- Holt, Marilyn Irvin. Orphan Train: Placing Out in America . Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. ISBNÃ, 0-8032-7265-0
- Johnson, Mary Ellen, ed. Orphan Train Drive: Their Own Story . (2 vol. 1992),
- Magnuson, James, and Dorothea G. Petrie. Orphan Train . New York: Dial Press, 1978. ISBNÃ, 0-8037-7375-7
- O'Connor, Stephen. Orphan Train: The Story of Charles Loring Brace and The Children He Saved and Failed . Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. ISBNÃ, 0-3958-4173-9
- Patrick, Michael, and Evelyn Trickel. Orphan Train to Missouri . Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997.
- Patrick, Michael, Evelyn Sheets, and Evelyn Trickel. We are Part of the History: The Orphan Train Story . Santa Fe, NM: The Lightning Tree, 1990.
- Riley, Tom. Orphaned Train . New York: LGT Press, 2004. ISBNÃ, 0-7884-3169-2
- Donna Nordmark Aviles. "Orphan Train To Kansas - A True Story". Wasteland Press 2018. ISBNÃ, 978-1-68111-219-0
- Renee Wendinger. "Extra! Extras! Orphan Train and Newsboys of New York". Legendary Publication 2009. ISBNÃ, 978-0-615-29755-2
- Clark Kidder. "Emily's Story - The Brave Journey of Orphan Train Rider". 2007. ISBNÃ, 978-0-615-15313-1
- West by Orphan Train - Documentary by Colleen Bradford Krantz and Clark Kidder, 2014
- DiPasquale, Connie. "Orphan Trains of Kansas"
- "He took the Orphan Train across the country" - CNN
- "Orphan trains riders, children seek answers about inheritance" - USA Today
- "Orphan Train" - CBS
- "98-Year-Old Woman Tells Experience As 'Orphan Train Passenger'" - CBS
- Cawker City General Record, April 8, 1886
- "Placing Out" department form
- "Orphan Train", American Experience , PBS
- National Orphan Train Complex
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