Historically speaking:

The orphan trains

How one man and the railroad saved 200,000 homeless children

by Stewart McCoy

During the mid 1800s, as many as 30,000 homeless children lived on the streets of New York City. Some were able to find work shining shoes, while others sold newspapers and some ran errands. Still, many children resorted to sleeping in doorways, eating out of trash cans, and stealing.

And this was during a time when children 7 years and older were treated as adults by the law. Those who were 12 years of age and caught stealing could be hanged publicly.

This was the midst of the Industrial Revolution. Many of these children were of immigrant families. Others were of families who moved from rural areas. All were trying to find work at factories, but there were too many workers and not enough jobs. So many children suffered and were left to fend for their selves.

Some ended up in orphanages, which were mostly crowded places where children were poorly fed and educated, ordered around like soldiers, and otherwise ignored.

What children needed was a good home with a family that could teach them to contribute to society.

Charles Loring Brace and the Children's Aid Society

In 1853, a minister by the name of Charles Loring Brace wrote that his heart became sick after witnessing the suffering of these children. So he founded the Children’s Aid Society, which would sponsor homeless children’s trips to find new homes.

Children had been relocated before in countries such as England and Germany, but not on the scale that Brace imagined.

By the late 1830s, railroads had become a booming business, and by the 1850s some trains were offering regular passenger service. So when Brace decided that frontier families would most need and welcome new family members, he realized trains were the best option to get them there.

Without trains, Brace’s “placing out” program would have never worked. Sending an average of 240 children a month over a 70-year period wasn’t feasible by other means.

They couldn’t have walked or ridden horses. It was too dangerous and the children were too young.

Carriages or wagon trains wouldn’t have worked either. They would take much longer to travel distances sometimes as far as New York to Texas. And the supplies needed to maintain the wagons and to feed, clothe, and protect the children would have been too numerous and expensive.

The orphan trains

The railroad offered a way for hundreds of homeless children to travel and find new families in a few days or weeks. And fewer supplies were needed because of the less intensive nature of the trips.

Fewer chaperons were need, as well. Usually an older woman, sufficiently mature to be their mother, and called a “matron” would supervise the children during their journey.

Most children were too young to understand why or where they were going, or had been moved around so much they just didn’t care.

Children suitable for placing out were selected by the Children’s Aid Society or the Foundling Hospital in New York City. It was easier to place younger children, and while children as old as 17 found new families, usually they weren’t older than 14 years old.

For the trip, children were grouped together, bathed, provided new clothes, and sometimes taught basic manners so as to impress prospective parents. And to make sure no children went missing, numbers were pinned to their clothes and they were made to number off at regular intervals.

When the children arrived at their destination, they would usually have a few hours to scrub up and nap. Afterward, they would be taken to a town center, such as a church, where people would gather to size up the children and decide if they might like to take one of them home.

Some adults would prod, tug on limbs, and feel teeth to decide if a child was strong and healthy. Others would quiz and question the children to determine their intelligence and temperament.

From the outset of the program, the CAS requested that town leaders form a committee to approve of potential parents before they chose to take in a homeless child. However, the committees usually weren’t very rigorous in their review process. Most people who applied were simply approved without a background check.

Some placements were successful and others weren't. Some children found loving new families. Others were set to work as servants.

Still, orphan trains riders included those who grew up to be governors, congressmen, and district attorneys. One became a justice of the Supreme Court. Others became educators, law enforcers, financial professionals, and engineers.

One rider's story

In 1926, a few years before the last orphan train ran in 1930, Lee Nailling and his brothers were put on a train from New York City and sent out West. He ended up being separated from his brothers and had trouble being placed with a family.

In Orphan Train Rider by Andrea Warren, Nailling describes how the orphan trains changed his life for the better:

“...though I was still angry at the whole world for what had happened to me, I couldn't hold out forever. My new parents gradually wore me down. I not only learned to love them deeply and call them Mom and Dad and mean it, but I also gained a wonderful grandmother and an assortment of aunts, uncles, and cousins. The little town of Manchester [Texas] turned out to be the best place in the world to grow up.”

So thanks to the train technology resulting from the Industrial Revolution, and Brace’s creative compassion, Nailling and so many others before him were able to escape homelessness and find a new family and hope for the future.

Resources

For more information visit www.orphantraindepot.com.