Two Books and a Dozen Articles=Three Pages of Our Novel

This is an example of one of the flyers
that would be posted ahead of the train
full of orphans. Notice that in January
of 1907 there were likely children
adopted in Winnebago, MN.

What captivating reading it is to learn about adoption practices in early America!

In our plot line, there is the subject of adoption, so I needed to know what practices were in place during the early 1900's. I knew the most interesting and useful reading would be first-person accounts, but I also needed to base the storyline on common practices.

I started online, of course, looking for any first person accounts I could find. A book entitled The Adoption Reader, edited by Susan Wadia-Ells, was available for $3.99 on Amazon and it ended up sucking up several of my evenings with stories that ranged from joyful to poignant to downright miserable. It's broken down into birth mother stories, adoptive mother's stories and the last section is adopted daughters. (Don't know what happened to the sons.) The stories had all been published in the 1970's and '80's but didn't give any other dates, so it wasn't as directly applicable to what I was trying to do as I would have liked.

Then, I stumbled onto the history of the Orphan Trains. I seriously don't know why it took me so long to discover it, because there are thousands of accounts, photos, novels, movies and documentaries of the Orphan Trains.

Basically, there was a do-gooder in New York City in the 1850's by the name of Charles Loring Brace who was training to be a preacher. He moved to NYC and saw the thousands of homeless children living on the streets and was appalled and saddened. So the children were rounded up and taken to children's aid societies. Their parents were located if they were still living and signed over custody, giving up their parental rights. Then the children were put on trains to what they then called the West (which was the Midwest) where children were wanted for adoption and to work the farms. Generally this occured in the late winter or early spring, in anticipation of the seasonal need for farm hands.

In the Midwestern states, prospective parents would fill out paperwork to determine if they would be fit parents. Some matches were made ahead of time, but many others were made on the spot as the trains went from town to town. Children would be scrubbed up after the long journey, clean clothes would be put on them, and they would be lined up in places like the schoolhouse stage or other public places. Farmers and their wives would walk through the rows of children, looking them over and then say "I pick that one!" The child (if old enough) could refuse if they didn't want to go with that person.

There are many first-person accounts by these children because around 500 of up to 200,000 who were on the orphan trains are still alive today. They will break--and sometimes warm--your heart. (I will include some links below, but there are SO many. Children were split up from their siblings, older boys sometimes ran away to get paying jobs and sometimes there was abuse, but also, many families were blessed by the new additions and the children--especially the youngest ones--often thrived. Two years after the placements, The Children's Aid Society did follow-up visits and sometimes changed the childrens' placement or sent them back to the children's asylums or to jail if they were deemed incorrigible.

The trains first originated out of New York City, but eventually,
other states started their own orphan trains.

This practice continued until 1929--3-4 years after my parents were born, so it seems like quite recent history. Now, with the wisdom of time, we know that it is a tough call whether it was the right thing to do--or not. Usually minorities and the poor were the ones who lost their children, so clearly, there are major human rights violations that occured.  Some people credit the movement with advancing better adoption laws, but other sources blame the orphan trains for delaying improvements. They feel that instead of helping poor parents feed, clothe and house their children, shipping them away buried the seriousness of poverty.

It wasn't until the economy changed and the Midwest didn't need farmhands as much and families began getting social services, that there wasn't the demand for orphans.

If anyone knows of someone who was on an orphan train, I would really appreciate speaking with them. The likelihood is actually quite high, because one of the primary destinations was the Minneapolis/St. Paul train station! They continued all the way to Texas, depending on where they started out, I suppose. Please ask any older members of your family if they know of anyone or even heard about the Orphan Trains. (I was surprised that my dad did not know of them, but then, he grew up in a very small town in a rural area of Wisconsin.)

So, a couple of evenings ago, I sat down to write about our characters and their adoption experience and though I pulled bits and pieces of various accounts into the story, it felt like old news to me. Before I wrote it, I knew exactly what happened to them! (Sometimes surprises when you are writing are a bit more fun.) But it's historically accurate, so yay!

Here are some links the reader might find interesting and worth reading:

http://www.childrensaidsociety.org/about/history/orphan-trains

http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wcl.american.edu%2Fmodernamerican%2Fdocuments%2FTrammell.pdf&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNGqbhcCIdtrgQ1l2tuNEtfb4pqXUg

http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fwp-srv%2Fnational%2Fhorizon%2Fnov98%2Forphan.htm&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNEn7S9g6mHI_npVdxdGQtsVnsJegA

http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pbs.org%2Fwgbh%2Famex%2Forphan%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNFjdFTRVbJS_W63ov-BcojIjsE-eg