They Came by Train

Turning to the archives for the stories of the Orphan Train Riders

by

“As names and numbers were called, the parents stepped forward to claim their child. The parents were assured that they could return the child if they were dissatisfied or could not go through with the transaction.”

In a 1980 article titled “The Baby Train Comes South,” Louisiana writer and researcher, Rachel Lemoine depicts children being delivered as cargo. Her extensive research, published in The Avoyelles Journal and dozens of other articles, is also catalogued in the Rachel Lemoine Collection in the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Special Collections Archive. It invites researchers to hop on board the narrative of one of the largest, yet least-understood, migrations in human history.

The origins of the Orphan Train Movement began as part of the larger Child Welfare Movement of the mid-19th century. Charles Loring Brace, founder of the Children’s Aid Society (CAS), advocated for better conditions for the growing number of homeless children in northern port cities such as Boston and New York. He recognized that many families could no longer afford childcare, and feared the influx of immigrants flooding city streets and rising crime rates would tempt the youth to criminality. Brace used the CAS as a vehicle to relocate children to be placed with families in rural areas. With the aid of fellow reformers, civil leaders, and businessmen, Brace developed an indenture process that required prospective parents to specify the types of children they wanted and required the families to treat their new children and their natural ones equally. The first Orphan Train departed in 1854.

[Read about Louisiana's Orphan Train Museum, here.] 

Initially, the CAS program did not send children to southern states and tended to favor Protestant placements (the best of which tended to be given to Protestant white boys). Starting in 1875, the Catholic Sisters of New York Foundling Hospital developed their own adoption train process, where prospective parents requested babies from the hospital beforehand (whereas CAS sent its passengers on trains unaware if they would be adopted). In her article, “The Baby Trains: Catholic Foster Care and Western Migration, 1873-1929,” Dianne Creagh establishes the connection between Foundling Hospital’s Catholicism and the significance of Louisiana—with its enormous Catholic community and wide network of Parish priests—as a destination for the Baby Trains. While the sisters sought to save homeless children, they also saw the program as an opportunity to evangelize. Baptismal records, death records, and Orphan Interview Sheets from the Rachel Lemoine Collection confirm these children’s entries into the Catholic church. Baby Train “conductors” began moving children to the South in vast numbers; one of the largest recorded moves was in 1909 when three hundred children were brought to Loreauville, Louisiana.

On Thursday, December 18, 1980, Lemoine published the second of thirteen feature stories titled “The Avoyelles Orphan Story,” in the Avoyelles Journal. She writes that “[t]here was an air of festivity as the trains arrived in the South. Eager crowds awaited the arrival of the ‘orphan train’ and local bands played at the depot.”  The general mood for the newcomers’ arrivals was excitement, but did the orphans share in it?

Accounts contained in the Lemoine Collection complicate the oft-romanticized legacy of the Orphan Train as a benevolent system, a metaphorical journey towards a better life for unfortunate children. Some criticisms of The Orphan Trains Movement debate the validity of the title “orphan,” and point out frequent evidence that children were often mistreated by their new families. Author of The Orphan Trains Kristin Johnson states that “one of the criticisms … was that the program separated families in which parents and other siblings were still alive.”  This was part of the reformers’ efforts to recruit the offspring of families that could no longer afford childcare, who were coerced or forced to give up their children for adoption. Johnson’s book includes the account of Claretta Miller, who reflected on her experience as an 'orphan' and recalled her family struggles before the Orphan Train relocated her.

“We were hungry. I don’t ever recall taking a bath in a tub of water. We slept on old, dirty mattresses on the floor and the rats ran over our heads and through our hair lots of nights we’d wake up screaming with it. We didn’t know where our parents were. We never did know.”

In Louisiana, towns such as Opelousas, Ayoyelles, Rayne, Morgan City, and Loreauville were designated by Orphan Train organizers as “safe zones”—places where children would be well cared for. However, records demonstrate that these simplistic assignments could not account for the various difficulties children might face in their new South Louisiana homes.

Within her body of research, Lemoine collected accounts in which orphans often described experiencing a sense of isolation because of language barriers in this French-speaking region. Orphan Ernest LeDoux experienced culture shock due to his new environment, recounting his fear of chickens especially, and the farm animals his adoptive family owned and worked with. In a journal entry addressed to Lemoine, one woman apologized for her mother’s refusal to answer any questions about her experience as a child of the Orphan Train Movement: “Please understand, many of these children were made to feel less than equal to their friends during ‘growing up’ period. Even as they became adults the stigma was still there. The hurt was very deep then and to some it still remains.”

Also documented in Lemoine’s research are examples of babies being placed with the wrong families. R. David Lognion sent a letter to Rachel Lemoine documenting that such an occurrence happened to his grandmother, Margaret Henkel. Henkel arrived in Louisiana at just eighteen months old and was the last child on the 1908 train to Louisiana. She was supposed to be delivered to the Fassbender family in Jennings, Louisiana, but because she was an ill infant, the Dronet family decided to adopt her instead of the child that they were to receive.

The Orphan Train Movement is tucked away inside the history of the Child Welfare Movement, obscuring the narrative of the individuals affected, as well as the generational implications for families and communities here in Louisiana and across the country. Within Lemoine’s collection is a rare invitation for the orphans themselves to become the primary actors in this history of large-scale migrations. 

On May 3, the Delta Theatre in Opelousas is hosting a mini documentary screening of Louisiana Orphan Trains: The Untold Story. 

WORKS CITED

Creagh, Dianne. “The Baby Trains: Catholic Foster Care and Western Migration, 1873-1929.” Journal of Social History 46, no. 1 (2012):129-218

Hoffpauir, Jerry. “Ledoux became Cajun by way of Orphan Train,” A Supplement to the Eunice News, September 8, 1994. The Orphan Trains Collection, box 1, folder 12.

Johnson, Kristin F. The Orphan Trains. Edina, Minn: Abdo Publishing, 2011. 

Lemoine, Rachel. “The Baby Train Comes South,” The Avoyelles Orphan Story, Dec 18, 1980. The Orphan Train Collection. Box 1

Newberg Letter to Rachel Lemoine, Orphan Train Collection, box 1, folder 14.