The usual method of placing the children resembled a cattle auction.Īfter the train deposited them at the local rail station, the orphan children were herded together on the steps of the local courthouse or church, where they were picked over by potential foster parents, who would feel the sturdiness of their limbs.Ĭhildren were chosen on a trial basis.
Orphan train free#
By sending children west, he believed they would be getting a fresh start in life.Īlthough many of the placed-out children had good experiences with their new families, many were exploited as free labor. Brace believed that the family was “God’s reformatory.” He also was taken by the myth of the wholesomeness of farm families and the healthiness of the wide-open plains. The best way to do this, he concluded, was to place each child in a family. Shocked at the multitude of homeless children who were barely surviving on the streets and leading lives of crime, Brace was determined to give them a better opportunity. The Children’s Aid Society was founded during the early 1850s in New York City by Charles Loring Brace, a social worker who became a pioneer in placing out children on orphan trains. The trains that carried them became known as orphan trains, and the relocation was called “placing out.” Between 18, about 200,000 children were sent by rail from Eastern cities to rural families in the West. His two daughters, Marcelle Hopper and Yvonne Watson, now live in Weatherford.ĭe Leleu was part of one of the largest mass migrations of homeless children in U.S. In later years, he became a schoolteacher, then a successful businessman. He was taken in by a nearby farm family, but he was seen as an outsider and treated as a workhand. His trip ended when he arrived in Weatherford, Texas.
In 1912, De Leleu and a group of other homeless children boarded a train and were sent west to foster homes in rural communities. In 1908, his parents died, and he was taken in by the Children’s Aid Society, a charitable institution for waifs.
Maurice de Leleu was one of three children, the son of 19th-century Flemish immigrants who traveled from Belgium to New York City. This article was originally featured in the September/October 1992 issue of The Medallion.