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The Orphan Train Riders
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 1853 and 1929, relocating about 200,000 orphaned, abandoned, or homeless children. The children were called the orphan train riders.
They put us all on a big platform in some big building while people came from all around the countryside to pick out those of us they wished to take home. I was four years old, and my sister was only two . . . Source: Marilyn Irvin Holt, “Orphan Train Genealogy,”
Aim of this project
About one in twenty-five Americans has an orphan train rider connection.
The aim of this project is to identify the children who were part of the Orphan Train movement in the United States between 1853 and 1929 The secondary aim is to build the family-trees of the orphans where possible with natural parents and adoptive parents both listed. The children were from all nationalities and it has been said that one out of two children were Irish.
How can you help?===
You can help by joining this project as a collaborator, to join click on the action button in the top right of the page and select join then after you joined you will be able to add profiles of the orphan children to this project.
- For help how to add natural parents AND adoptive parents see Geni adoption and The Geni knowledge base
Main institutions who offered help to the children
The 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. Sometimes these sending institutions have records which show the names of the birth parents. Records of the transfers may be found at the city asylums that participated in the project or in the deed books of the courthouses of the counties that received the children. Deed books were commonly used to record the adoptions of children (usually males under the age of ten and young females) or the apprenticeships (usually males ten and over). But, do not overlook justice of the peace dockets, guardians’ records, county order records, and board of supervisors minutes, among other county records.
To learn about orphan train and adoption research try these Research Wiki articles:
- National Orphan Train Complex
- Children's Aid Society
- New York Foundling Hospital
- United States Adoption Research
Headfigures in the organisation
- Charles Loring Brace
- Sister Mary Irene Fitzgibbon
- William J McCully - organiser of some of the Kansas orphan trains
Some orphan train riders (orphans) stories
- Charles Frederick
- Irma Craig
- John J. Callahan
- Ellen Broderick
- Ann Harrison
- Marguerite Thompson
- Mary Jane Baade
- Clifton & Myrtle Jennings
- Edith Peterson
- Jean Sexton
- Anna Miller Bassett
- Mike Francese
- Bill Oser
- Fred (Engert) Swedenburg
- Lee Nailing
- Alice Bullis Ayler
Forwarding institutions
Some of the children who took the trains came from the following institutions:
Online Sources and references
- Orphan Traindepot.org
- Orphan Train riders to Iowa
- Louisiana orphan train museum
- Orphan train riders Minnesota
- The Orphan Train wiki
- The Childrens Aid Society
- American Experience
- History of the Orphan Trains
- Lost Children
- Cyndi's list Orphan Trains
Reference books
- Warren, Andrea. Orphan Train Rider - One Boy's True Story. Houghton Mifflin Co. Boston, 1996.
- Patrick, Michael, Evelyn Sheets, and Evelyn Trickel. We Are A Part of History. Santa Fe N. Mex.: Lightning Tree Press, 1990.
- Vogt, Martha Nelson, and Christina Vogt. Searching for Home: Three Families from the Orphan Trains. Grand Rapid, Mich.: Triumph Press, 1986.
- Johnson, Mary Ellen (ed.) Orphan Train Riders: Their Own Stories, volumes I-V. Baltimore, Md.: Gateway Press, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996.