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Orphan Trains
They Crossed the Country Looking
for Homes
were wholesome homes in the Midwest.
So, in 1894, at a meeting in the Dysart, Iowa, town hall for the citizenry to look over the children, little Ben Morris looked out into the audience., Henry Pippert must have resembled Ben’s father, for when the child spotted him, he cried, “Data!”
Pippert shouted, “I’ll have to take that boy!”
Since the Children’s Aid Society required that siblings be placed in the same community, Ben’s brothers and sisters went to Dysart families, too.
Dorothea Petrie happened on the story of Ben (Morris) Pippert and the orphan trains in 1974 when she took her mother home for Dysart’s centennial celebration. As a child Ms. Petrie had spent summers with her grandparents
(© 1978^The^Los^Angeles Times)
He was 18 months old, a toddler in a little brown coat with a tag that gave his name and birth date: Ben Morris, Nov. 12, ’92.
He had come by train — orphan trains, they called them — from New York City to a tiny town in Iowa, one of five siblings sent west with other homeless children to find families that would care for them.
His mother had died. His father had remarried and his stepmother did not want her husband’s children. The father turned them over to the New York Children’s Aid Society, which, shortly after its founding in 1853, had begun transplanting orphaned and abandoned children from the hellish streets and slums of New York to what it hoped
in the small Iowa town and she and her cousins had played with the Pippert family children.
She found 82-year-old Ben Pippert’s story fascinating. He still had the little brown coat and the nametag. From their conversations came a novel, her first, “Orphan Train” (Dial Press. $7.95), co-written with James Magnu-son.
“You’ll find no references to the orphan trains in history books, except for one, ‘Poverty U.S.A.,’ from Columbia University,” Ms. Petrie said.
“I wrote to the Children’s Aid Society, but its books and references all were published before the 1900s, except for a doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin in the ‘60s.
“The majority of the orphan trains
Charles Loring Brace, a young minister,"Telt the street children were his special calling. He, with other concerned citizens, founded the Children's Aid Society, one of America’s first charities.
In addition to proposing industrial schools to teach the street nomads, Brace suggested relocating the children.
“His plan was to send them west, to a Christian home, clean air, a good environment and schooling,” Dorothea Petrie said.
“They sent out fliers along the railroad routes advertising ‘Children Without Homes . . . call and see them.’ , When the train stopped, the townspeople would meet the children at the railroad station or in a church or town hall.
ran from 1854 to 1904, although some ran as late as 1929. The Children’s Aid Society does have records but, as in adoption proceedings, they cannot be opened without the consent of those involved.”
New York City’s population in the 1850s was 500,000, and in 1854 alone, more than 300,000 immigrants poured into its harbor. Many died, leaving orphaned children; others simply could not provide for their youngsters.
As early as 1849, New York’s Police chief warned of the “dangerous class” of street children, estimated at from
10,000	to 30,000. They slept on grates, in cardboard boxes and doorways, on barges in the Hudson River. They survived by begging, stealing and prostitution.
“There were rules: a Christian home, the child to be reared as a member of the family, to have the same schooling, clothing and training a the family’s other children.”
In return, the children were to work from 15 to 18 for their board and clothes; at 18 they were at liberty to make their own arrangements. Youngsters from 12 to 15 also worked for board and clothes but were to be sent to school at least part of the year. Those under 12 were to remain until 18 but be treated as members of the family
The society, in addition to asking foster parents to report by leter on the child’s progress, sent representatives to interview the children to make sure they were not being abused.