Speaker 1: Hi, it's Moe. We're off through the new year, but
Speaker 1: I wanted to share another one of my favorite stories
Speaker 1: with you before we return with our final episode of
Speaker 1: the season. It's about the largely forgotten social experiment known
Speaker 1: as the Orphan Train Movement. From eighteen fifty four to
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty nine, more than a quarter million abandoned or
Speaker 1: orphaned children were placed on trains, taking them from East
Speaker 1: coast cities to the Midwest and beyond to live with
Speaker 1: new families, the largest mass migration of children in American history. Today,
Speaker 1: two million Americans are descendants of these courageous riders. In
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, we looked back at their often heartbreaking journeys
Speaker 1: and tracked down the last known survivor. It's a story
Speaker 1: that moves me as much now as it did when
Speaker 1: we first told it. As always, thank you for listening.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 3: My name is Addie Skilman, and this is Loving Versus Virginia,
Speaker 3: the stepping stone for equality in America.
Speaker 1: Every year, at the National History Day Contest, middle and
Speaker 1: high school kids from across the country gather to compete,
Speaker 1: presenting on a range of historical topics, therefore turning the
Speaker 1: times reward to Victory.
Speaker 3: Rysler appeal taking a stand against prohibition.
Speaker 1: Root sixty sis road possibilities.
Speaker 4: What chaplin, Missouri?
Speaker 5: Alcoholis?
Speaker 6: Let's all so great to get your kids all Rude
Speaker 6: sixty six.
Speaker 1: But the topic that grabbed my attention was one presented
Speaker 1: by a fifteen year old from Minnesota, Claire Isaacson.
Speaker 3: Orphan Train, the compromise that the children on the right trucks.
Speaker 1: I'd never heard of the Orphan Train, but from her
Speaker 1: first line, Claire had me hooked.
Speaker 3: Your parents are not your parents, Your past is not
Speaker 3: your past. Your life begins when you are chosen.
Speaker 1: Your life begins when you were chosen, an apt way
Speaker 1: to describe the Orphan Train, a mostly forgotten nineteenth century
Speaker 1: movement that rescued abandoned children from the crowded streets of
Speaker 1: East Coast cities and delivered them by train to new
Speaker 1: families across the country. In her presentation, Claire channeled real
Speaker 1: life Orphan Train rider Victoria Moe, a child of Irish immigrants,
Speaker 1: as she made the trip west.
Speaker 3: We cruss our fingers and prayed that we get a
Speaker 3: loving home. Many older children are scared and tried to run.
Speaker 3: Our pasts were left behind on that train station. We
Speaker 3: were going to have a totally different life and our
Speaker 3: new homes.
Speaker 1: I spoke to Claire after her performance, and I'm a
Speaker 1: little embarrassed that I'd never even heard of this before.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I know, it's crazy, and that's why I'm thankful
Speaker 7: that I did the topics so I can hopefully make
Speaker 7: more people know about it, because it's really a secret
Speaker 7: and kind of hidden.
Speaker 1: How big was this movement?
Speaker 8: Well, a quarter million children removed west from eighteen fifty
Speaker 8: four to nineteen twenty nine.
Speaker 1: A quarter million people. That's like the population of Cleveland.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of people. As I dug into our
Speaker 1: archives at CBS News, more voices began to surface, voices
Speaker 1: of orphan trained riders from years past, all of them
Speaker 1: children who had been lifted from dire situations and scattered
Speaker 1: across the country for hope of a better life.
Speaker 5: They sent me out west to Colorado Springs. I went
Speaker 5: to Wayne County, Michigan.
Speaker 4: I had never heard of anything like Kansas.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we'll tell you the story of the
Speaker 1: largest mass migration of children in American history, and I'll
Speaker 1: travel to Texas to talk to the last known surviving
Speaker 1: orphan train rider. They took you when you were such
Speaker 1: a little baby of us.
Speaker 6: The Smallest, Small, Smallest one London Home train.
Speaker 1: From CBS Sunday Morning, and Simon and Schuster. I'm Morocca
Speaker 1: and this is mobituaries, This mobid the Orphan Train. May
Speaker 1: thirty first, nineteen twenty nine, death of an American experiment
Speaker 1: extra extra. Read all about it the Boston molasses disaster
Speaker 1: of nineteen nineteen. It's a slow reader. If you happen
Speaker 1: to be outside Penn Station in New York City last June,
Speaker 1: you might have seen a familiar face. What else h
Speaker 1: extract star. I read all about it Warren Harding dead.
Speaker 1: It was the one hundredth anniversary of the New York
Speaker 1: Daily News, and I had joined their street team for
Speaker 1: the day to pass out papers. Look, I love any
Speaker 1: opportunity to shout random historical facts at strangers were extract
Speaker 1: I read all about it, the Sultan, the Swat credit
Speaker 1: to the Yankees, call the bay Rute News you want.
Speaker 1: I love the baby Ruth thing, but I also wanted
Speaker 1: to get a feel for what it was like to
Speaker 1: be a newsye on the streets of New York. You know, newsies,
Speaker 1: they're the plucky dancing paper boys from that disney musically loved.
Speaker 1: But it turns out it wasn't all song and dance.
Speaker 1: Newsies worked long hours on poor wages. Most of them
Speaker 1: were abandoned children, and in the mid eighteen hundred It's
Speaker 1: New York City had a crisis of abandoned children. Enter
Speaker 1: Charles Loring Brace.
Speaker 9: Charles Loring Brace, from a young age to his dying day,
Speaker 9: really tried to be the best he could be for others.
Speaker 1: Say, George is the head curator of the National Orphan
Speaker 1: Train Complex in Concordia, Kansas. And to tell the story
Speaker 1: of the Orphan Train, you have to tell the story
Speaker 1: of Charles Laring Brace, who was born in eighteen twenty
Speaker 1: six into a well to do family in Lichfield's, Connecticut.
Speaker 1: What was he raised to do?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 9: Well, his father, who was a teacher, thought that Charles
Speaker 9: would follow in his footsteps, and he thought, okay, Charles
Speaker 9: is going to be a teacher. And then Charles decides
Speaker 9: to be a pastor. But then he realizes that you
Speaker 9: don't have to be a pastor that stands behind a pulpit.
Speaker 1: The patrician Charles was going to become a missionary, an
Speaker 1: idea that greatly concerned his father, because being a pastor,
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of nice you get invited over
Speaker 1: to dinner, you've got a nice place where you live.
Speaker 1: But I mean, when you're a missionary, it's you're kind
Speaker 1: of rolling up your sleeves and getting out there.
Speaker 9: He truly jumped into the depths that were being ignored.
Speaker 1: In the eighteen fifties, mass immigration from Europe, mostly Irish
Speaker 1: and German Catholics, overwhelmed New York City. Poor sanitation and
Speaker 1: wild pigs roaming the streets spread diseases like cholera and tuberculosis.
Speaker 1: Non Existent labor laws meant unsustainable wages and unsafe working conditions.
Speaker 1: And while the wretched state of affairs touched people of
Speaker 1: all ages, children felt the effects hardest.
Speaker 10: There was in fantaside happening in New York, where these
Speaker 10: kids were actually literally dying in the streets, in the gutters.
Speaker 10: These babies were tossed out of homes.
Speaker 1: Renee Wendinger has written several books about the orphan train movement.
Speaker 1: She has a personal connection to the subject. Her mother's
Speaker 1: Sophia was a rider. Have you ever wondered what would
Speaker 1: have happened to your mother. Had she stayed in New York.
Speaker 11: I don't think in that timeframe she would have survived.
Speaker 1: Charles Loring Brace was determined to help remember the newsiaes.
Speaker 1: He created lodging houses for them, but there were far
Speaker 1: more children in need than there were jobs for newsboys.
Speaker 1: Give me a sense of the scale of the problem.
Speaker 9: At one point they say ten thousand kids are on
Speaker 9: the street. At another turn, it's thirty.
Speaker 1: Thousand, thirty thousand homeless children at a time when New
Speaker 1: York had fewer than six hundred thousand people total. Charles
Speaker 1: Loring Brace saw all this firsthand.
Speaker 9: Is eighteen fifty three. In the February of that year.
Speaker 9: He starts going out into the streets and quickly realizes
Speaker 9: that we're spending more money imprisoning children because you could
Speaker 9: be arrested for being a vagrant child, and he wants
Speaker 9: to help.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: Orphanages existed back then, but they were overcrowded, and so
Speaker 1: called poorhouses put children and adults together, a dangerous situation
Speaker 1: for kids. So maybe it was best to get them
Speaker 1: out of New York altogether.
Speaker 9: He really believed in the idea of getting kids out
Speaker 9: of the city and out of.
Speaker 1: Vice, vice seems like the perfect word what he sees
Speaker 1: going on in the cities of these kids. He just
Speaker 1: sees it as kind of a cauldron of sinfulness, basically.
Speaker 9: But he really doesn't see a way for children to
Speaker 9: grow up and not be touched by it, not be
Speaker 9: drawn into it, to live in an orphanage and then
Speaker 9: be let out at eighteen and not fall into a prison.
Speaker 1: So Brace comes up with a plan to move children
Speaker 1: en mass to a place where they'll stand a better chance.
Speaker 1: Put simply, Charles Loving Brace says, we're going to put
Speaker 1: some kids on a train.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty three, Brace founds the Children's Aid Society
Speaker 1: to help carry out his grand play. First, he needs
Speaker 1: to find people willing to take in abandoned children.
Speaker 9: He basically selects a community where he knows someone. They're
Speaker 9: going to go through that church and require that people
Speaker 9: who apply for them bring two references from their pastor
Speaker 9: and from their courthouse, and they're going to place them
Speaker 9: out under the guardianship of the Children's Aid Society.
Speaker 1: Why is he confident that they're even going to be
Speaker 1: placed I.
Speaker 9: Think he truly believed that people weren't going to come
Speaker 9: to New York and take kids out of orphanages. But
Speaker 9: if he brought them to them, put them in their face,
Speaker 9: there was no way they could say no. And so
Speaker 9: he took a chance.
Speaker 1: Brace makes a deal with a pastor he knows in
Speaker 1: the small town of Dowagiac, Michigan, and the Children's Aid
Speaker 1: Society begins to gather the forty five children who will
Speaker 1: be the passengers on the first orphan train.
Speaker 9: The majority come from the New York Juvenile Asylum, and
Speaker 9: technically that first train we now know by historical records,
Speaker 9: is paid for in half by children they had studied
Speaker 9: your jubil asylum.
Speaker 1: Were any of the kids coerced, pressured or is this
Speaker 1: something that they all wanted?
Speaker 9: It's seemingly like they wanted it, But of course what's
Speaker 9: the alternative.
Speaker 6: Now?
Speaker 1: Orphan train is a slight misnomer. It takes multiple trains
Speaker 1: and boats to get from New York City to Michigan.
Speaker 1: For many of these children, it's their first time ever
Speaker 1: leaving New York City.
Speaker 9: How scary that must have been on the choppy water
Speaker 9: and the cliffs and how many trees there are.
Speaker 1: For these kids, it must have been like going to
Speaker 1: another planet. Oh, absolutely, a memory of This kind of
Speaker 1: crossing even made it into Claire's Orphan Train performance.
Speaker 2: I remember crossing the Hudson River. Oh the wonder that
Speaker 2: filled our eyes. Oh we had ever seen sorrow and pain?
Speaker 2: What's the world is supposed for us?
Speaker 1: The children arrive into Watchiack in late September eighteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: and no one, not the children, not their caretaker, not
Speaker 1: the townspeople, really knows what to expect. So they get
Speaker 1: off the train into Watchiack, and then what happens.
Speaker 9: The kids are so excited. They're finally in Michigan, their
Speaker 9: final destination, and they take off.
Speaker 1: That's right, they run in all directions. Look, they're kids,
Speaker 1: they've been cooped up on a train for days. Their
Speaker 1: caretaker can't keep up. He just goes to wait for
Speaker 1: them at the hotel.
Speaker 9: Finally the kids start rolling in and they have stolen
Speaker 9: everything green apples and pumpkins and acorns, and have shoved
Speaker 9: grass and leaves up their shirts, up their shirt sleeves,
Speaker 9: in their hats, down their pants, in their pockets because
Speaker 9: they're so excited. They've never seen everything where it grows.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious, do they know that you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to steal. Possibly not, And I'm just I'm trying to
Speaker 1: imagine what the people in the town are thinking.
Speaker 9: I bet they're alarmed.
Speaker 1: They probably are alarmed. The people of Dowagiac, after all,
Speaker 1: are scheduled to meet the orphan train riders that day
Speaker 1: at church. You can imagine that already they're regretting welcoming
Speaker 1: the orphans to town. But when they get to church,
Speaker 1: they're greeted with a surprise.
Speaker 9: The first thing that they really hear from the kids
Speaker 9: are Sunday hymns, and they are singing comy centers, poor
Speaker 9: and needy.
Speaker 1: The kids went over the town.
Speaker 9: They're placed within a week.
Speaker 1: All of them, so this first ride had to be
Speaker 1: considered a success.
Speaker 9: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Two months later, a second train leaves New York and
Speaker 1: the orphan train movement begins in earnest and now a
Speaker 1: pop quiz because I love pop quizzz. It's easy to overlook,
Speaker 1: but so much of America's history, innovation, arts, and entertainment
Speaker 1: politics has been driven by individuals who grew up adopted
Speaker 1: or in foster families. I'm going to give you some
Speaker 1: clues and you have to guess which famous orphan I'm describing.
Speaker 1: If you get two out of three, you win. There
Speaker 1: are no prizes. Our first clue. Before this, former president,
Speaker 1: Stanford graduate and self made millionaire was roasted in the
Speaker 1: Broadway musical Annie for his role presiding over the Great Depression.
Speaker 1: He was raised by distant relatives in Oregon after losing
Speaker 1: both of his parents to pneumonia. It's Herbert Hoover fun fact.
Speaker 1: One of his nicknames was the Hermit, author of Palo Alto. Next,
Speaker 1: this fast food mogul, whose grandma's advice not to cut
Speaker 1: corners inspired his decision to make his iconic burgers square
Speaker 1: instead of round, was adopted as a baby and used
Speaker 1: his wealth and influence to help others with childhoods like his,
Speaker 1: creating a foundation that still supports foster children around the country.
Speaker 1: I'm Dave Thomas. I started Wendy's with one restaurant. It's
Speaker 1: Dave Thomas. Fun fact. Before he created Wendy's, he was
Speaker 1: the mastermind behind the fried Chicken bucket that put KFC
Speaker 1: on the map. Finally, this adopted child would become famous
Speaker 1: at the ripe old age of ten, playing the lead
Speaker 1: role in a series about a family living on the
Speaker 1: prairie in Minnesota. In the eighteen seventies, I decided something.
Speaker 5: What's that happening home is the nicest word there is.
Speaker 1: It's Melissa Gilbert. Her show Lit on the Prairie would
Speaker 1: have storylines revolving around orphans throughout its run, including one
Speaker 1: played by friend of the podcast, Chason Bateman.
Speaker 2: And we hope you meant what you said about how
Speaker 2: you want us to stay, because that's what we want.
Speaker 1: To Speaking of little houses and prairies, let's get back
Speaker 1: on that orphan train. As the Children's Aid Society grew,
Speaker 1: it sent hundreds, then thousands of children all across the country.
Speaker 1: Now almost none of the riders are alive today. But
Speaker 1: back in nineteen seventy nine, my CBS Sunday Morning colleague
Speaker 1: the Great Martha Teichner interviewed sisters Anna and Margaret Fuchs.
Speaker 1: They and their third sister, Helen, rode the orphan train
Speaker 1: when they were just ten, nine and seven years old.
Speaker 1: They were orphaned after losing both their parents to tuberculosis.
Speaker 1: Margaret remembered seeing their mother's burial.
Speaker 12: The thing that really got to me was seen in
Speaker 12: that coffin being lowered, and I can remember trying to
Speaker 12: jump into that grade because that was my mother down there.
Speaker 1: When the children were put on a train in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty four, they didn't even know where they were headed.
Speaker 1: As Anna remembered, I had.
Speaker 4: Very strong ideas that I was going to California. I
Speaker 4: didn't know there was any other stake besides New York
Speaker 4: and California, as far as I was concerned.
Speaker 1: Margaret described their arrival in the tiny town of McPherson, Kansas.
Speaker 12: First thing I did was to look around. How come
Speaker 12: they're letting us out in the middle of nowhere. I
Speaker 12: couldn't see any buildings. I was looking for skyscrapers.
Speaker 1: Whenever orphans sent by the Society arrived at their destination,
Speaker 1: they were lined up on a train platform or on
Speaker 1: the stage of a theater so that families could walk
Speaker 1: down the line and pick out their preferred kid. As
Speaker 1: author Renee Wendinger explains, this process actually gave rise to
Speaker 1: a familiar turn of phrase.
Speaker 10: Some of the children would have stood on a little
Speaker 10: box called the soap box, and that's how the term
Speaker 10: put up for adoption became known as we know it today.
Speaker 1: If it sounds impersonal, well that's an understatement. Here's how
Speaker 1: fifteen year old Claire Isaacson described it in her National
Speaker 1: History Day performance.
Speaker 2: Ladies were usually chosen first, then the tougher, stronger looking voice.
Speaker 3: US girls were usually chosen vast. We watched people come
Speaker 3: and go and inspect of the children. We saw them
Speaker 3: looking at their teeth and even having some boys to
Speaker 3: push us.
Speaker 1: Martha Teichner asked Anna Fuchs about her experience.
Speaker 13: Did you ever feel any outrage or any any anger
Speaker 13: at the fact that you were being kind of lined
Speaker 13: up there and say, okay, I got a kid.
Speaker 4: No, I don't think so. I think it's a matter
Speaker 4: of you sort of blame yourself for having lost your folks.
Speaker 1: The sisters were all selected, but by different families.
Speaker 13: How big thought was that when you were standing there
Speaker 13: the day that you were both selected by families, seeing
Speaker 13: each other and seeing goodbyes and wondering what's going to happen?
Speaker 12: I think it was sort of the case that there
Speaker 12: was so much confusion and all that we didn't really
Speaker 12: have that much chance to think about it, did we.
Speaker 4: I don't think the thought entered my mind at all
Speaker 4: until I got there and sat on that step ladder
Speaker 4: in the kitchen, and then it finally hit me. You
Speaker 4: are alone that was when you started, and that's when
Speaker 4: I start in.
Speaker 1: Sibling separation was an added trauma thousands of orphan writers
Speaker 1: suffered over the years.
Speaker 12: Were you scared, Yes, I think we just wanted to
Speaker 12: be sure that we were going to be close enough
Speaker 12: together so that we get to wouldn't lose each other.
Speaker 13: Why was that so important?
Speaker 12: What was it's We were family and that was all
Speaker 12: the family there was.
Speaker 1: Even though Anna and Margaret were both taken in by
Speaker 1: families in the same town, their lives took very different turns.
Speaker 1: Anna became extremely close to her new mother, Jenny Bankston.
Speaker 4: She was a person I could trust when I first
Speaker 4: came here. When I came out here, that was one
Speaker 4: thing I did not trust anyone. I had lost faith
Speaker 4: in people. I really feel like I've had two mothers.
Speaker 1: Margaret, meanwhile, was taken in by the Runian family, who
Speaker 1: ran a local boarding house. They enlisted Margaret to help
Speaker 1: with cleaning and cooking for guests. It was a pretty cold,
Speaker 1: business like relationship.
Speaker 12: I always had the feeling that I was there in
Speaker 12: place of a maid.
Speaker 1: Now these weren't formal adoptions, at least not at first,
Speaker 1: but the family's writers ended up with were bound by contract.
Speaker 1: Parents had to make sure the children went to school
Speaker 1: and church. They were expectationsations for the kids as well.
Speaker 9: Yes, the child had to you know, be a child
Speaker 9: and listen to those parents and help out around the house,
Speaker 9: and a household at that moment operated like a little business,
Speaker 9: whether you were the birth child, or the adopted child,
Speaker 9: or the foster child.
Speaker 1: Basically, what you're saying is being a kid in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century wasn't very fun. No, no, absolutely not. But
Speaker 1: that didn't make it any easier for orphaned children hoping
Speaker 1: to find a family. Arriving to one like Margaret's was hard.
Speaker 12: I honestly don't remember whether I call them mom and
Speaker 12: dad or whether I call them mister ms Venion.
Speaker 5: What does that tell you about your experience.
Speaker 12: Well, just that there wasn't that kind of love there, well,
Speaker 12: affection of any kind.
Speaker 13: Does it hurt you that you never had that?
Speaker 5: Does it?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 12: Yes, yes, particularly when I knew the kind of a
Speaker 12: home that Anna was in, where she was getting that
Speaker 12: kind of affection and all.
Speaker 1: Mart situation wasn't rare, but spurred by the Children's Aid
Speaker 1: Society's success, other organizations began to follow suit, and in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty nine, the second largest orphan train institution began earlier.
Speaker 1: I quizzed you on some of America's most prominent real
Speaker 1: life orphans, but they're not nearly as famous as some
Speaker 1: fictional orphans. Remember that Herbert Hoover song from about ten
Speaker 1: minutes ago, Well, it's from a musical centered around an orphan.
Speaker 4: Why any kid would want to be an orphan is
Speaker 4: beyond me.
Speaker 1: Not little orphan Annie was a star, first of comic strips,
Speaker 1: then of the Broadway stage. In my opinion, the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two movie is only worth mentioning for Carol Burnett's
Speaker 1: Miss Hannigan.
Speaker 9: And if this floor don't shine, I could turn with
Speaker 9: the pressure building or becks.
Speaker 4: Unders stamp yes Miss Again.
Speaker 1: On television, the nineteen eighties, as It Happens, were a
Speaker 1: boom time for orphan centered sitcoms, starting with Arnold and
Speaker 1: Willis on Different Strokes.
Speaker 5: Don't get too used at his place?
Speaker 4: Who'ld you talk about? Willis?
Speaker 1: And there was Punky Brewster.
Speaker 5: What doesn't anyone want me?
Speaker 1: What's wrong with me? Nothing's wrong with you?
Speaker 6: You don't want me?
Speaker 9: Neither did my mom, That's.
Speaker 4: Why she did?
Speaker 8: She?
Speaker 1: And who could forget Webster.
Speaker 5: I'm r getting used to you guys.
Speaker 13: And you know what, chance, we're getting kind of used
Speaker 13: to you too.
Speaker 1: It's surprising, given our love of a good orphan story,
Speaker 1: that the Orphan Train has been so overlooked. By the
Speaker 1: time the Civil War ended in eighteen sixty five, the
Speaker 1: Children's Aid Society had placed twelve hundred children with families
Speaker 1: in America's heartland, but Charles Loring Brace's organization placed children
Speaker 1: primarily in Protestant homes, regardless of the fact that many
Speaker 1: of those babies were born to Catholic immigrant mothers. Enter
Speaker 1: the New York Foundling Hospital once again, Shaley George from
Speaker 1: the National Orphan Train Complex.
Speaker 9: The New York Founding Hospital starts in eighteen sixty nine
Speaker 9: with two sisters, Sister Theresa and Sister Anne, and then
Speaker 9: they're head of their foundling sister Mary Irene Fitzgibbons. And
Speaker 9: so they start the New York Founding Hospital as tiny
Speaker 9: little Brownstone and within the night a baby's left on
Speaker 9: their doorstep.
Speaker 1: The demand for their services caught them totally off guard, and.
Speaker 9: By the end of the month they have forty five infants.
Speaker 9: By the end of the year, they have over one hundred,
Speaker 9: and so their mission turned to placing Catholic babies in
Speaker 9: Catholic homes.
Speaker 1: Not all of those babies were Catholic when they were
Speaker 1: left at the door of the Foundling Hospital, but as
Speaker 1: one Orphan trained riders set about the Foundling, you.
Speaker 9: Might go in one way, but you'll leave a.
Speaker 1: Catholic Following in the tracks of the Children's Aid Society,
Speaker 1: the Foundling started placing children on trains headed west, but
Speaker 1: these children were much younger, mostly infants, and specifically chosen
Speaker 1: to resemble the families they were joining.
Speaker 9: They believe that placing out younger children who matched the
Speaker 9: family by eye color, hair color, age, and gender would
Speaker 9: cut back on the stigma from the surrounding community because
Speaker 9: they looked like the family that they were placed in.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of the reverse of Children's Aid Society,
Speaker 1: where the Children's Aid Society sends kids out and then
Speaker 1: prospective parents choose the kids. Then here it's more of
Speaker 1: a mail order system, right. Basically, that's what happened to
Speaker 1: Anne Harrison, who was featured on CBS Sunday Morning back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two when she was a spry
Speaker 1: ninety three.
Speaker 14: They had asked for a two and a half year
Speaker 14: old girl with brown hair and brown eyes. Well they
Speaker 14: got a two and a half year old girl that
Speaker 14: had auburn hair and hazel eyes, but that was close enough.
Speaker 1: Because she was so young when she arrived. Anne grew
Speaker 1: up not even knowing she was adopted. Her father made
Speaker 1: sure that.
Speaker 9: Her father basically threatened the entire town to not tell
Speaker 9: her she was adopted. Her father never wanted her to
Speaker 9: feel less than to be thought of, that she was
Speaker 9: not truly his daughter.
Speaker 1: But despite her father's best efforts, the other kids and
Speaker 1: her own teachers never quite accepted her.
Speaker 14: I was never popular in school, and that bothered me,
Speaker 14: and I seemed to always be the odd ball. Orphans
Speaker 14: or adopted children were not really as good class as
Speaker 14: the other people. I think that was just a general
Speaker 14: thought that you were a bad seed if you came
Speaker 14: from people that they didn't know.
Speaker 9: So a lot of the orphan train writers had to
Speaker 9: contend with people who were not pleased with them being
Speaker 9: in town. The idea is that you're going to inherit
Speaker 9: traits of poverty, of vice from parents that some never.
Speaker 1: Knew, almost like the orphan train writers are tainted.
Speaker 9: Yeah, the negativity of immigration is there from the get go,
Speaker 9: the negativity of your parents didn't want you, your parents
Speaker 9: lost you because they were a drunk or abusive or
Speaker 9: in prison, and.
Speaker 1: Would grow up move to Chicago and become a professional
Speaker 1: nightclub singer. She wouldn't find out she was adopted until
Speaker 1: she was twenty seven years old, and that wasn't the
Speaker 1: only surprise waiting for the woman who'd been baptized to Catholic.
Speaker 14: In nineteen eighty nine, I get this letter from the
Speaker 14: New York Health Department. Open it up, and there's my
Speaker 14: original birth certificate, Mabel Reuben. My mother's name was of
Speaker 14: Jenny Ruben. My father's name was Moe Kohn.
Speaker 5: Well. I looked at that and I just split into laughter.
Speaker 9: She just thought, well, I'll just go on and add
Speaker 9: a Star of David to my crucifix necklace and just
Speaker 9: keep going, because what can I do?
Speaker 5: Well? My Jewish friends said, we know it all about.
Speaker 1: The Foundling and Children's Aid Society together set the Lion's
Speaker 1: share of those two hundred and fifty thousand children west
Speaker 1: until the last orphan train left for Sulfur Springs, Texas,
Speaker 1: on May thirty first, nineteen twenty nine, the world had
Speaker 1: simply outgrown the orphan train. Communities in the Midwest now
Speaker 1: had their own abandoned children to help. The story doesn't
Speaker 1: end there. We know how a quarter million children found
Speaker 1: their way west, but what happened after they grew up?
Speaker 2: Do you know the name that was given to you
Speaker 2: at bern.
Speaker 4: Sofia?
Speaker 10: Who names your Sofia?
Speaker 5: For my mother and my dad?
Speaker 1: That's Renee Wendinger interviewing her mother, Sophia Hillesheim Kaminski. Sophia
Speaker 1: had been an orphan train rider taken in by Anna Grime,
Speaker 1: a single woman in Springfield, Minnesota, who spoke only German.
Speaker 14: She really didn't know how to raise children because she
Speaker 14: could not be English.
Speaker 5: So I had to learn German.
Speaker 9: And when I went forward to school, then I had.
Speaker 14: To relearned the English because I had only talked German
Speaker 14: all the time.
Speaker 4: So what did you do for entertainment?
Speaker 5: I didn't have any entertainment. That had to work all
Speaker 5: the time.
Speaker 1: But that wasn't the worst of it. Was Anna physically abusive?
Speaker 11: Yeah she was. She had a little whip that she
Speaker 11: kept in the corner.
Speaker 10: It was a snake handled whip, and by that I
Speaker 10: mean it was sort of a leather handled whip, and
Speaker 10: that's the way she would flog her and she'd say,
Speaker 10: now you remember this, and remember not to do that again.
Speaker 1: Sophia's orphan train story is a sad one, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't end at her childhood. She would grow up to
Speaker 1: become someone vastly different from Anna Grime. Here's how Renee
Speaker 1: describes her mother.
Speaker 10: She just had such a warm, open heart. There is
Speaker 10: no one that ever knew her would say anything bad
Speaker 10: about her, because she was just a warm, loving person.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny that your mother's story in so
Speaker 1: many of these other orphan train writers' stories. It sort
Speaker 1: of underlines how vulnerable children are, but also how resilient.
Speaker 10: They were the type of people that would just sort
Speaker 10: of kind of pull the bootstraps up and they would
Speaker 10: carry on. But my mother would always say, I was
Speaker 10: just so thankful to have a roof over my head.
Speaker 1: Your mother had a lot to be angry about.
Speaker 11: She really did, but she did not have that in
Speaker 11: her heart.
Speaker 10: And you know, I don't know if that's something that
Speaker 10: we inherit Is it biological? Is do we have the
Speaker 10: influences around us? Is it our geography? I have no idea,
Speaker 10: but her arms were always outreached to people.
Speaker 1: But Renee's mother didn't find peace until near the end
Speaker 1: of her own life. Did your mother ever forgive Anna?
Speaker 10: She did not forgive her until she was about I
Speaker 10: think she was like ninety six years old, and she
Speaker 10: asked me one day if I would take her to
Speaker 10: a cemetery. She said, it's time. I need to go
Speaker 10: to the cemetery and I need to forgive her.
Speaker 1: So you took your ninety six year old mother to
Speaker 1: the cemetery. And what did she say when she was
Speaker 1: at the tombstone? Havanna.
Speaker 10: I have no idea what she spoke inside her heart
Speaker 10: and we walked away and she said, it's done. I
Speaker 10: needed to do that, She said, I should have done
Speaker 10: that a long time ago.
Speaker 1: Now, all the Orphan train riders you've been hearing from
Speaker 1: in this episode, Renee's mother, Sophia, Anna, and Margaret Fuchs,
Speaker 1: Ann Harrison, they're all voices from the past. They're all gone.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to talk to a writer myself, and
Speaker 1: so I went down to Texas to meet the last
Speaker 1: known survivor being orphan train rider. Okay, testing testing right here,
Speaker 1: I'm in a conference room at an assisted living facility
Speaker 1: in East Bernard, Texas, an hour outside of Houston. Sitting
Speaker 1: with me, a host of eager relatives would surrounding ninety
Speaker 1: seven year old Beatrice Voytek, an actual orphan train rider.
Speaker 2: The only thing is we know for ninety seven she's
Speaker 2: doing great.
Speaker 1: That's her son, George. You're a terrific looking ninety seven
Speaker 1: and appreciating you may be the last surviving orphan train rider.
Speaker 1: How does that feel?
Speaker 6: Well, I'm kind of They believe that because I was
Speaker 6: the smallest on that train.
Speaker 1: She's a national treasure. Did you hear that?
Speaker 6: No, you're a national treasure.
Speaker 1: You are because you are.
Speaker 6: You absolutely are.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 6: I appreciate that. I'm thinking, I think extra from any
Speaker 6: other orphan.
Speaker 1: Beatrice, the daughter of an Irish immigrant, was only fourteen
Speaker 1: months old when she made the trip from New York City,
Speaker 1: landing with a Czech family in Texas. She's got a
Speaker 1: fascinating story, but in the end, the person that seems
Speaker 1: least interested in it is Beatrice. I asked her about
Speaker 1: discovering she was an orphan train rider. You didn't know
Speaker 1: that you'd been adopted.
Speaker 6: I didn't know I was an orphan. I didn't know anything.
Speaker 6: I just read it all the time. You mind you mama,
Speaker 6: You mind your mama, And I didn't pay attention.
Speaker 1: Could I asked her about her birth mother, who was
Speaker 1: twenty nine when she had her.
Speaker 6: If she used she stood that chance of getting pregnant,
Speaker 6: then she should have known that she finet to provide
Speaker 6: for that baby.
Speaker 1: Do you wonder what the rest of her life was like?
Speaker 6: You mean my real mother?
Speaker 1: No, I asked Beatrice if she ever wondered what she
Speaker 1: might have missed out on having been scooped up and
Speaker 1: moved so far away so young.
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, I mean I was adopted into a into
Speaker 6: a family, and and that was my family. There's that,
Speaker 6: you know, that was my life.
Speaker 1: You've never imagined, even for a moment, what your life
Speaker 1: would have been like if you stayed in New York.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, oh yeah, I thought about that, America?
Speaker 1: And what did you think?
Speaker 5: What were you?
Speaker 6: Thank God? I'm I'm here in Texas. I'm satisfied with
Speaker 6: my life the way it is, and and I'm so
Speaker 6: blessed with you know, the people that adopted me and
Speaker 6: and and brought me up and raised me right and
Speaker 6: probably much better than my real parents.
Speaker 1: With and if you ever do want to come to
Speaker 1: New York, I've got a guest room. We'll go see
Speaker 1: a Broadway show. You ever see Phantom of the Opera? No,
Speaker 1: it's terrific.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: There was no dramatic revelation from Beatrice, no Rosebud moment.
Speaker 1: She didn't render a sweeping verdict on whether the Orphan
Speaker 1: Train was good or bad. As she saw it, She
Speaker 1: rode the train, she grew up, she moved on. It
Speaker 1: was what it was. But when Beatrice herself passes on,
Speaker 1: that won't be the end of the Orphan Train story. Descendants,
Speaker 1: historians and budding historians like Claire Isaacson are still telling
Speaker 1: it today. Does this give you kind of a new
Speaker 1: appreciation of the importance of preserving history.
Speaker 13: I believe it does.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and especially this movement, because it's not well known
Speaker 8: at all. And I've joined the little community of the
Speaker 8: Orphan Train rider, people trying to keep the story alive.
Speaker 1: And the main way of preserving it is through Orphan
Speaker 1: Train reunions. When they first started in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: they were places for the writers themselves to gather.
Speaker 10: What these writers would do, would stand up and tell
Speaker 10: their stories. And I found them so intriguing and so interesting.
Speaker 11: These riders.
Speaker 10: When they got together, they celebrated for three straight days.
Speaker 1: I'm struck by how you used the word celebrate. What
Speaker 1: do you mean celebrate?
Speaker 10: They celebrated their togethern Us as orphan trained brothers and sisters.
Speaker 1: But as the number of riders has dwindled, they've become
Speaker 1: a chance for descendants to share memories and stories of
Speaker 1: their loved ones who have passed on.
Speaker 11: It's quite amazing.
Speaker 10: In fact, we feel very much a kinship with each other.
Speaker 10: We all know what our parents felt or our grandparents felt,
Speaker 10: and soon, hopefully the grandchildren of these writers will take over.
Speaker 1: The legacy of the Orphan train movement. Isn't easy to quantify.
Speaker 1: While all the writers were impacted by their new communities
Speaker 1: and families, many grew up to make their own impact
Speaker 1: on the world.
Speaker 9: The kids went on to serve in the Civil War,
Speaker 9: World War One, World War II, Korea. We have some
Speaker 9: that served in Vietnam. Just thinking politically, you know, speaking
Speaker 9: the people who served in our state governments, in our Congress.
Speaker 1: Just some of the orphan trained riders who went on
Speaker 1: to lead lives of distinction. Andrew Burke became the second
Speaker 1: governor of the state of North Dakota. His friend John
Speaker 1: green Brady, who rode the same orphan train, would become
Speaker 1: governor of the Territory of Alaska. Henry L. Jost became
Speaker 1: mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, his nickname the Orphan Boy
Speaker 1: Mayor before joining the United States Congress. Joe Iya would
Speaker 1: become head football coach at Louisiana Tech University and inducted
Speaker 1: into the College Football Hall of Fame. And while we
Speaker 1: can't confirm, it's a long standing rumor in the orphan
Speaker 1: trained community that a former United States Supreme Court justice
Speaker 1: was a writer, but kept its secret because of the stigma.
Speaker 1: If you think you know who it was, let us know.
Speaker 1: The writers certainly made their mark. The Children's Aid Society
Speaker 1: estimates that there are over two million Orphan trained descendants
Speaker 1: alive today.
Speaker 9: Yeah, they helped shape America, but.
Speaker 1: On a personal level, the trains meant something different to
Speaker 1: each child who rode them. For Anna Fuchs, it was
Speaker 1: the best possible solution to a terrible situation.
Speaker 4: It took a lot of kids off of the streets
Speaker 4: of New York who might have become prostitutes and beggars
Speaker 4: and thieves and gave them another chance of life for.
Speaker 1: Her sister Margaret. Though its benefits couldn't justify the pain
Speaker 1: it caused for that time.
Speaker 12: I guess it was as good as anything. It was
Speaker 12: all it was, but I certainly can't go along with it.
Speaker 12: I feel that the idea of taking children and having
Speaker 12: them lose all contact with any of the relatives I
Speaker 12: think is wrong.
Speaker 1: And Harrison never let the inauspicious start to her life
Speaker 1: slow her down.
Speaker 5: I've had a good life, you think so.
Speaker 14: Yes, I just took opportunities when they came, and when
Speaker 14: I couldn't find the opportunities, I lived with what was there.
Speaker 1: But it's Renee Wendinger's perspective that will stick with me
Speaker 1: the longest.
Speaker 10: I am a grandmother, and every time my grandchildren have
Speaker 10: turned the age of two, I look at them and
Speaker 10: I think, oh, my gosh, this is what my mother
Speaker 10: would have looked like when she boarded that train at
Speaker 10: Grand Central terminal. And I really cannot imagine that little
Speaker 10: child getting on a train to somewhere to know where.
Speaker 11: I have no idea what my life is going to
Speaker 11: be like.
Speaker 1: Wow, and two year olds is so vulnerable.
Speaker 10: Absolutely so vulnerable, it hits your heart. You know, I
Speaker 10: don't know anyone that does not have a heart for
Speaker 10: any child.
Speaker 1: An update since we first posted this episode in December
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, we learned that Beatrice Voytech passed away at
Speaker 1: the age of one hundred. Her local newspaper wrote that
Speaker 1: Beatrice started life in New York City, but an orphan
Speaker 1: train ride was in her future to take her to
Speaker 1: East Bernard, where she lived all her life. I am
Speaker 1: so grateful that I had the chance to meet her
Speaker 1: that day in Texas and to learn her remarkable story.
Speaker 1: Mobits will be back next week with the story of
Speaker 1: legendary comic Lwanda Page. You may know her best as
Speaker 1: the hilarious aunt esther on Sanford and Son.
Speaker 5: You are evil heathen.
Speaker 1: And one of these days the Lord is gonna strike
Speaker 1: you down.
Speaker 13: If he ever decide to get his hands dirty.
Speaker 1: But Page was much more than a secondary character on
Speaker 1: a sitcom. A queen of comedy. She remains an inspiration
Speaker 1: to comedians including Whoopy Goldberg. She as funny as hell,
Speaker 1: Yeah you know, and black women. They will tear you up.
Speaker 1: They will tear you up, they will talk about it,
Speaker 1: they will tell you about yourself. I certainly hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this mobituary, Nah ask you to please rate and
Speaker 1: review our podcast. You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook
Speaker 1: and Instagram, and you can follow me Morocca on Twitter
Speaker 1: at Morocca. For more great content about the Orphan Trains,
Speaker 1: please visit mobituaries dot com. You can subscribe to Mobituaries
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of Mobituaries was
Speaker 1: produced by Harry Wood and Gideon Evans. Our team of
Speaker 1: producers also includes Megan Marcus and me Moroka. It was
Speaker 1: edited by Harry Wood and engineered by Dan Dezzula. Indispensable
Speaker 1: support from Genius Denesky, Kate mccauliffe, Sam Egan, Renee Wendinger,
Speaker 1: Shelley George, Jason Sakka, Alberto Robina, Richard Roher, and everyone
Speaker 1: at CBS News Radio. Thank you to the New York
Speaker 1: Daily News for letting me join you for your one
Speaker 1: hundredth anniversary celebration, and to the New York Foundling for
Speaker 1: welcoming us to your one hundred and fiftieth anniversary, not
Speaker 1: that it's a competition. Thanks also to CBS News correspondent
Speaker 1: Bob McNamara for his two thousand and two interview of
Speaker 1: Ann Harrison. We'd like to thank Greg mark Way, the
Speaker 1: families of Anna and Margaret Fuchs and Anne Harrison, Beatrice
Speaker 1: Voytek and her family, and Linda Fomer, the orphan trained
Speaker 1: descendant and researcher who connected us to Beatrice. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to our bold, budding young historians from National History Day,
Speaker 1: Addie Skilling, Tucker Olshaby, Jacob Reid, Evelyn Carpenter, Katie Merrikovitz,
Speaker 1: Jack Anderson, Jader Briggs, Megan swankat Daytona Foley Logan Smith,
Speaker 1: and of course Claire Isaacson and her mom Joy. Our
Speaker 1: theme music is written by Daniel Hart and, as always,
Speaker 1: undying thanks to Rand Morrison and John carp without whom
Speaker 1: mobituaries couldn't live