"When a child of the streets stands before you in rags, with a tear-stained face, you cannot easily forget him."
- Charles Lorring Brace, New York, Founder of the Children's Aid Society
Charles Brace founded the Children's Aid Society in 1853, raising funds and arranging travel for homeless children from New York west to safer environments. Brace understood the need for labor in the expanding farm country, he believed farmers would welcome homeless children and treat them as their own. Between 1854 and 1929, more than 100,000 children were sent west on The Orphan Trains. Brace's program would be the forerunner to modern foster care.
My grandmother, Rosa Liberto, arrived in Ellis County, Kansas in 1903. She was not even three years old when she stepped off the train to be chosen by a German couple to be their daughter. She was loved and had a happy childhood, yet was embarrassed about being adopted, not knowing the circumstances of her abandonment in New York until she was in her mid-60s. (See 100 Years Ago on the Orphan Train Post.)
Some children were not treated well and ran away; some were rejected by their new parents. Some became governors of their states like Andrew Burke of North Dakota and John Brady of Alaska.
In my book, Iron Horses of the Santa Fe Southwest, in the section about the impact of Anglo expansion into the southwest, this story reveals some of the challenges:
"In 1904, the Orphan Train arrived in the Arizona copper-mining towns of Clifton and Morenci with forty orphans of Irish descent, age two to six. The children were being placed with Catholic families, mostly of Mexican heritage, who had agreed to adopt them. The Anglos of the community decided it was wrong for the 'Mexicans' to have them. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed."
For more about the Orphan Trains, go to PBS online, The American Experience, The Orphan Trains at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/orphan/
