In 1854, the Children’s Aid Society of New York City, New York, faced a tough reality. With intensive immigration, tenements with large families, high levels of contagious disease, and dreadful poverty, New York City had 10,000 orphans and no plans to house them. Charles Loring Brace, a social worker, had the idea of sending large groups of these children west by train in hopes of giving them a new start in wholesome country surroundings. At cities along the way, the children were able to participate in a “free-home-placing-out,” hoping to find adoptive families. The orphan trains, with groups of 25 to 100 children, carried their precious cargo for 75 years, bringing hundreds of children to Arkansas.
In addition to the large group of children brought to Fayetteville, Orphan Trains stopped in Ft. Smith, Cane Hill, Rogers, Paris, Little Rock, Conway, Clarksville, Morrison Bluff, Jonesboro, and other Arkansas towns. The total number of orphans taken out west was over 200,000, and the Orphan Train in Arkansas is part of many Arkansas families’ history.
The Orphan Train Heritage Society
The Orphan Train Heritage Society of America, founded in 1986, held the first of its reunions in Springdale, Arkansas. Among the 32 who attended were Algie Braly and Johnny Brant, brothers who had been separated when the Orphan Train came to Fayetteville with 120 children. Reunions of siblings like Algie and Johnny was a primary goal for the organizers of the Orphan Train Heritage Society of America.
Adoption?
The USGenWeb has a list of Orphan Train riders who found homes in Arkansas, but only five are identified as having been adopted. It is possible that the people who gave the information did not know whether the children had been legally adopted — but it is also known that not all of the children from the Orphan Trains were legally adopted.
One of the ideas behind the orphan train program was that farms in the rural areas of America would need workers. Some of the orphans were taken on not as new family members but as hired hands. Some were indentured, meaning that they had to work for the family who took them in for no pay for an agreed-upon number of years, often till age 16.
The Orphan Trains continued until 1929, by which time Child Labor laws were being developed. Every state also had at least some laws about adoption by that time. Ideas about child welfare and about adoption were changing by that time.
During the years that the Orphan Trains were running, it was not unusual for families to take in children in a casual, unofficial way. Legal adoption might follow, but many families never got around to it. Over the years, it has become clear that casual arrangements of this kind are not in th best interests of the child or of the adoptive parents or the birth parents. Legal adoption considers the well-being of all the people involved in the adoption journey, and ensures that all their rights are respected.
When you have questions about adoption, ask Heimer Law. We specialize in adoption.
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