"Orhpan Train's" Head West
(Childrens Bureau, 2012)
(Kahan, 2006) (1 mars 1854 – 1 déc. 1929)
Description:
children's bureau: From 1854 through the early 1930s, approximately 200,000 orphaned or abandoned children from Eastern cities were transported by train to new families in other parts of the country. Organizations such as Charles Loring Brace’s Children’s Aid Society in New York hoped that these children would benefit from living in family homes, where they could receive a good education and training in wholesome work.
kahan: Believing that the best thing for these poor youth would be to get out of the city, he began by loading a group of 66 boys and 72 girls on a train to rural Pennsylvania in March 1854. His plan was to place these children out West in "good Christian families where they would be cared for, educated, and employed"
There were no legal ties between these children and the farmers who took them in. The Children's Aid Society announced to the local community that a train would be arriving. When it did, the children stood on the platform waiting to be claimed.
The orphan train placements served, in effect, as a foster care system without payment to the foster families. Not only were the children available to labor on the farms where they were placed, but shipping them out to the country was far less costly than institutionalizing those who could not live at home. While Brace died in 1890, the movement continued for almost 40 more years, under his son. Other agencies also replicated his methods, in Great Britain and Australia as well as the U.S. Estimates of the total number of children placed (in this country) vary widely, from 150,000 to 250,000.
Ajouté au bande de temps:
Foster Care History
Date:
