The Orphan Trains

Between 1841 and 1860 an estimated four million immigrants landed in America. Port cities like New York were terribly overcrowded and ill equipped to handle this influx of people. There was widespread disease, crime and without the support of extended family members, the breakdown of many families was almost inevitable. When parents became unable to care for their children they were sent to orphanages who would care for the children for pay. If the payments stopped the social workers "disposed" of the children as they saw fit. I'm not sure what that means. It is estimated that there were between 10,000 and 30,000 children in New York City at this time that were homeless or neglected.

Charles Loring Brace, the founder of The Children's Aid Society, was determined to help these uncared for children. The Society devised a plan whereby they would take the homeless children off the streets of New York and send them to "morally upright" families who would give them a home in exchange for help with chores. Many of these children who were growing up on the streets of New York were forming gangs for mutual protection. Maybe not surprisingly, most of them had never heard of Jesus Christ. In 1854 the first "orphan train" headed west to Michigan with 40 children.

In 1865 the New York Foundling Asylum was founded by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul. In the early days of this charity, a basket would be placed by the front door to receive infants with no questions asked. A nun would scoop up the baby and make sure it was taken care of.

This organization would later become known as the New York Foundling Hospital and in 1872 would send out its first train filled with babies and children to be placed. The receiving families had to agree to raise the children in the Catholic faith.

Tags were sewn on to the children's clothing with their name, birth date and the name of the family they had been matched with.

Western agents are employed who travel through remote farming districts, and discover where there is a call for children's labor. An arrangement is then made with the citizens of the village to receive a group of these homeless children of the city.

On a given day in New York, homeless children are gathered to a central office from the streets, from the industrial schools and the lodging-houses of the aid society. They are cleaned and dressed, and sent away under the charge of an experienced agent, to seek a new home in the West.

When they arrive in the village a public meeting is held, and a committee of citizens is formed to decide on the applications. Farmers come in from twenty to twenty-five miles around, looking for a boy who could do the light work of the farm and aid the wife in her endless household labor; childless mothers seek for children to replace those that are lost; housekeepers look for girls to train up; mechanics look for boys for their trades; and kind-hearted men, with comfortable homes and plenty of children, think it is their duty to do something for the orphans who have no fair chance in the great city. Thus in a few hours the little colony is placed in comfortable homes. Subsequently, if changes should be necessary, the committee will replace the children, or the agent revisits the village, while a steady correspondence is kept up by the central office with the families. In this way something like 25,000 boys and girls have been placed in country homes during the past twenty years. Nearly 3000 a year are now sent forth by the society. Great numbers of these children have acquired property, or have grown up to positions of influence and respectability."

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