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Agencies Conduct Way To Find Orphans Homes

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By SHARON TATE MOODY, Tribune correspondent

Published: January 27, 2008

Trains, which played critical roles in America's move westward, were of special significance to an estimated 200,000 children in 19th century New York City.

In groups of 10, 20 or perhaps 50, children from New York's streets and orphanages literally were railroaded to America's heartland in hopes of finding better lives. Known as the Orphan Trains, they carried true orphans and children from families too poor to care and provide for them.

The Orphan Trains began in 1854, when 46 children were carried from New York to Dowagiac, Mich. The trains continued until 1930.

The Children's Aid Society and the New York Foundling Hospital backed the movement. Society founder Charles Loring Brace meant for each child to be taken into a home and treated as part of the family.

He expected the adopted or foster parents to provide them with food, clothing and education just as they would their own natural children.

Some children were not adopted and remained as "boarders." Others merged into their "adopted" families, taking new surnames but not going through a legal adoption process. Some were legally adopted through local courts in their new home counties.

Court records and stories that have survived show some of the children became nothing more than servants, and others were abused. But the majority appear to have lived better lives than they would have had on the streets of New York City.

If a child was not a true orphan, the aid society had the parent or guardian sign a release for placement. The society placed notices in local newspapers that an Orphan Train was coming to town and gave instructions to local families on where and when to come see the children. Sometimes these viewings took place at the train stations and sometime in community halls.

Each group was accompanied by chaperons from New York.

Genealogists often are frustrated at an inability to get access to adoption records. Those who suspect or know they are descendants of these New York orphans have organized on some levels to make these historical records available.

Most of the children who traveled on these trains now are deceased. Through the efforts of various Orphan Train organizations, some of their stories have been captured on various Web sites (see the list below).

If you think your ancestor was one of these children, there are some basics you can cover to begin your research.

Educate yourself on adoption laws: These laws differ from state to state. Some states now open their records to direct descendants through court orders.

For example, in Iowa, a person (or his descendants) whose adoption became final prior to July 4, 1941, and whose record was not required to be sealed, can get a court order to open the records without presenting any evidence or reason for wanting the files.

A good Web site with links to all state adoption laws is at www.childadoptionlaws.com.

Read old newspapers: Small-town newspapers to which the Orphan Trains traveled ran advertisements or stories about the pending arrivals and then carried stories about the actual arrivals and pairing of orphans with local families.

For example, on Jan. 6, 1906, the Clinton Herald in Clinton, Iowa, told of the arrival of 10 children, "a bright and intelligent lot of little ones, ranging from 16 years to 18 months."

The names and ages of each of the children and the couples that selected them were listed.

Check census records: In some cases, you can locate the children in their adopted or foster households.

For example, one of the children listed in the Clinton Herald was 11-year-old Harry Pape, who went home with William E. Flathers. I located the 1910 census, the next after Harry's arrival, and found Harry listed as a 15-year-old boarder with William and Rosa Flathers and their three natural children.

This census told me that Harry was born in New Jersey and that both his parents were born in Germany.

I then looked for Harry in the 1900 census in New Jersey and found that he was the son of Henry and Zena Pape, who were from Germany. He had siblings: Hattie, Elsie and Frederick. I also was able to find that Elsie also rode the Orphan Train to Clinton, but I found no such record on Hattie and Frederick.

I checked the 1920 census and found that Harry, then 25, no longer lived with the Flathers family, and, apparently, they never adopted him. He was living as a boarder with another family in 1920 and still had his Pape surname.

Check orphanages in the census: If orphans of interest to you lived in an orphanage in New York, they are easy to check in censuses from 1860 to 1930. I located several orphanages in the 1900 census by going to Ancestry.com and entering the word "orphanage" as a census keyword and New York as the state.

Check standard local records: Checking marriage and death records in the area where orphans relocated may help locate subsequent evidence of their lives.

For example, I found where Harry had registered for the World War I draft in Delmar, Iowa. He gave his date of birth as May 22, 1895, and showed his place of birth as Hoboken, N.J. I also found that he married Leota Riggs.

In some cases, it will pay to check probate files of the family that took in the child to see if he is listed as an heir.

Check old newspapers again: This time you want to check for obituaries for the orphan or his foster family. This will be one way to determine if the family adopted him or if he remained with them as a foster child.

If he is not mentioned in an obituary or probate, this probably means he did not stay with them once he came of age (probably 18, although the age of majority varies from state to state).

Check with the placing agency: If the agency that placed the orphan is still operating, it may have records you can access.

The key agency was the New York Children's Aid Society, which still operates at 105 E. 22nd St., New York NY 10021.

Online Assistance

Here are a few Web sites if you want to learn more about these trains and efforts to locate information on the children:

• www.42explore2.com/ orphan.htm

•www.orphantrainriders .com/

• www.kancoll.org/articles/orphans/

•press.umsystem.edu/spring1997/patrick.htm

• www.rootsweb.com/~wiorphan/sitemap.html

• www.rootsweb.com/ ~neadoptn/Orphan.htm

• www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/orphan

•iagenweb.org/iaorphans

Sharon Tate Moody is a certified genealogist by the Board for Certification of Genealogists. Send your genealogy questions and event announcements to her in care of BayLife, The Tampa Tribune, 200 S. Parker St., Tampa FL 33606 or stmoody0720

@mac.com. She regrets that she is unable to assist with personal research.

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