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Orphan Train
Wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_Train
Publisher: Wikipedia
Resource Type: Article
The Orphan Train Movement was a supervised welfare program that transported orphaned and homeless children from crowded Eastern cities of the United States to foster homes located largely in rural areas of the Midwest. The orphan trains operated between 1854 and 1929, relocating about 200,000 orphaned, abandoned, or homeless children.
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The phrase "orphan train" was first used in 1854 to describe the transportation of children from their home area via the railroad. However, the term "Orphan Train" was not widely used until long after the Orphan Train program had ended.
The Children's Aid Society referred to its relevant division first as the Emigration Department, then as the Home-Finding Department, and finally, as the Department of Foster Care. Later, the New York Foundling Hospital sent out what it called "baby" or "mercy" trains.
Organizations and families generally used the terms "family placement" or "out-placement" ("out" to distinguish it from the placement of children "in" orphanages or asylums) to refer to orphan train passengers.
Widespread use of the term "orphan train" may date to 1978, when CBS aired a fictional miniseries entitled The Orphan Trains. One reason the term was not used by placement agencies was that less than half of the children who rode the trains were in fact orphans, and as many as 25% had two living parents. Children with both parents living ended up on the trains -- or in orphanages -- because their families did not have the money or desire to raise them or because they had been abused or abandoned or had run away. And many teenage boys and girls went to orphan train sponsoring organizations simply in search of work or a free ticket out of the city.
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