New York CityOrphan train movementUp to 30,000 homeless children in one city, in peacetime. Where were their parents?From 1854 to 1929 the trains moved about 200,000 children. In 1850 there were an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 homeless children in New York City alone.
Photo: Unknown photographer · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
Orphan Trains · Clifton, United States (approx.)
Clifton–Morenci, Arizona, 1904
The open question
Forty toddlers shipped across the country, then taken by a mob. Papers called it 'sold like cattle'. Who were their parents?
On the record
A complicated lawsuit arose from a 1904 Arizona Territory orphan train placement in which the New York Foundling Hospital sent 40 white children between the ages of 18 months and 5 years to be indentured to Catholic families in an Arizona Territory parish. At the time, these events were well-documented in published newspaper stories which were titled "Babies Sold Like Sheep," telling readers that the New York Foundling Hospital "has for years been shipping children in car-loads all over the country, and they are given away and sold like cattle." == Decline == As the West was settled, the demand for adoptable children declined.
- Year
- 1904
- Kind
- receiving-town
Sources
More from Orphan Trains
New York CityOrphan train movementUp to 30,000 homeless children in one city, in peacetime. Where were their parents?From 1854 to 1929 the trains moved about 200,000 children. In 1850 there were an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 homeless children in New York City alone.
Dowagiac, MichiganFirst orphan train stop, DowagiacA train of children shows up and families pick them at the station. Who checked where they went?In 1854 Dowagiac was the final stop for the first group of orphans brought west from New York; children were dropped off and taken in at the depot.
Concordia, KansasNational Orphan Train ComplexChildren stood on a stage and said their names. How many lost those names afterwards?A museum in the restored Union Pacific depot. Some children were walked from the depot into a playhouse and put on stage, said by the museum to be the origin of 'up for adoption'.
New York CityChildren's Aid SocietyBusinessmen paid to send city children to farms. Who needed the labour, and who gained?Founded in 1853 by Charles Loring Brace with money from New York businessmen; one of the three charities behind the orphan trains.