Lucy’s Wish (9 page)

What did the orphan train children think about their new lives? What made the biggest impression on them? They were used to living in small spaces, surrounded by many people in a noisy, crowded city. Were they overwhelmed by the sight of miles of open countryside?

A group of children ready to board the orphan trains, and their placing-out agents.
Courtesy the Children's Aid Society

Many of them had never tasted an apple. How did they react when they saw red apples growing on trees?

When they sat down to a meal with their new families, did they stuff themselves? And did they feel a little guilty, remembering the small portions of food their parents had to eat?

Were they afraid to approach the large farm animals? What was it like for them to milk a cow for the first time?

During the first few years of the orphan trains, the records kept by the Children's Aid Society were not complete. In 1917 an agent made a survey. He wanted to find out what had happened to many of the orphan train children who had grown up.

He found that among them were a governor of North Dakota, a governor of the Territory of Alaska, two members of the United States Congress, nine members of state legislatures, two district attorneys, two mayors, a justice of the Supreme Court, four judges, many college professors, teachers, journalists, bankers, doctors, attorneys, four army officers, and seven thousand soldiers and sailors.

Money is needed to carry forward this great child-saving enterprise. With more confidence do we ask it, since it has been so clearly shown that this work of philanthropy is not a dead weight upon the community. Though its chief aim is to rescue the helpless child victims of our social errors, it also makes a distinct economic return in the reduction of the number of those who are hopeless charges upon the common purse. More money at our command means more power to extend this great opportunity of help to the many homeless children in the boys' and girls' lodging houses in New York, and in the asylums and institutions throughout the State. We therefore ask the public for a more liberal support of this noble charity, confident that every dollar invested will bring a double return in the best kind of help to the children, so pitifully in need of it.

This chart, from the Children's Aid Society's 1910 bulletin, shows the number of children who rode the orphan trains and the states to which they were sent.
Courtesy the Children's Aid Society

Although there were some problems in this system of matching homeless children with foster parents, the orphan train program did what it set out to do. It gave the homeless children of New York City the chance to live much better lives.

Three sisters who were taken in by the Children's Aid Society after their mother had died. At the time the photograph was taken, the two youngest girls had been adopted.
Courtesy the Children's Aid Society

New York City in the 1860s was a fast-paced, crowded, and sometimes dangerous city. Almost half the population of the city had been born in another country. Most of these immigrants came from Ireland or Germany.

The streets of New York City were full of life. Food and other items were sold in markets, and children played marbles and other outdoor games. Horse-drawn carriages clattered noisily down the bumpy streets, which were paved with cobble-stones.

Many of the people who settled in New York City in the 1860s moved to the southern part of Manhattan. There they could be close to the factories and docks where they worked. They lived in tenements—cheaply built, overcrowded housing. People in tenements used outdoor communal toilets that often overflowed and enabled diseases like cholera to spread quickly.

A New York City street scene.
Courtesy the Children's Aid Society

In fact, in 1866, the year in which
Lucy's Wish
is set, one of the most serious epidemics of cholera in history hit New York City. There were eleven hundred deaths in 1866 alone; there were sixteen hundred deaths between 1860 and 1870. And it was usually poor immigrants, like Lucy's
mother, who died from cholera, or from tuberculosis or scarlet fever.

New York City in the 1860s was a violent place. There was tension between longtime residents and new immigrants, between the rich and the poor, and between people of different ethnic backgrounds. Immigrants were blamed for the cholera epidemic and for taking jobs from others by agreeing to work for lower wages. These tensions led to riots. There were also violent protests against the draft for the Civil War. In 1863, one of these protests turned into a terrible riot in which hundreds of New Yorkers were killed or wounded.

There were public schools in New York City in the 1860s, but many poor and immigrant children could not attend them. There simply wasn't room in the schools for the huge number of immigrant children, and many were turned away. Some schools operated two half-day sessions so that more children could attend. Younger children were taught arithmetic, singing, drawing, calisthenics, and English. Older students also studied science, history, and civics. There was no public high-school system in New York City at that time, so students usually stopped going to school at age fourteen.

Two New York City children in their tenement home. Between them is a Christmas tree they have made using a broom and a bucket.
Courtesy the Children's Aid Society

These boys stand on a New York City street, ready to travel west and start new lives. Their placing-out agent stands behind them.
Courtesy the Children's Aid Society