Hopping the Orphan Trains

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer

In 1910 an ad was placed in the local Troy, Missouri paper stating that homes were wanted for orphan children: “WANTED: Homes For Children.

“A company of homeless children from the East will arrive at TROY, MISSOURI on Friday, Feb. 25, 1910. These children are of varying ages and of both sexes, having been thrown friendless upon the world. They come under the auspices of the Children’s Aid Society of New York. They are well-disciplined, having come from various orphanages.

“The citizens of this community are asked to assist the agent in finding good homes for them. Persons taking these children must be recommended by the local committee. They must treat the children in every way as a member of the family, sending them to school, church, Sabbath school and properly clothe them until the age of 17.”

Another ad in the Rockford, Illinois paper is self-explanatory: “ASYLUM CHILDREN! A company of Children, mostly boys, from the New York Juvenile Asylum will arrive in Rockford, at the Hotel Holland Thursday Morning, Sept. 6, 1888 and remain until evening. They are from 7 to 15 Years of Age.

“Homes are wanted for these children with farmers, where they will receive kind treatment and enjoy fair advantage. They have been in the Asylum from one to two years, and have received instruction and training preparatory to a term of apprenticeship, and being mostly of respectable parentage, they are desirable children and worthy of good homes.

“They may be taken at first upon trial for four weeks, and afterwards, if all parties are satisfied, under indenture–girls until 18, and boys until 21 years of age.

“The indenture provides for four months schooling each year, until the child had advanced through compound interest, and at the expiration of the term of apprenticeship, two new suits of clothes, and the payment to the girls of fifty, and to the boys of one hundred and fifty dollars.

“All expenses for transportation will be assumed by the Asylum, and the children will be placed on trial and indentured free of charge.

“Those who desire to take children on trial are requested to meet them at the hotel at the time above specified. E. Wright, Agent.”

The Orphan Train Cattle Call

Margaret Braden, a native of New York City, rode a train car to South Dakota in 1914, and later described the system of choice used by various societies: “They put us all in some big building while people came from all around the countryside to pick out those of us they wanted to take home. I was four and my sister was only two. It was a nice train ride, and we were fed mustard and bread during the trip.” She and her sister were selected by a family from a very small town.

The orphans were not always little darlings. There were an estimated 10,000 vagrant children roaming the streets of New York City in 1848. In eleven of the city’s wards at least 3,000 minors survived by stealing. Over 500 Boston children between the ages of seven and eighteen were in jail, many for selling newspapers without a license.

The literature of the day often glorified the orphans but there were also many stories of how “wicked” they were. The Reverend Jonathan Edwards, who believed in strict “Christian” training, said that some children were “not too little to die…not too little to go to Hell.”

Boys were always the most popular, although girls were often taken in by the rich so they would serve as cheap servants. Orphan agents thought that girls were hard to place because adolescent girls were often “street girls” who displayed an overt sexuality in order to survive on the streets. One agent described them as girls with small bodies but “with woman’s passion, and jealousy and scathing tongue.” Sometimes it was difficult to see these girls as innocent little waifs worthy to be saved.

The Migration of the Poor From the East to the West

In the last half of the 19th century, urban reformers recognized the overpopulation of the cities while rural sections complained about the lack of cheap labor. It was a foregone conclusion that these two powers would eventually get together. The result? Orphan trains shipping the poor and destitute of the cities to Western rural towns, farms, and ranches.

Rural businessmen needed young workers to stock and staff stores and farmers needed labor to break new ground for crops. This great need, this almost endless demand for labor in the West, brought the worlds of the urban poor and the underpopulated West to a mutual understanding. This movement of people is much like the current movement of the poor destitute Hispanic in Mexico and Latin America to jobs in meat processing plants, landscape companies, and construction of all kinds.

Poor children in the Eastern cities were often abandoned by their parents because they couldn’t afford to feed them. As a consequence the street children stole, collected bottles and rags to sell, sold newspapers and anything they could make, and begged openly on the streets.

One eleven-year-old girl placed on an orphan train described her early way of earning a living. She collected coal along the railroad tracks and the shipping docks of New York, carried the heavy sacks to residential areas, and sold the coal. It was hard work for a child.

Poor New York children also had to battle for jobs in the Eastern cities with the waves of equally poor European immigrants. These were hard times for both groups. Factory accidents, unwanted pregnancies, illness, lost wages, or the death of a family breadwinner often reduced the whole family to abject poverty.

The problems of the poor could be gauged by the number of orphanages established in the East in just 60 years. In 1825 the State of New York had only four. In 35 years the state established 56 more. A survey by the federal government in 1877 recorded 208 orphanages in the entire country. In addition many asylums and reform schools were established during this same period.

Most of the Orphans on the Trains Had Living Parents

Thousands of children riding the railroad cars to a new life in the West were not orphans. Many had been turned over to welfare agencies because their parents were unable to care for them. Others had been institutionalized as “half orphans” because parents were in jail or completely destitute.

We often hear of the British system of sending criminals, the unemployed, and the poor to a new life in far-off Australia where they were “indentured” to employers and families for seven years. The families were responsible for their care during that period and also had to prepare them to be good citizens following indenture.

Many adult couples on the Eastern seaboard of the United States rode the trains and were indentured when they reached the West. Couples with small children often served as escorts for 30 or more orphan children and then were placed in indentured service in factories or on farms. There is no accurate total of those resettled because dozens of agencies from dozens of cities were involved in western placements.

A Literary Orphan Describes Most of the Experiences of Real-Life Orphans

In 1979, Charlene Joy Talbot wrote about Kevin O’Rourke, a fictional immigrant from Ireland, in her book “An Orphan From Nebraska.” Readers said the fictional Kevin experienced practically everything a real “orphan” went through. Kevin and his mother are immigrating to this country because Kevin’s schoolteacher father has died. Halfway across the Atlantic, Kevin’s mother dies of what is called “ship’s fever.”

Kevin is told to contact his Uncle Michael when the ship reaches New York. But Kevin discovers (at age eleven) that he is all by himself in the New World because Uncle Michael is incarcerated at Blackwell’s Island in New York. Michael advises Kevin he can get by if he can get a job selling newspapers. He needs a license but Kevin forges one. Kevin then begins a life on the streets with other orphans, selling newspapers, visiting Bowery theaters and other places of ill-repute, and sometimes gambling away his meager earnings. Eventually Kevin and the other street boys are driven off the street by the police and placed with the New York Aid Society.

Kevin then joins an orphan train going to Nebraska and many other points west. Out of the 30 or so boys and girls in his group, he is the last boy to be chosen in the fictional town of Cottonwood, Nebraska. The farmers don’t want him because he is too small and frail to do heavy farm work. They say he may burn up in the sun. But at the end of the choosing session the bachelor newspaper publisher shows up and takes Kevin on as a “printer’s devil” who sets the type for the paper. Kevin can read and write, skills very few orphans have. Needless to say, the fictional Kevin lives happily ever after.

“I’d Like to Introduce Our Two Sons”

Some real orphans did live happily ever after. In a radio tribute to the orphan trains, two brothers described their experiences on National Public Radio last year. At ages nine and six the brothers ended up as the last ones on the train in a small Texas town.

A rancher and his wife had been wanting sons for years but had almost given up hope. On the same day the train was in town the rancher drove his team in to pick up supplies for the month. The storekeeper, knowing that the rancher and his wife desperately wanted children, told the man of the orphan train and of the two boys waiting to be placed.

The rancher went to the train station and talked to the two boys. After interviewing them, he asked them to live at the ranch. When they reached the ranch after a day’s ride, the rancher introduced the boys to his very surprised wife this way: “Mama, I’d like you to meet our two sons.” She immediately broke down and cried. The two boys were later officially adopted, were well taken care of in their teenage years, and eventually inherited the ranch. They thought they had been extremely lucky.

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