Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you missed in history class from
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Chacy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we
Speaker 1: are drawing straight from the listener requests again. So is
Speaker 1: another one that has been requested many, many, many times.
Speaker 1: It is orphan trains. If you have never heard of
Speaker 1: orphan trains before, this probably sounds to you like trains
Speaker 1: full of orphans being taken to new homes. Just kind
Speaker 1: of correct. Between eighteen fifty four and ninety nine, about
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty thousand children were taken to new
Speaker 1: families by train, except they weren't really called orphan trains
Speaker 1: at all at the time. A lot of the children
Speaker 1: were not actually orphans, and a lot of times these
Speaker 1: families who were taking them in were more like employers.
Speaker 1: So that is a story that we're going to tell today. Uh,
Speaker 1: And to get kind of some groundwork, lad We're going
Speaker 1: to start with the context of the situation. After the
Speaker 1: end of the War of eighteen twelve, the population of
Speaker 1: the United States, and particularly in the eastern ports cities,
Speaker 1: really exploded. For example, about forty thou people lived in
Speaker 1: New York and eighteen hundred and by nineteen hundreds, of
Speaker 1: just a hundred years later, it was close to a
Speaker 1: million and a half. So many of these new residents
Speaker 1: were desperately poor and very sick, having arrived with basically
Speaker 1: nothing from wherever they were immigrating from. UH and depending
Speaker 1: on where they were immigrating from, they often faced a
Speaker 1: lot of prejudice and discrimination, which made it harder for
Speaker 1: them to find work and get on their feet. As
Speaker 1: a consequence of this influx of people and poverty, the
Speaker 1: US saw the rise of its first slums. Poverty has
Speaker 1: had always existed, but now there were entire neighborhood that
Speaker 1: were really destitute. They had high crime rates, the buildings
Speaker 1: were deteriorating, and the circumstances were just apparently hopeless. And
Speaker 1: that was the prevailing scenario, and an alarming number of
Speaker 1: the people who lived in these neighborhoods were children. Some
Speaker 1: of the children really were orphans uh some had at
Speaker 1: least one living parent who for whatever reason couldn't or
Speaker 1: didn't support them, but regardless, by the mid eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: there were somewhere between ten thousand and thirty thousand homeless
Speaker 1: children living in the slums of New York City, which
Speaker 1: at that point only had the whole city only had
Speaker 1: a total population of five hundred thousand people, so that's
Speaker 1: a pretty significant chunk of the population that are homeless
Speaker 1: street children. In New York and other cities, children formed
Speaker 1: gangs to try to keep themselves safe and supported themselves
Speaker 1: through petty theft and other crime, or even through begging.
Speaker 1: Others would find work in fact trees or as newsboys
Speaker 1: or shoeshine boys, and some sold matches or rags on
Speaker 1: street corners and in some cases became prostitutes because they
Speaker 1: kind of wandered like nomads through the city. People referred
Speaker 1: to these children often as street arabs, and this all
Speaker 1: kind of calls up images of like scrooges, street urgins
Speaker 1: or Oliver twist Um, and for a lot of children,
Speaker 1: that's pretty much how it really was. And when then
Speaker 1: were the resources to handle them, cities resorted to incarcerating
Speaker 1: children in workhouses and prisons that had been meant for adults,
Speaker 1: but eventually they would build prisons and asylums for juveniles,
Speaker 1: which were really not much better. The field of social
Speaker 1: work also barely, if at all, existed at this point.
Speaker 1: We've done a previous series of podcasts on Jane Adams,
Speaker 1: who thought of as the mother of social work. She
Speaker 1: started doing her groundbreaking work kind of in the middle
Speaker 1: of when all of this was going on. So there
Speaker 1: was you know, if if law enforcement found a child
Speaker 1: who was in danger, there it wasn't like there was
Speaker 1: a social worker or a department of social services they
Speaker 1: could call for help. There was also no foster care system.
Speaker 1: Foster care itself did exist, but it was in a
Speaker 1: very informal way, with individual families taking on children in need,
Speaker 1: and in that sense, fostering has really existed for as
Speaker 1: long as families have. But there was no organized system
Speaker 1: for placing children in foster families or for screening potential
Speaker 1: foster parents. And there were also virtually no adoption laws
Speaker 1: in the United States at this point. The first adoption
Speaker 1: law passed in the US was in Massachusetts and that
Speaker 1: was past an eighteen fifty one. But other than that,
Speaker 1: there was, you know, before that point, there was no
Speaker 1: legal governance about how one made it official that this
Speaker 1: child was now part of your family. So, as a
Speaker 1: result of all of this and all of these sort
Speaker 1: of gaps in uh a social way to deal with
Speaker 1: all these children. Homeless children were a huge issue in
Speaker 1: many cities, particularly port cities, and the government's in question
Speaker 1: just didn't have the resources or programs that they would
Speaker 1: need to do much about it. This brings us to
Speaker 1: Charles Loring Brace of Hartford, Connecticut. He was a Presbyterian
Speaker 1: from a middle class family, and he moved to New
Speaker 1: York City in eighteen forty eight so he could go
Speaker 1: to seminary. He was really horrified at this situation with
Speaker 1: homeless and orphaned children. And it was not just because
Speaker 1: what was happening to these children was horrifying. It was
Speaker 1: also because he thought that these hordes of unsupervised, marauding
Speaker 1: children were a threat to the social order. His opinion
Speaker 1: was that these kids who didn't have families and were
Speaker 1: kind of left up to their own devices and were
Speaker 1: often making ends meet for themselves through petty theft and
Speaker 1: other crime. Uh, he just thought they were gonna gonna
Speaker 1: grow up into hardened criminal adults, and he became really
Speaker 1: fixated on them. He would go exploring through the city's
Speaker 1: poorest neighborhoods and interview them and record their conversations in
Speaker 1: a journal, and he became really motivated to try to
Speaker 1: find some way to take care of this problem of
Speaker 1: homeless children left alone to do as they will. In
Speaker 1: March of eighteen fifty three, he started the Children's Aid Society,
Speaker 1: and the first programs of the Children's Aid Society were
Speaker 1: Sunday School and vocational training, and the society also started
Speaker 1: the United States first home for runaways, the Newsboys Lodging House.
Speaker 1: Almost immediately though, the Children's Aid Society was just overrun
Speaker 1: with demand. There were not enough jobs or enough money
Speaker 1: to provide the services that these children really needed. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, at this point in history, it was pretty
Speaker 1: normal for children to work in some way. And while
Speaker 1: they were trying to match up children with jobs, the
Speaker 1: children vastly outnumbered the jobs. Uh. And they did not
Speaker 1: have the funding to to do more to really help.
Speaker 1: And Brace wanted to do more, But he didn't just
Speaker 1: want to build more facilities to handle more children. He
Speaker 1: thought prisons and asylums were the wrong approach. In his words, quote,
Speaker 1: the best of all asylums for the outcast child is
Speaker 1: the farmers home. The great duty is to get these
Speaker 1: children of unhappy fortune utterly out of their surroundings and
Speaker 1: to send them away. To kind Christian homes in the country.
Speaker 1: This is kind of alludes to the plan that Brace
Speaker 1: came up with, which he called the Immigration Plan. This
Speaker 1: was that they would gather up children from New York
Speaker 1: who were homeless or whose parents couldn't care for them,
Speaker 1: and they would send them west to work on farms.
Speaker 1: This became known as outplacement. So you're placing children out
Speaker 1: versus placing them into an orphanage or an institution. He
Speaker 1: didn't exactly invent the idea of outplacement, uh. The This
Speaker 1: act of like placing children out with other families existed before,
Speaker 1: but the Children's Aid Society and Brace's influence on it
Speaker 1: really became the biggest and most well known outplacement effort.
Speaker 1: So the Children's Aid Society turned its focus to raising
Speaker 1: money and working through all of the legal requirements involved
Speaker 1: in finding new homes for children, and to finding the
Speaker 1: children to send, sometimes working directly with the birth parents themselves.
Speaker 1: As the Children's Aid Society started sending the children out
Speaker 1: on trains and the program really started to take off,
Speaker 1: other agencies followed suit and they placed children from other
Speaker 1: major cities in the Northeast elsewhere in the United States
Speaker 1: and Before we talk about what exactly was happening with
Speaker 1: these trains, let's take a moment for a brief word
Speaker 1: from a sponsor. So let's take a look at what
Speaker 1: was going on with the orphans and the trains. So,
Speaker 1: before being put on the trains, these children would be
Speaker 1: given new clothes or put into their best clothes if
Speaker 1: they had clothes that were serviceable. Often this meant that
Speaker 1: they were in a new outfit that had been provided
Speaker 1: to them by charity. They were meant to look their best,
Speaker 1: but depending on how long and difficult the journey was,
Speaker 1: sometimes what really happened was by the time they arrived
Speaker 1: they were filthy and sick. Someone representing the agency usually
Speaker 1: went on the train with them, and often another agent
Speaker 1: had gone ahead to spread the word and begin screening
Speaker 1: potential parents and assembling a committee of local people, which
Speaker 1: usually included doctors and clergy to help with the approvals.
Speaker 1: Agencies would also distribute leaflets and place advertisements about the children.
Speaker 1: Here's an example of an ad that ran in Nebraska.
Speaker 1: In all children received under the care of this association
Speaker 1: are of special promise in intelligence and health, and are
Speaker 1: in age from one month to twelve years and are
Speaker 1: sent free to those receiving them on ninety days trial
Speaker 1: unless a special contract as otherwise made. Homes are wanted
Speaker 1: for the following children. Eight boys, ages ten, six and
Speaker 1: four years English parents. Blondes very promising two years old, blonde,
Speaker 1: fine looking, healthy American, has had his foot straightened, walks
Speaker 1: now okay. Six years old, dark hair and eyes, good looking,
Speaker 1: at intelligent American. Ten babies boys and girls from one
Speaker 1: month to three months. One boy. Baby has fine head
Speaker 1: and face, black eyes and hair, fat and pretty three
Speaker 1: months old. Agencies also had rules for the placements themselves.
Speaker 1: Here's the Children's Aid Society rule for the placement of boys.
Speaker 1: Applications must be endorsed by the local committee. Boys under
Speaker 1: fifteen years of age, if not legally adopted, must be
Speaker 1: retained as members of the family and sent to school
Speaker 1: according to the educational laws of the state until they
Speaker 1: are eighteen years old. Suitable provisions must then be made
Speaker 1: for their future. Boys between fifteen and sixteen years of
Speaker 1: age must be retained as members of the family and
Speaker 1: sent to school during the winter months until they're seventeen
Speaker 1: years old, when a mutual arrangement may be made. Boys
Speaker 1: over sixteen years of age must be retained as members
Speaker 1: of the family for one year, after which a mutual
Speaker 1: arrangement may be made. Parties taking boys agree to write
Speaker 1: to the society at least once a year, or to
Speaker 1: have the boys do so. Removals of boys providing unsatisfactory
Speaker 1: can be arranged through the local committee or an agent
Speaker 1: of the society, the party agreeing to retain the boy
Speaker 1: a reasonable length of time after notifying the society of
Speaker 1: the desired change. This kind of reminds me of, uh,
Speaker 1: when you get a pet through pet rescue, Like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And obviously this particular set of rules is from after
Speaker 1: states that started to pass abaction laws, which was actually
Speaker 1: done in part to kind of curtail the more willy
Speaker 1: nilly aspects of this placement of children that was going on. Um.
Speaker 1: When the train arrived at a town, the children would
Speaker 1: be taken to a playhouse or a theater or some
Speaker 1: other suitable gathering place that had places for spectators and
Speaker 1: places to display the children, and the children will be
Speaker 1: paraded across the stage for the families to inspect. And
Speaker 1: so the term up for adoption purportedly comes from this
Speaker 1: practice of literally putting the children up on stage, and
Speaker 1: often the whole town would come to watch whether they
Speaker 1: wanted a child or not. Sometimes the children would be
Speaker 1: asked to say something or perform in some way, and
Speaker 1: the prospective families would ask questions of them and sometimes
Speaker 1: inspect them in a way that was more reminiscent of
Speaker 1: buying a horse or a slave. In some towns, demand
Speaker 1: for these children was really huge, and families would almost
Speaker 1: come to blows over who could pick from the limited
Speaker 1: number of children. Foster families were supposed to have references
Speaker 1: from their pastor or the justice of the peace attesting
Speaker 1: to their character, but if none was available, the agent
Speaker 1: in charge would often just judge based on their appearance,
Speaker 1: their dress, and their demeanor. Children who couldn't find a
Speaker 1: placement would be put back on the train to be
Speaker 1: sent on to the next town, or, failing that, would
Speaker 1: wind up in a local orphanage or some other local
Speaker 1: facility for homeless children. For most agencies, the record keeping
Speaker 1: was pretty lax um, The screening was pretty minimal, and
Speaker 1: depending on who you asked, these people taking in children
Speaker 1: could be considered parents or they could be considered more
Speaker 1: like employers. There was also not a lot of follow
Speaker 1: up after the facts. Travel was really difficult and expensive
Speaker 1: at this point, which became a big deterrent against sending
Speaker 1: representatives from the agencies to check up on people. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some of them, like the Children's Aid Society, had planned
Speaker 1: initially to do in person follow ups on a regular basis,
Speaker 1: but that never really came to fruition uh. And that
Speaker 1: pretty much meant that they were relying on the families
Speaker 1: or the childre are in to send letters back to
Speaker 1: the agency, which also sometimes happened and sometimes not. And
Speaker 1: although most of the agencies that were kind of doing
Speaker 1: these sorts of projects of out placing children followed similar methods,
Speaker 1: the Children's Aid Society really got some particular criticisms, and
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about those after we have a
Speaker 1: quick word from our sponsor. So a lot of agencies,
Speaker 1: not just the Children's Aid Society, got involved in sending
Speaker 1: children out west or to some other place by train. Um.
Speaker 1: Charles Loring Brace in particular, though, had some aspects to
Speaker 1: what he was doing in his philosophy that are kind
Speaker 1: of problematic. He was really sure that farms were the
Speaker 1: best places for New York's impoverished children. They would get
Speaker 1: used to doing honest work there, and they would ideally
Speaker 1: have the affection and support of a family. And this
Speaker 1: I mean it sounds like an at least well meaning
Speaker 1: plan on the surface, but there are aspects of it
Speaker 1: that are pretty problematic. Fewer than half of the children
Speaker 1: that were sent on the trains by the Children's Aid
Speaker 1: Society were actually orphans. Roughly a quarter of them had
Speaker 1: one living parent, and about a quarter had both parents
Speaker 1: still living, so fifty of them had some parents in
Speaker 1: the mix. Arguably the living parents couldn't afford to or
Speaker 1: didn't want to raise their children, or the children were
Speaker 1: being abused, neglected, or mishandled in some way. Some were
Speaker 1: also teenagers who were making the step to leave home
Speaker 1: themselves with the aid of this free passage and clothing
Speaker 1: and work help that would come without placements. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: did not find horror stories of like children being taken
Speaker 1: with no regard to their parents, but I did find
Speaker 1: ones where the parents were pressured pretty extensively to give
Speaker 1: up their children for their better good, you know, based
Speaker 1: on the person who was speaking to them's idea of
Speaker 1: what would be best for them. Um. His critics argued
Speaker 1: that Brace was really taking it upon himself to dictate
Speaker 1: what was best for these children, regardless of the parents
Speaker 1: feelings or their actual situation. And as a side note,
Speaker 1: the existence of parents for about half of these children
Speaker 1: is one reason why the phrase orphan trains wasn't really
Speaker 1: used at the time. The more common terms for the
Speaker 1: setup were mercy trains and even baby trains. So one
Speaker 1: of brace's actual stated goals was also to provide labor
Speaker 1: and the less popular populated regions of the United States
Speaker 1: where people were moving. Uh you know, there were new
Speaker 1: families who were getting out to somewhere in the West,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, in a typical situation, they probably
Speaker 1: would eventually have children, and the children were eventually helped
Speaker 1: them on the fire. But they needed that child like
Speaker 1: that child help now. Um. So for this reason, most
Speaker 1: of the Children's Eights Society's children were between six and fourteen,
Speaker 1: so they were old enough to do work, but young
Speaker 1: enough to still be like trained and educated and maybe
Speaker 1: not so said in their ways and and obstinate as
Speaker 1: to cause problems for their new families. BRACE also definitely
Speaker 1: had some monetary motivations, pointing out how much cheaper it
Speaker 1: was to place children out than to put them into institutions.
Speaker 1: And the last one is something that he denied, but
Speaker 1: a lot of people pointed out a lot of the
Speaker 1: children who went on Children's Aid Society trains were Catholic
Speaker 1: or Jewish, and a lot of them were also Italian,
Speaker 1: Polish or Irish, and these were all groups who faced
Speaker 1: massive amounts of prejudice and discrimination. Um, Italian, Polish and
Speaker 1: Irish people were all viewed as like second class and
Speaker 1: inferior citizens. The families who received these children were mostly Protestant,
Speaker 1: and they were mostly not Italian or Polish or Irish,
Speaker 1: and so critics argued that Brace was trying to kind
Speaker 1: of strip these children of their religion and their heritage
Speaker 1: and to force them to assimilate to the culture that
Speaker 1: he thought was the best one. Um. His like this
Speaker 1: was sort of the response of him being like nah,
Speaker 1: and his critics being like, yuh huh, Like it does
Speaker 1: seem a little uh, a little problematic. That that was
Speaker 1: that was generally how it went. He would say, well,
Speaker 1: but they're they're just aren't as many you know, non
Speaker 1: Protestant people out west, That's why. And people would say,
Speaker 1: I don't really buy your argument. It definitely, like the
Speaker 1: data set does sort of support a certain prejudice going
Speaker 1: into it. The Children's Aid Society also did not work
Speaker 1: with African American children, although exactly why this is the
Speaker 1: case is not really clear. There were definitely fewer African
Speaker 1: American homes in the West that could have taken the children.
Speaker 1: But it's also possible that this whole exercise looked way
Speaker 1: too much like slavery for anybody to be comfortable sending
Speaker 1: black children. Or it's also very possible that racists did
Speaker 1: not want that to be part of the system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody really clearly said why they were not working with
Speaker 1: African American children. Some of the other outplacement organizations, seeing
Speaker 1: what Brace was doing and seeing the flaws that people
Speaker 1: were pointing out in his plan, tried to avoid the
Speaker 1: controversies that he was generating. So, for example, the New
Speaker 1: York Foundling Hospital was a Catholic organization, and it's since children,
Speaker 1: including babies and toddlers, a lot of babies and toddler's
Speaker 1: actually exclusively to Catholic homes. The Boston Home for a
Speaker 1: Little Wanderers also claims that it's screening and follow up
Speaker 1: processes were much more exact and stringent than BRACES. Were
Speaker 1: so um. While the Children's Aid Society was the most
Speaker 1: well known, there were a lot of other organizations that
Speaker 1: were into this whole practice, and some of them, either
Speaker 1: by their own claims or by actual documentation, seemed to
Speaker 1: have taken more deliberate care with the whole process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and while the Children's Aid Society was mostly sending children
Speaker 1: out to rural farming communities, the New York Foundling Hospital
Speaker 1: and other agencies replacing children much closer to home. So
Speaker 1: many of the children who were placed during this time
Speaker 1: actually stayed in New York, contrary to the perception that
Speaker 1: they all went west. And some of the other agencies
Speaker 1: were definitely more oriented towards children's welfare and not so
Speaker 1: much with the providing labor aspect of it. So this
Speaker 1: whole phenomenon of the trains and outplacement it really hinged
Speaker 1: upon assuming the best in people. So everybody was assuming
Speaker 1: that the parents who were surrendering their children generally were
Speaker 1: doing so because they thought it was in the children's
Speaker 1: best interests uh. And everybody sort of assumed that the
Speaker 1: parents who were taking in these children really were doing
Speaker 1: so out of love and charity and not just to
Speaker 1: get free labor. But in reality, of course, people are
Speaker 1: not always doing their best, and when it comes to
Speaker 1: what happened to the children that were involved, it's really
Speaker 1: something of a mixed bag. Some found themselves genuinely in
Speaker 1: happy homes, when they were loved and cared for, as
Speaker 1: though they were a member of the family, working alongside
Speaker 1: other siblings on farms or in family businesses. The whole
Speaker 1: practice had its share of horror stories too, though they
Speaker 1: were definitely children who were abused, one whose foster families
Speaker 1: took them on strictly to act as unpaid manual labor.
Speaker 1: There were family members who were separated one another, separated
Speaker 1: from one another, and and the like. There are lots
Speaker 1: and lots of surviving letters and diaries that tell of
Speaker 1: children whose parents sent of a way with notes that
Speaker 1: contained their names and their addresses so that they could
Speaker 1: come back home eventually and stay in touch, only for
Speaker 1: these notes to be taken away from the children by
Speaker 1: placement agents as they slept on the trains. That's so heartbreaking, uh.
Speaker 1: There are also many, many first person accounts of children
Speaker 1: who just did not know or understand what was happening
Speaker 1: to them. Some were too young to really grasp the situation,
Speaker 1: and others were simply never told what was going on,
Speaker 1: and in at least some cases, parents seem to have
Speaker 1: been pressured, as Tracy mentioned earlier, into surrendering their children
Speaker 1: when they didn't really want or possibly even need to.
Speaker 1: Outplaced children also did not necessarily get a warm welcome
Speaker 1: in their new communities. A lot of people viewed the
Speaker 1: trained children as they were called, with suspicions. Surely they
Speaker 1: must have been of poor character or have come from
Speaker 1: bad families. There were also religious and cultural tensions as
Speaker 1: Catholic children were placed with Protestant families, and as we
Speaker 1: were speaking earlier speaking about earlier ethnic tensions with Irish
Speaker 1: and Polish and Italian children who were placed into communities
Speaker 1: that carried prejudices against all of these people, all of
Speaker 1: these nationalities. So sometimes, you know, somebody, a child would
Speaker 1: leave a situation where they were homeless and begging out
Speaker 1: the streets, and they would wind up in the situation
Speaker 1: where they had food and shelter, but were outcast and
Speaker 1: faced derision from the community. And there were also cases
Speaker 1: where foster parents had taken in these children and they
Speaker 1: truly loved them and you know, raised them as their own,
Speaker 1: and they lived in this sort of constant fear that
Speaker 1: someone was going to come and take their child away
Speaker 1: from them someday. There was finally an independent investigation of
Speaker 1: the Children's Aid Society in eighteen eighty three, and it
Speaker 1: found that there was very little screening of the prospective
Speaker 1: parents and very little supervision of the overall process. A
Speaker 1: significant number of the older boys who had been outplaced
Speaker 1: had later run away from home, But overall, the investigators
Speaker 1: found that for the most part, the children under the
Speaker 1: age of fourteen who had been outplaced by the Children's
Speaker 1: Aid Society we're doing okay. Outplaced as a child. Andrew
Speaker 1: Burke became governor of North Dakota and John Brady became
Speaker 1: governor of Alaska. They had both been sent to the
Speaker 1: same town in Indiana on the same day, and the
Speaker 1: man who adopted John Brady had actually been a judge there.
Speaker 1: Because records weren't kept very well, while we do have,
Speaker 1: you know, stories about what some of his children grew
Speaker 1: up to be, a lot of times the children who
Speaker 1: had been placed out lost all track of their birth
Speaker 1: families if those families still lived, and so in you know,
Speaker 1: more recent years, their children and grandchildren have been trying
Speaker 1: to trace down the family genealogy and just have been
Speaker 1: unable to figure out where their parents or grandparents came
Speaker 1: from before they got on the train. The last train
Speaker 1: ran on May thirty one, nine, carrying three children to
Speaker 1: Sulfur Springs, Texas. And there were several things that kind
Speaker 1: of worked altogether to really bring an end to this
Speaker 1: UH approach to outplacement. One was at the Great Depression
Speaker 1: made the trains financially unsustainable UH, and people began to
Speaker 1: focus more on local outplacement of children. Prior to that,
Speaker 1: the trains had gone nearly to every state included in
Speaker 1: as well as Canada in Mexico. But also a big
Speaker 1: factor in it was that social agencies had started focusing
Speaker 1: on trying to keep children with their birth families wherever
Speaker 1: that was possible. The agencies that had been part of
Speaker 1: the orphan train movement later morphed into adoption and foster
Speaker 1: care agencies as we think of them today, and Brace's
Speaker 1: idea that children are better off in homes than in
Speaker 1: institutions continues to be at the heart of today's foster
Speaker 1: care programs. This movement is often credited for spawning the
Speaker 1: foster care system as we know it today, and many
Speaker 1: states adoption laws were put on the books in an
Speaker 1: effort to rain in Brace's seemingly haphazard placement of children
Speaker 1: with families. A lot of the news articles that you
Speaker 1: will see about the Orphan Trains the American Heritage series
Speaker 1: that was are the American Heritage uh TV show installment
Speaker 1: that was about the Orphan Trains. Most of these are
Speaker 1: from the mid nineties nineties, as the last writers of
Speaker 1: the Orphan Trains were getting into their eighties and nineties,
Speaker 1: so very few, if any, of the people who were
Speaker 1: placed out on the trains survived today. But fortunately in
Speaker 1: in the eighties and nineties, people did a lot of
Speaker 1: documentation of like oral histories and first person accounts and
Speaker 1: talking to people who had ridden on the trains and
Speaker 1: been placed with the new family about their experiences. Today,
Speaker 1: the Orphan Train Complex and other Orphan Train historical and
Speaker 1: heritage societies trying to keep the movement documented and help
Speaker 1: the descendants of children's who road to trains connect to
Speaker 1: one another. So a whole lot of people have asked
Speaker 1: us to talk about orphan trains. It's fascinating it well,
Speaker 1: and it turned out to be a whole lot more
Speaker 1: layered than what I knew of it going into it.
Speaker 1: I basically knew the orphan trains. They took orphans on
Speaker 1: trains to get new families, and that is pretty reductive. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and it's one of those things that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of complex angles to it, Like wow, the initial
Speaker 1: impetus for it was surely like a good intent, you
Speaker 1: know it it ended up doing some not so great things,
Speaker 1: but also had some legacies that were good. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and I think one of the things that uh may
Speaker 1: not have occurred to anyone, or it might not have
Speaker 1: been nearly as much common knowledge at the time, there
Speaker 1: have definitely been efforts in multiple places in the world
Speaker 1: two place minority children with majority families in an effort
Speaker 1: to make them assimilate. Um. And while that was not
Speaker 1: the like specified intention of any of the agencies that
Speaker 1: were running orphan trains, it did have a little bit
Speaker 1: of that flavor, which is troubling. Yeah, it's a like
Speaker 1: I said, good and bad, some good legacy, some very
Speaker 1: unfortunate circumstances. But do you have a spot of listener
Speaker 1: mail for us? It is from Valerie. Valerie says hey,
Speaker 1: Holly and Tracy. I was so excited to hear the
Speaker 1: Pueblo Revolt episode. I, along with others, I am sure,
Speaker 1: sent in a request for so long ago. I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time as a kid learning about that
Speaker 1: time period outside of school. Growing up in Santa Fe
Speaker 1: with my dad. Curating a Navajo museum has affected my
Speaker 1: life in so many ways. Things like spending a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks one winter living in a hogan is not
Speaker 1: part of everyone's childhood. There's a favorite story that my
Speaker 1: friend of my dad's told us that I thought you
Speaker 1: guys might enjoy. Two of the artists my dad met
Speaker 1: through the museum used to give tours around the Peblos
Speaker 1: around Arizona and New Mexico. They were getting off the
Speaker 1: bus with a group at a Hopie village. They walked
Speaker 1: up to the village and there was a large sign
Speaker 1: asking the visitors to respect the laws of this area
Speaker 1: since it is an independent nation. The first on the
Speaker 1: list was no photography. A lady in the group was
Speaker 1: taking pictures of the sign, saying photography wasn't allowed. They
Speaker 1: asked her to stop and not take any pictures. The
Speaker 1: woman responded that they should have told her if they
Speaker 1: really meant it. I wonder if they put up a
Speaker 1: secondary part of the sign that said no, we really
Speaker 1: mean it. Oh yeah, so that's that's a gonna get to.
Speaker 1: This was so surprising to them that it became kind
Speaker 1: of a joke phrase ending states, statements and requests with
Speaker 1: and I really mean it. They even began to use
Speaker 1: the acronym A W R M I and we really
Speaker 1: mean it etched into the jury they made as part
Speaker 1: of the identification marks. Uh. That cracked me up. That
Speaker 1: is so every few podcast there's one that I know
Speaker 1: some of the basic information because of a board game
Speaker 1: I had played based on that time period. Most recently,
Speaker 1: I played a game themed to being dressmakers in the
Speaker 1: French Court a little before the time period of Rose Berton.
Speaker 1: I ended up winning the game, and like the thing,
Speaker 1: knowing about Rose gave me an edge. I also have
Speaker 1: a game called voc about running ships as the Dutch
Speaker 1: East India Company. I think that if I studied all
Speaker 1: the themes of the games I played, I could probably
Speaker 1: become a history buff. And then Valerie has an episode suggestion.
Speaker 1: I wanted to read this in part because the the
Speaker 1: and I really mean its story made me laugh so hard. Uh,
Speaker 1: And because I love having board games that have some
Speaker 1: kind of nod to history somehow or tie into history
Speaker 1: in subway. Um, we have a giant board game closet,
Speaker 1: several of which have some kind of historical high end
Speaker 1: or theme. UM like Carcasson is one where you make
Speaker 1: a French town. It's pretty awesome. So thank you, Valerie.
Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us, you can.
Speaker 1: We're at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. Our Facebook
Speaker 1: is Facebook dot com slash miss in history, and our
Speaker 1: Twitter is miss in History. Our tumbler is mrs in
Speaker 1: history dot tumbler dot com, and we're also on pinterrestt
Speaker 1: pinterest dot com slash missed in History. Our very own
Speaker 1: website is that missed in history dot com. And if
Speaker 1: you would like to learn more about what we've talked
Speaker 1: about today, you can come to our parent website, how
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Speaker 1: word adoption in the search bar and you will find
Speaker 1: how adoption works. You can learn all about that and
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