Lucy’s Wish (8 page)

cholera   
kol'-er-a
   An infectious, often fatal disease.

committee   
ka-mit'-e
   A group of people elected or appointed to perform a service.

embroider   
em-broi'-der
   To sew a design on a piece of fabric with needlework.

evict   
e-vikt'
   To legally remove someone from the property on which he or she is living.

fort   
fort
   A military site, strengthened to prevent attack and occupied by soldiers.

frock coat   
frok cot
   A man's close-fitting coat, long enough to reach the knees.

hem   
hem
   To fold back and sew down the edge of a piece of cloth.

pallet   
pal'-it
   A small, makeshift bed of blankets or straw.

parasol   
par'-e-sol
   A woman's sun umbrella.

placed out   
plased out
   The term used by the Children's Aid Society to mean that a home had been found for a child on an orphan train.

privy   
priv'-e
   An outside toilet.

refuse   
ref'-yoos
   Something that is discarded as useless. Trash or garbage.

sampler   
sam'-pler
   An embroidered cloth showing a beginner's talent with the needle.

tenement   
ten'-a-ment
   An apartment house in the poorest, most crowded part of a city.

top hat   
top hat
   A man's tall hat with a curved brim. Often made of silk.

waif   
waf
   A child who has no home or friends.

well   
wel
   A hole drilled or dug into the earth to get water.

In 1850 there were five hundred thousand people living in New York City. Ten thousand of these people were homeless children.

Many of these children were immigrants—they had come to the United States with their families from other countries. Many lived in one-room apartments. These rooms had stoves for heating and cooking, but the only water was in troughs in the hallways. These apartments were called tenements, and they were often crowded together in neighborhoods.

Immigrant parents worked long hours for very low wages. Sometimes they had barely enough money to buy food. Everyone in the family over the age of ten was expected to work. Few of these children could attend school, and many could not read or write.

Girls took in bundles of cloth from clothing manufacturers. They carefully sewed men's shirts, women's blouses, and babies' gowns. Or they made paper flowers and tried to sell them on the busy streets.

New York City's Lower East Side during the late nineteenth century.
Courtesy the Children's Aid Society

Boys shined shoes or sold newspapers.

There were no wonder medicines in the 1800s. Many immigrants who lived in poor conditions died from contagious diseases. Children often became orphans with no one to care for them.

Some orphaned children were taken in by aunts and uncles. But many of the immigrant children had no relatives to come to their aid. They had left their grandparents, aunts, and uncles in other countries. They were alone. No one in the government had developed any plans for caring for them.

These orphans were evicted from their homes so that the rooms could be rented to other families. Orphans with no homes and no beds slept in alleys.

This was a time in which children were expected to work hard, along with adults. They were expected to take care of themselves. But there were not enough jobs for all the orphans in New York City. Many street arabs, as they were called, turned to lives of crime.

A New York City “street arab.”
Courtesy the Children's Aid Society

Charles Loring Brace, a young minister and social worker, became aware of this situation. He worried about these children, who so badly needed care. With the help of some friends he founded the Children's Aid Society. The Children's Aid Society provided a place to live for some of the homeless children. It also set up industrial schools to train the children of the very poor in job skills.

Charles Loring Brace soon realized, however, that these steps were not enough. He came up with the idea of giving homeless, orphaned children a second—and much better—chance at life by taking them out of the city and placing them in homes in rural areas of the country.

Brace hired a scout to visit some of the farm communities west of New York State. He asked the scout to find out if people would be interested in taking orphan children into their homes. The scout was surprised by how many people wanted the children.

Charles Loring Brace, founder of the Children's Aid Society and the orphan train program.
Courtesy the Children's Aid Society

A boy proudly holds up his Children's Aid Society membership card.
Courtesy the Children's Aid Society

One woman wrote, “Last year was a very hard year, and we lost many of our children. Yes, we want your children. Please send your children.”

Brace went to orphans who were living on the
streets and told them what he wanted to do. Children flocked to the Children's Aid Society office. “Take me,” they begged. “Please take me.”

“Where do you live?” the children were asked.

The answer was always the same: “Don't live nowhere.”

The first orphan train was sent west in 1856, and the last one in 1929. During these years more than a hundred and fifty thousand children were taken out of New York City by the Children's Aid Society. Another hundred thousand children were sent by train to new homes in the West by the New York Foundling Home. By 1929, states had established welfare laws and had begun taking care of people in need, so the orphan trains were discontinued.

Before a group of children was sent west by train, notices that the children were coming would be placed in the newspapers of towns along the route: “W
ANTED
: H
OMES FOR
C
HILDREN
,” one notice said. It then listed the Society's rules. Children were to be treated as members of the family. They were to be taken to church on Sundays and sent to school until they were fourteen.

Boys on board an orphan train.
Courtesy the Children's Aid Society

Handbills were posted in the towns where the orphan train stopped, where people could easily see them. One said: “C
HILDREN
W
ITHOUT
H
OMES
. A number of the Children brought from
New York are still without homes. Friends from the country, please call and see them.”

A committee of local citizens would be chosen at each of the towns. The members of the committee were given the responsibility of making sure that the people who took the orphan train children in were good people.

Most committee members tried to do a good job. But sometimes a child was placed in a home that turned out to be unhappy. Some farmers wanted free labor and were unkind to the boys they chose. But there were many good people who wanted to provide loving homes for the orphans. Many people were so happy with their children that they took a step beyond being foster parents and legally adopted them.

Not all the children who were taken west on the orphan trains were orphans. Some had one or both parents still living. But sometimes fathers and mothers brought their children to the Children's Aid Society.

Families that wanted to adopt an orphan train rider had to follow rules such as these.
Courtesy the Children's Aid Society

“I can't take care of my children,” they would say. “I want them to have a much better life than I can give them. Please take them west to a new home.”