Orphan Train (fostercare/fosterhome)

The Orphan Train Movement was an organized welfare initiative that moved kids from crowded Eastern cities to foster homes, most of which were in the Midwest's rural regions. Between 1854 and 1929, the orphan trains were in operation, moving roughly 250,000 kids. These youngsters were not always orphaned, abandoned, abused, or homeless, despite what the co-founders of the Orphan Train movement stated. They were primarily the offspring of recent immigrants as well as the children of urban poor and disadvantaged families. The fact that many kids were utilized as purely slave farm labor and that there were insufficient follow-ups on placements are among the criticisms.

Three philanthropic organizations worked to aid these kids: the Children's Village (1851; founded by 24 donors), the Children's Aid Society (1853; founded by Charles Loring Brace), and later, the New York Foundling Hospital. Rich benefactors funded the institutes, which were run by qualified staff. The three institutions created a scheme to send the estimated 30,000 city children who were homeless, orphaned, or abandoned in the 1850s in foster homes across the nation. Orphan trains or baby trains were used to carry the children to their new residences. Due to a decline in the demand for farm labor in the Midwest, this kid relocation program came to an end in 1930. Institutional orphanages were unusual before to the early 19th century, while the first orphanage in the United States is said to have been founded at Natchez, Mississippi, in 1729. Children who had lost both parents were typically reared by relatives or neighbors. Courts were rarely involved in informal agreements.


Children who were homeless proliferated in great Eastern cities like New York City around 1830. Between 10,000 and 30,000 children were thought to be homeless in New York City in 1850. The population of New York City was only 500,000 at the time. Some kids lost their parents to typhoid, yellow fever, or flu outbreaks, leaving them orphans. Others were left behind because of their indigence, disease, or addiction. To make ends meet, many kids sold newspapers, rags, or matches. They came together and established gangs in order to be protected from street violence.

Charles Loring Brace, a young preacher, became worried about the fate of street children in 1853. (often known as "street Arabs").

The Children's Aid Society was started by him. The Children's Aid Society primarily provided religious counseling, as well as academic and vocational teaching, to boys during its initial year of operation. The association eventually built the Newsboys' Lodging House, the first runaway shelter in the country, where street boys could get low-cost lodging and a fundamental education. Brace and his colleagues made an effort to locate homes and occupations for specific youngsters, but they soon gave up due to the sheer volume of children in need of placement. Brace proposed the notion of placing groups of youngsters for adoption in rural locations.

Brace thought that if New York City's poverty and vice were left behind and the children of the streets were reared by morally upstanding country people, they would have better lives. Brace felt that farmers would welcome homeless children, take them into their homes, and treat them as their own since they understood the necessity for work in the developing farm region. His program would end up being a precursor to contemporary foster care.

The Children's Aid Society launched its first significant expedition to the Midwest in September 1854 after spending a year sending individual children to farms in adjacent Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and rural New York.



The term "orphan train" was first used in 1854 to refer to the railroading of kids away from their hometowns.

But it took a while after the Orphan Train program had ended for the phrase "Orphan Train" to become commonly used.

The relevant division of the Children's Aid Society was referred to as the Emigration Department, Home-Finding Department, and lastly the Department of Foster Care. Later, what the New York Foundling Hospital referred to as "baby" or "mercy" trains were dispatched.

When referring to orphan train passengers, organizations and families typically use the terms "family placement" or "out-placement" (with the "out" separating it from the placement of children "in" orphanages or asylums).

The phrase "orphan train" may have become widely used after CBS broadcast the fictional drama The Orphan Trains in 1978. Less than half of the children who traveled the trains were actually orphans, and as many as 25% had two surviving parents, which is one reason placement agencies did not use the phrase. Because their families lacked the resources or the will to raise them, or because they had experienced abuse, abandonment, or running away, children with both parents still present ended up on trains or in orphanages. Additionally, many young men and women went to groups that sponsored orphan trains purely in search of employment or a free ticket out of the city.

The phrase "orphan trains" is also inaccurate because many of the children who were adopted did not travel by train to their new homes, and some of them did not even go very far. Nearly one-third of the total number of children were placed in the state of New York, which got the most of them. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Connecticut also took in sizable numbers of kids. The Children's Aid Society administration did not distinguish between local placements and even its most remote ones throughout the majority of the orphan train era. They were all recorded in the same logbooks and, for the most part, managed by the same individuals. Additionally, if the first placement of the child in the West did not work out, the youngster might be placed in New York City the following time. The choice of where to place a child was nearly entirely based on the option that was most convenient at the time the child needed assistance. On October 1, 1854, the first batch of 45 kids arrived in Dowagiac, Michigan. The kids had been on a day-long, arduous journey. E. P. Smith from the Children's Aid Society was with them. Without checking their background, Smith personally had allowed two different New York City riverboat passengers to adopt two little boys. A youngster he encountered in the Albany railroad yard, whose claim of orphanhood Smith never bothered to investigate, was added by Smith. Smith played on his audience's sympathies during a meeting in Dowagiac while pointing out that the lads were useful and the girls could be employed for all kinds of housework.

Smith said that in order to obtain a kid, applicants needed endorsements from their pastor and a justice of the peace, but it is unlikely that this criterion was strictly followed, in an account of the trip published by the Children's Aid Society.

15 boys and girls had been placed with local families at the conclusion of the first day. Twenty-two more kids had been adopted five days later. Smith and the remaining eight kids took a train from Chicago to Iowa City, where they were put on by themselves by Smith. A Reverend C. C. Townsend, who oversaw the area's orphanage, took them in and made an effort to place them with foster homes. The charity dispatched two other groups of homeless youngsters to Pennsylvania in January 1855 as a result of the initial expedition's perceived success.