Orphan Trains to Missouri

by Patrick, Michael D.

• ISBN13: 9780826211217
• ISBN10: 0826211216
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-07-01
• Publisher: Univ of Missouri Pr

Summary

Early immigration laws encouraged the poor of Europe to find new hope with new lives in the United States. But sometimes the immigrants exchanged a bad situation in their native country for an even worse one on the streets of New York and other industrial cities. As a result, the streets were filled with crowds of abandoned children that the police called "street arabs." Many New York citizens blamed the street arabs for crime and violence in the city and wanted them placed in orphan homes or prisons. In 1853 a man by the name of Charles Loring Brace, along with other well-to-do men in New York City, founded the Children's Aid Society. The society planned to give food, lodging, and clothing to homeless children and provide educational and trade opportunities for them. But the number of children needing help was so large that the Children's Aid Society was unable to care for them, and Brace developed a plan to send many of the children to the rural Midwest by train. He was convinced that the children of the streets would find many benefits in rural America. In 1854 he persuaded the board of the society to send the first trainload of orphans west. With this, the orphan trains were born. Cheap fares, the central location of the state, and numerous small farming towns along the railroad tracks made Missouri the perfect hub for the orphan trains, even though many areas of the state were still largely unsettled. Researchers have estimated that from 150,000 to 400,000 children were sent out on orphan trains, with perhaps as many as 100,000 being placed in Missouri. Orphan Trains to Missouridocuments the history of the children on those Orphan Trainsthorn;their struggles, their successes, and their failures. Touching stories of volunteers who oversaw the placement of the orphans as well as stories of the orphans themselves make this a rich record of American and midwestern history.

Table of Contents

PREFACE	xi	(2)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	xiii
INTRODUCTION	1	(10)
ONE Charles Loring Brace and the "Street Arabs"	11	(11)
TWO The Orphan-Train Plan	22	(12)
THREE The First Orphan Trains Problems and Changes	34	(12)
FOUR Missouri The Railroad Hub for Orphan Trains	46	(22)
FIVE New Missourians Separated from Their Families	68	(15)
SIX Brothers and Friends The Lawyers and the Jahnes	83	(6)
SEVEN The Weirs A Family United, Separated, and Reunited	89	(11)
EIGHT The Orphan-Train Legacy	100	(5)
FOR MORE READING	105	(2)
INDEX	107