The Orphan Train movement lasted over seventy-five years and took over 100,000 children to adoptive parents in forty-seven states and Canada. Find out who started the orphan train and how the movement sought to solve problems in overcrowded New York by sending parentless children to farm families in the country.
Charles Frederick – Illinois – 1888
Irma Craig – Missouri – 1901
John J. Callahan – West Virginia – 1903
Ellen Broderick – North Dakota – 1908
Ann Harrison – Colorado – 1911
Marguerite Thompson – Nebraska – 1911
Mary Jane Baade – Nebraska – 1912
Clifton and Myrtle Jennings – Arkansas – 1912
Edith Peterson (Sister Justina Bieganek) – Minnesota – 1913
Jean Sexton – Missouri – 1914
Anna Miller Bassett – Texas – 1918
Mike Francese – Texas – 1919
Elizabeth Wilde Daniel – Missouri – 1919
Bill Oser – Michigan – 1922
Fred Engert Swedenburg – Nebraska – 1925
Lee Nailing – Texas – 1926
Alice Bullis Ayler – Kansas 1930
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A twelve-year-old Polish American girl is boarded onto an orphan train in Chicago with fears about traveling to the West and a life of unpaid slavery.