This is how one woman remembered her 1914 orphan train experience, one that she shared with at least 200,000 others from 1853 to 1929. The orphan trains carried children, teenagers, and some adults (mostly women) out of eastern cities to rural communities. They were removed from poverty and want, incarceration and institutionalization. Some went to Connecticut, Vermont, Illinois, Nebraska, Virginia, and Texas. By the time the relocation program ended, youngsters were scattered across the breadth of America.

When it began, the program was called "placing out." Today it is know as the "orphan trains." The practice began with the New York Children’s Aid Society, but it was taken up by other charities – the Children’s Mission to the Children of the Destitute (Boston), the New York Juvenile Asylum, the New England Home for Little Wanderers (Boston), and the New York Foundling Hospital. By the late 1800s, charities in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois also adopted the program, sending children to states farther west. Each agency had its own placement policies; the New England Home for Little Wanderers, for example, strongly encouraged legal adoption, but New York Juvenile Asylum placements were by legal indenture only. Agencies, however, varied little in procedure.

As a rule groups of children were gathered together and put under the charge of agents employed by the placing charity. The groups traveled to pre-planned destinations where local citizens had been told to expect the children. Upon arrival, the children were taken to "some big building" – an opera house, a church, or courthouse – where they were displayed before the curious citizenry who had turned out for the orphan train. Local families or "employers" chose who they wanted to take home, and the agents were supposed to ensure that the homes were suitable. Some youngsters found themselves in homes where they were treated as members of the families; some discovered that they were to be a new farmhand or housekeeper. Obviously, there were good experiences and bad. Some children and teenagers ran away from their new homes – especially when agents did not remove them from abusive environments.

In the scheme of great national events in American history, the relocation program made barely a visible ripple. Yet it affects family genealogies today, presenting a special challenge to researchers.

Perhaps the first thing that researchers should understand is the misleading label of "orphan train." The majority of those placed out were not true orphans. Most had at least one living parent. Parents gave up their children because of destitution, spousal desertion, widowhood, or birth out of wedlock. Courts also removed children from violent homes or when young people showed signs of turning to crime and delinquency. (States’ laws so broadly defined delinquency that it could mean anything from smoking a cigarette to keeping bad company.) There were, of course, delinquent children who were true orphans, who were homeless in the streets, or who had no extended family upon which they could rely. However, children with living parents, as well as brothers and sisters, were the norm, not the exception, in placing out.

Some of these children were immediately turned over to placing-out charities, but most lived in other institutions before they were chosen for relocation. The New York Children’s Aid Society, for example, drew its pool of children from the United Helpers orphanage in St. Lawrence County, New York; Salvation Army Brooklyn Nursery and Infants Hospital; and New York’s Five Points House of Industry (to name just a few). Of course, for researchers the task of locating institutional records can be formidable, particularly because many of the smaller charities and orphanages closed their doors long ago.

Other problems are name and ethnic identity. By the late 1800s, one complaint against placing out agencies was the loss of identity and family contact. Certainly, agencies discouraged children from maintaining contact with any family left behind. Agencies, however, did not change children’s names. When names were changed – and they were – it was done by families taking children. Adoption changed names, but sometimes families capriciously renamed children: "You remember Mary S---. Her name is now Jennie P." Often, ethnicity was also revised. Children taken by the New York Foundling Hospital were baptized in the Catholic Church and placed in Catholic homes. Said a woman who was given up as an infant by her unwed mother: "I went in (to the Foundling Hospital) Jewish, but I came out Catholic." On the other hand, Protestant charities usually placed Catholic and Jewish children in Protestant homes.

A logical step in any search is to contact the placing agency – when that information is known. (Some are still in operation; addresses are given below.) Requests must be as specific as possible and include all known information of the placement, such as date, state or town, and name of receiving family. As straightforward as the approach is, results can be far from satisfactory. Agencies’ records are not always complete, most do not devote staff time to searches on any regular basis, and the response time may involve months. Thus, researchers have taken to other avenues. One route is the local newspaper. Orphan train arrivals were routinely reported in town newspapers. Certainly, not every reporter bothered to list children’s names or those of the people who took them, but some did. Consider the Eureka (Kansas) Herald report for July 1, 1898, which provided "The names of the boys and the homes they are, respectively, occupying today." The article listed fourteen boys by first and last name, the full names of those who took them, and their addresses. Newspapers on microfilm are available on interlibrary loan from many state historical societies.

Many area and regional genealogical societies, county historical societies, local museums, and state historical societies have collected newspaper clippings, county histories, reminiscences, and portions of charities’ annual reports on the orphan trains. Although I can’t claim to have searched every state society, I have found that the Nebraska and South Dakota state historical societies have made an especially good effort in locating materials and in compiling New York Children’s Aid Society annual reports which contain some placement names and agent reports for various parts of the country.

Official records also offer possibilities. In this case, it is helpful to know the placement policies of the agency involved. For example, researchers familiar with the New York Foundling Hospital’s practice of baptizing its charges might search for baptismal records in New York. Genealogy hunters who know that the New York Juvenile Asylum demanded indenture might search through county indenture records. This last procedure, of course, may not be as easy as it seems at first glance. In Illinois, I found indenture records in county courthouses (where they should be), as well as at the state historical society and in one university archive. Adoption records also provide assistance, but as researchers know, state vary widely in accessibility to records. There is also the problem of knowing whether adoption ever occurred. Many orphan train children grew up believing that they were legally adopted, and they conveyed this belief to their descendants. After all, they were taken into the family fold and often took the names of their new families. It has become more and more apparent, however, that many children were never adopted. Either families did not know or consider the niceties of the law or, in some states, adoption was impossible because it was not recognized by state statute. Massachusetts, for example, had adoption statutes as early as the late 1850s, but Minnesota did not have statutes until 1917.

Some researchers have turned to census records in hopes that names appearing in a household list but not bearing the family surname might prove an orphan train rider in residence. While this strategy can deliver results, it is probably the least likely means of locating family. Apparent non-family members on a household list may have been hired laborers, boarders, or relatives with different surnames. Unless the orphan train rider’s full name is already known, census searches can be time-consuming and non-productive.

On the brighter side, family historians have found a source of help at the Orphan Train Heritage Society of America, Inc., which is building a databank of reference material and publishes a newsletter providing personal stories and request for information. It also sponsors orphan train reunions in several states, providing another forum for discovery and the sharing of information. The society is a clearinghouse for individuals who want to establish a network with others interested in the orphan train experience. Researchers should remember, however, that the organization is a labor of love, its staff are volunteers, and the crush of information requests sometimes overloads the organization’s capabilities.

When the orphan trains began, planners and participants paid scant attention to the ways that the practice altered families. Today, researchers who retrace the journeys of family members often find the trip filled with obstacles and frustrations. There are however, happy endings. There are successes, and family histories are richer for including their orphan train roots.

For more information contact:
New England Home for Little Wanderers
850 Boylston Street, Suite 201
Chestnut Hill, MA 02167

New York Children’s Aid Society
105 East 22nd Street
New York, NY 10021

New York Juvenile Asylum Alumni Affairs
Children’s Village
Dobbs Ferry, NY 10007

Orphan Train Heritage Society of America, Inc.
P.O. Box 496
Johnson, AR 72741-0496

Marilyn Irvin Holt is the author of The Orphan Trains: Placing Out in America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992). As a member of the Kansas Humanities Council’s speakers bureau, she presents a program on the orphan trains to groups in Kansas, including genealogical organizations. Copies of the research materials she collected while writing her book were given to the Orphan Train Heritage Society of American, along with an index of individual names and states that appear in the materials.