Monday, April 17, 2017

The Orphan Train Movement was a supervised welfare program that transported orphaned and homeless children from crowded Eastern cities of the United States to foster homes located largely in rural areas of the Midwest. The orphan trains operated between 1854 and 1929, relocating about 200,000 orphaned, abandoned, or homeless children. Three charitable institutions, Children's Village (founded 1851 by 24 philanthropists),[1] the Children's Aid Society (established 1853 by Charles Loring Brace) and later, the New York Foundling Hospital, endeavored to help these children. The two institutions developed a program that placed homeless, orphaned, and abandoned city children, who numbered an estimated 30,000 in New York City alone in the 1850s, in foster homes throughout the country. The children were transported to their new homes on trains that were labeled “orphan trains” or "baby trains". This relocation of children ended in the 1920s with the beginning of organized foster care in America. One of the many children who rode the train was Lee Nailling. Lee's mother died of sickness; after her death Lee's father could not afford to keep his children.[citation needed] Another orphan train child was named Alice Ayler. Alice rode the train because her single mother could not provide for her children; before the journey they lived off of "berries" and "green water.


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