Get The Orphan Train Quiz - Scholastic

The Orphan Trains operated prior to the federal government's involvement in child protection and child welfare. While they operated, Orphan Trains moved approximately 200,000 children from cities like New York and Boston to the American West to be adopted.

Newspapers.com is the largest online newspaper archive and is a great place to find more information about your family members or about the orphan train movement in general. Newspapers.com does require a subscription. American Ancestors – A wonderful site for researching birth families of orphan train riders.

The orphan trains had detractors. In New York, people called Brace a 'child stealer' and criticized him for 'shipping them wholesale into the country. ' Some of the states where children were sent complained they were placed indiscriminately in poorly supervised foster families.

The children were transported to their new homes on trains that were labeled "orphan trains" or "baby trains". This relocation of children ended in 1930 due to decreased need for farm labor in the Midwest.

Orphan train problems So-called “train children” were frequently bullied and ostracized in their new communities. Some were rejected and never found a home. Others were mistreated by adoptive families or misused as free farm labor, leading to many instances of runaways.

Orphan trains were the brainchild of Charles Loring Brace, a minister who was troubled by the large number of homeless and impoverished children in New York. A massive influx of new immigrants had crowded the city, and a series of financial panics and depressions in the late 19th century created unemployment.

Although some children were given a prosperous life like they were promised, countless other children were not and suffered many wrongdoings such as abuse, rape, and in some cases murder.