The Orphan Train Movement Essay

Orphan Children living in the 1800s were living on overcrowded streets of cities. Over 30,000 abandoned kids were placed into new families throughout Canada and the United States using what were called ‘orphan trains’ . This movement was one of the first documented for foster care in America. The Orphan Train Movement was a supervised welfare program that operated between 1854 and 1929. These kids faced many obstacles, a rough childhood, and their family life could be torn apart or challenging for

them. These children needed new families to care for them. The children traveled west mainly to rural areas in the Midwest by train in search of new homes where they could live and work. The children generally were a year old to seventeen years old. Most were separated from their brothers and sisters, and some never saw their siblings again. Thus began the “placing out” movement. The United States was engaged in an ambitious, and ultimately controversial, social experiment. Approximately thirty thousand

The Orphan Trains: Feeling Small Traveling up to 60 miles per hour in a chain of iron boxes weighing several hundred tons altogether can make you feel quite small; and even smaller if you didn’t have any control of the destination. It was a tight fit in each train car due to the thirty to forty other orphans packed in together with two to three adults. There was a strain on all orphans involved in this program. The orphan trains were a bitterly imperative movement put in place to disperse the population

“Orphans, Foundlings, waifs, half-orphans, street Arabs, and street urchins were terms used to describe abandoned children” (DiPasquale). In New York City alone, there were 30,000 homeless children in the 1850’s (The Orphan Trains). Children averaging from six to eighteen lived very homeless and neglecting lives and had little to no hope for a successful life. Children’s lives, orphanages, and Orphan Trains changed the way children lived during the 1800s. In the 1800’s, many people lived in poverty

Riders on the Orphan Train “When a child of the streets stands before you in rags, with a tear-stained face, you cannot easily forget him. And yet, you are perplexed what to do. The human soul is difficult to interfere with. You hesitate how far you should go.” – Charles Loring Brace Between 1854 and 1929 the United States was engaged in an ambitious, and ultimately controversial, social experiment to rescue poor and homeless children, the Orphan Train Movement. The Orphan Trains operated prior

successful because in 1854 the first Orphan Train ride was successfully completed with over forty children who were transported to Michigan in search for their new foster families (Jalongo, 2010; Social Welfare History Project, 2014; & Trattner, 1999). During the first year that the program was run, more than one hundred boys and girls were transported via train to their new lives in the Western world (Jalongo, 2010). During the long journey across the country, the train would stop in designated cities

“No, you can't make me come with you. I don’t want to face it,” Genevieve screamed. “You have to face it; she's gone. I know it’s hard, but please come with me” Caroline said. Genevieve jumped up from the table and ran up the stairs screaming back down “Why should I have to look at her past; I don’t even know mine” Caroline gulped she was right; it wasn’t the time to think about that. Reluctantly, Genevieve gave in to her mother’s requests and went to her grandmother’s house with Caroline. Little

to attend college, gets married, and gave birth to a daughter, Carol, who was disabled. Pearl S. Buck’s second child, Janice, was adopted, but in the United States. Most likely on the system of the “Orphan Train” movement, which is when orphans were put on auction in public places, and taken by train all over the country to make the adoption process similar to slavery. Janice was brought over to China(1925); spent her childhood learning a mixture of American and Chinese lifestyle. As the Welcome

Visual stimulation and Humanitarianism The visual culture contributed to the evolution of new forms of humanitarianism. Humanitarian movement definitely got the impetus when the visual images of holocaust got spread worldwide. This strengthens the humanitarian campaign in form of press photography, moving images and magic lantern slides. By result of this only the Philanthropic organizations in the US, Britain and elsewhere raised money to help the survivors with food and shelter. Foreign aid provided

government ruled that all jews who didn’t have citizenship would be sent to Nazi-held Poland and murdered. In March 1944, German soldiers came to Sighet and forced the Jews to wear yellow stars and put them on a train. The Wiesel family was the last one on the train. After four days, the train stopped at Auschwitz. Wiesel, then 15, followed the instructions of a prisoner and told the waiting SS