Researching your ancestor was "placed out" during the orphan train movement of 1854 - 1920's? Brace yourself for an episode that might just reshape how you research this pivotal, yet shadowy, segment of American history.
John questions Kathleen on the transport of children bustling East Coast cities to all 48 states. No state was missed as the trains traversed the heartland's rural expanses to the reach the southern and western states.
Kathleen brings a wealth of knowledge to our conversation, casting a light on the diverse tapestry of experiences faced by the orphaned children. John is also seeking more information on his half-brother, Bob, who grew up within the walls of a boys' "boarding home" rather than the family homes.
This episode doesn't just recount the past; it connects us to the human stories that continue to echo through time.
Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen is supported by our generous sponsors:
MyHeritage.com
Caymus Vineyards, CA
& Private Donors to TracingAncestors.com
Be sure to bookmark linktr.ee/hittinthebricks for your one stop access to Kathleen Brandt, the host of Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen. And, visit us on YouTube: Off the Wall with Kathleen John and Chewey video recorded specials.
Hittin' the Bricks is produced through the not-for-profit, 501c3 TracingAncestors.org.
Thanks to MyHeritage for their generous support to Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen! Follow us on social media and subscribe to HTB with Kathleen in order to enter your name in our monthly MyHeritage Complete Package giveaway starting Jan 2024!
Researching your ancestor was "placed out" during the orphan train movement of 1854 - 1920's? Brace yourself for an episode that might just reshape how you research this pivotal, yet shadowy, segment of American history.
John questions Kathleen on the transport of children bustling East Coast cities to all 48 states. No state was missed as the trains traversed the heartland's rural expanses to the reach the southern and western states.
Kathleen brings a wealth of knowledge to our conversation, casting a light on the diverse tapestry of experiences faced by the orphaned children. John is also seeking more information on his half-brother, Bob, who grew up within the walls of a boys' "boarding home" rather than the family homes.
This episode doesn't just recount the past; it connects us to the human stories that continue to echo through time.
Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen is supported by our generous sponsors:
MyHeritage.com
Caymus Vineyards, CA
& Private Donors to TracingAncestors.com
Be sure to bookmark linktr.ee/hittinthebricks for your one stop access to Kathleen Brandt, the host of Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen. And, visit us on YouTube: Off the Wall with Kathleen John and Chewey video recorded specials.
Hittin' the Bricks is produced through the not-for-profit, 501c3 TracingAncestors.org.
Thanks to MyHeritage for their generous support to Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen! Follow us on social media and subscribe to HTB with Kathleen in order to enter your name in our monthly MyHeritage Complete Package giveaway starting Jan 2024!
Ladies and gentlemen from the depths of flyover country in the heartland of America, the Kansas City on the other side of the mighty moe, welcome to hitting the bricks with Kathleen, the do it yourself genealogy podcast that features your questions and her answers. I am John, your humble hubby host, and on this episode we'll be talking about trains without parents, so let's start it in the bricks, okay, so what? Um hi, and is it morning? See, again, we do this at my prime time of the day that I absolutely hate, and it's one o'clock.
Kathleen:You're the one who set the time, John.
John:I know because I'm a masochist.
Kathleen:Okay, little more information than what anyone needs. But go ahead, Not that kind of masochist.
John:Oh, okay, okay, it shows you who you are Immediately. You go to the whips and chains and the locker room with the flashing lights Not me, I was talking about more of a mental, emotional state but okay, that was pretty descriptive. So, speaking of abuse, we're going to talk about orphan trains right?
Kathleen:Well, it's not necessarily abuse. You want to talk about the orphan trains or the orphan train riders?
John:Well, let's see where the conversation goes, Because I mean that's kind of a big deal about it, because I do kind of wonder which is just child trafficking? What are we getting into here?
Kathleen:That's the interesting way of putting that. I had never heard that analogy, but it was a form of moving children who had no say so, and some of these children were not really orphans. Some of them were half orphans. Their mom or dad were still alive, but they couldn't afford them.
John:So let's get a time frame. When were we started around?
Kathleen:1854 to about 1922 or so. Wow, 25 years of transporting children. It started from the East Coast to the Midwest because supposedly the Midwest was more holistic and they were good Christians and they had big farmlands and that means you're closer to God.
John:Oh, so they were transporting the Charles Dickens form of New York little urchins. They were bagging them up and sending them off to uh Aunt Jill's farm, basically, where they could find God and uh a good work life.
Kathleen:That is absolutely true. So the the religious part was actually in their contract when they took in an orphan. The whole thing was started by a minister that he really liked the way Germany and I believe it was Germany and maybe England did it, but he was copying it from that platform and his idea was, with all these waves, all these orphaned children, unkept, unfed and needing a place they were homeless children, whether or not they had a mom or dad alive that they could help them by moving them and getting the Midwest involved. So they were moving these boys, especially across country to the Midwest to be farm hands and they were actually monitored. People came back out every so often when the train came back through to check on the kids that they had placed and try to make sure that they were getting exactly what they were promised.
John:I, I. I understand that because the United States showed itself to be a bastion of well-regulated oversight in the 1920s, especially when it came to child labor. Hey, I can assume that, uh, they were right there when they needed to be making sure that everybody got to school, had shoes and, and put in a six hour day on the farm. Right the intent was good.
Kathleen:That is true. The execution is never as idealistic as you want it to be. No, of course not. So there are some stories that are horrific of little girls and little boys, or even teenage kids, because, remember, the orphans that were being sent out in general were not, most of them were not legally adopted, they were. The orphan train was our precursor to our foster homes of today.
John:Let's step out of that. Then let's step away from the train for a minute. Um, baby boxes and foundling hospitals Are these a stop on the Hogwarts Express of pain and suffering to the Midwest? Oh?
Kathleen:my goodness, and the answer is yes.
John:Okay.
Kathleen:And we call them. Family versus baby boxes. You could do this anonymously, mm, hmm, you could put your little baby in kind of a turntable type thing and deliver it without giving any information.
John:Oh lazy Susan, right, you'd like you did with fondues in the seventies you'd have. You could just spin it around, right?
Kathleen:And the Catholic family homes. Those drop off stations could be anonymous and a lot of mothers might put a note on their child, giving it a description with the name, the date of birth. They might even have left their names, but often that's not the case. Often they were registered in the book of the foundling homes. Mm, hmm, they were registered in the books of the family homes as a baby girl, blue eye, dropped off on this date. So later though, these people, if they knew where they were adopted from or orphaned out of, or they could see it in the newspaper what train came through what date, they were able to go back to that family home and actually find their own original information.
John:Okay, so that that actually helps me with. Well, it takes me to another question that I have, and that is I need to do some research on an orphanage. I'll get to that in a second, Okay, Um, but if somebody is looking for now, I'm assuming that maybe through folklore you hear that your great great grandmother or grandfather came to Iowa at the turn of the century on an orphan train. What sort of records am I looking at? How am I able to trace that? Am I going through, you know, the Rock Island Railroad and looking for what sort of cargo was shipped, or let's back up on the train itself.
Kathleen:Okay, the trains were used because their discounts were given. The trains were quite widespread by 1890, you remember these orphans really went to all 48 states. Right, it was cost efficient. Well, I'm sure.
John:I'm sure. For some reason in my head I'm thinking. I just wonder was it all truistic or were they actually, you know, receiving money from one place to another place in order to transport the kids, because it's hard to believe that the they were given discounts.
Kathleen:They did give a lot of the people discounts. I mean a lot of the organizations discounts to transport these, these children. They were paid.
John:I know how many like on an orphan train.
Kathleen:Orphan train could have as few as three or four, or it could have over 20. We have pictures of them coming into town, going to a station, excited. They would then stand on the platform of the station and people would pick them. Now those are the orphans themselves. The baby trains were different, john.
John:Oh, there's a difference between orphan trains and baby trains. There were baby trains. It's a baby train.
Kathleen:They normally weren't paraded on a platform.
John:They were Sorry.
Kathleen:They were pre-ordered, John.
John:They pre-ordered. Wait a minute. Ok, so now we're getting into the world of I want a blonde hair, blue eye, exactly Girl or boy, and so he'll. He'll match the rest of my, my kids.
Kathleen:Well, that's interesting also because you can say I want a Christian only, I want to, not only Christian. I prefer them not to be Catholic, I would prefer, you know, a Protestant. Or you can say I want a Jewish child. You could put in what your order was for this child and that child was assigned at the originating place. And then when they these are babies right under the age of three, usually Right and when they were taken to that spot where we're supposed to meet, those people already had a number like number fifty two. They had to just go and get a baby with the number fifty two. Those were.
Kathleen:Those children were normally anonymous, the names of those children and the names of those who were taking the children, because those children were supposed to be adopted as their own, not necessarily legally adopted, but put into the family and treated as their own. So this is totally different than the older kids who were used more for farm and during an indenture. They were supposed to have kids indentured to the age of about 18 or 16. Some of these children continued on for one reason or another. But that kind of contract was already set up front. You knew what you were contracting to. You knew what the children were supposed to do. A lot of the guys, once they became old enough to even join the military, they just left the farm and went and joined the military. So that's where I find a lot of their records. And when they ask, where did you live, they might say I was living in Lyons, kansas, but I was born in New York.
John:That's. That's actually interesting and also a little bit odd that we're hearing about children basically being contractually or indentured. This is obviously without consent.
Kathleen:The difference is that they had certain rules. Like I said you, they weren't supposed to work. But so what much? You weren't supposed to do certain things to them? You were supposed to provide them with clothing. You were supposed to only make sure they're educated and that they have a religious background. That didn't always happen. A lot of the I mean not a lot, but there were quite a few children who were definitely abused one way or the other.
John:I also have a question on whether Native American children were drawn up in this, because I know there was a concerted kind of no, they were part more of the assimilation projects.
Kathleen:They were taken away to assimilate into what America considered the new culture or their correct culture.
John:Civilized. The idea was to. I think it's.
Kathleen:The name, is the word we always throw about it is to civilize them, and that is a total different podcast. John, yeah, I'm sure it is.
John:Well, it's always. It's always interesting when we get into these things and I always make kind of light of certain things, but they're not. They get into some very serious issues and topics, but I find it interesting that so many of the things that people say those were the good old days were such bad days.
Kathleen:It was such bad days for a lot of people.
John:I mean our good old days were just not that great for a whole lot of people.
Kathleen:So, for example, the Italians, the Armenians, they were considered color. They were not considered white until after 1907. So they were treated differently than the others. Oh, and the finish Awesome. Then you also had the black orphan trains, oh which is it?
Kathleen:And they were treated totally different. Now there were black children on the white trains also and we can find them. I found one recently in Nebraska who came out. All the white children had their names and ages attached to who they actually went to. The black child says he's going to JM Bennett and who JM Bennett took who was a leader of this community was the colored boy. That's all it said. No age, no name, nothing to identify. So you can see that he came with these other children. Wow, and normally I do a lot of newspaper searches when I really want to narrow down to who's supposed to be on the train, who isn't on that train. And when I did that, that's what came up Now later I do find him as an older guy and he did take the Bennett name. They could do whatever they wanted at that point, legally or not.
John:So, researching these, it seems like you're going to be diving into a lot of different areas. That's everything from train to, like you said you would look at the military records.
Kathleen:I look at military records, the trains, not the trains, I'm sorry. The military records, the institutions, the newspapers. I'm looking at the National Orphan Train Museum, the complex and National Orphan Train complex is what it's called and they have about 7,000 in their database, but that's 7,000 out of almost 300,000. Wow, well, we do know it's definitely upward of 250,000. Yeah, so there's a small. It's a great place to start, but it's a small, small sampling.
John:Now that we're talking about researching and the institutions, here comes my question.
Kathleen:My family, my half brother, it's always about you, isn't it?
John:It is always my dad. Well, I'm not going into all of that. So my oldest brother, my half brother, yes. He was in an orphanage in Los Angeles. Yes, he was when she was young, so we're talking about the late 40s, maybe not the late 40s.
Kathleen:It would have been Somewhere around 1940.
John:Because he was born in 1937.
Kathleen:Yeah, I think it was somewhere around 1942, somewhere between 1942 and 1948.
John:OK, so between 1942 and 1948, he's in a place and I know he called it Brownies, and that's pretty much all I know about where he would have been. Now my dad honestly describes it as it was a boarding school. That is not the description Bob gave, and Bob told some stories of one bathtub and everybody taking a bath on the same day of the week, or at least a series of kids, and that you wanted to get in early because otherwise you were bathing in everybody else's dirt and there was sand in the bottom of the tub by the time he got out.
Kathleen:I do remember Bob telling us that story. Ok, yeah.
John:And one of the other things that I thought was interesting is that he said that, Brownie, the person who ran it was a woman. It was African-American. In that it was an interracial. That's correct. Yeah, it was a mixed orphanage. Having that little information, where am I in this search?
Kathleen:So let's first make sure everyone's clear Bob was not on an orphan train. No no, no, ok. So Bob was not on an orphan train. His father and mother were living. Yes, his father was working far away, distantly. His mother was right there in the city, right, it's possible just to have a little grace here, bob, that your father paid to have Bob at the orphanage. So that's why he said it was a boarding house.
John:That's possible.
Kathleen:Yeah, that would be my assumption, that, but it really was an orphanage, based on Bob's experience, how would you start or what would you do looking for where this is? I would start with the city directories. There was an apartment because Bob's mother lived in it, your father had it and I have seen a few with your father's name in the city directory.
John:That's right. You were doing some digging on this a while back.
Kathleen:I was just kind of glimpsing though and you would start with the city directories for that time frame. Then you would take a great big circle and give yourself about a five mile radius of where was the closest orphanage. Again, the city directories can help that also, as well as city maps, and you would start there. It is not uncommon for Los Angeles during that time frame to have interracial orphanages.
Kathleen:So, I have seen quite a few. One of them, the guy, a white fella, was an orphanage and became a judge and he really talks about this black guy who communicated and found him much later in years and how they laughed about their experience.
John:So the time and the time as orphans, yeah.
Kathleen:So I personally start with the largest, because Bob's experience sounded like it was a pretty big one. But you're looking for boys' homes, right? So it might not just be as the word orphanage might not be the name. It might say asylum boys', institution boys' home.
John:It can have a lot of other words. There's a whole lot of other words in there that I need to incorporate in starting to do kind of the searching You're saying the city directories.
Kathleen:I would start with that city directory, first finding your father because he had a rental property there. He was renting rather, and oh, right, right Gotcha.
Kathleen:And so I would start with finding him in a city directory and see if we can find him that way. I'd also pull some of his records, because you kind of know where he worked and he made up your dad Right, he also was coming in and out from Alaska. He might have been on a ship, so we can look at some shipwreckers. Ok, the idea is, first start with your dad, let's place him, oh OK, then we can put Bob in the correct proximity.
John:OK, cool. Now I know everybody's thinking they could do that over breakfast. They don't have to do that on our time. So we're taking a podcast time to talk about my stuff. So I'm going to apologize because everybody's like hey you can talk to him on your own time, don't talk to him on our time. So wait a minute. Let's just run back into real quick. Let's run back into what we started with and look at the orphan trains and general orphanage research. If we haven't closed that out yet, I don't know.
Kathleen:No, believe it or not, exactly what I just told you is exactly what everyone else is doing for their ancestors.
John:So orphan trains. It would kind of work the same way.
Kathleen:It's the same way. I was recently looking for a particular orphan who was in Kansas, I think, and when he got to Kansas we knew nothing about him except two brothers, and there was a sister.
Kathleen:Well, later, by doing exactly what I told you, I was able to narrow it down, find the family that they were with, find that one went to the military and moved away, and then I was able to trace them back to the original orphanage in Brooklyn based on a military record. That particular father had to go to Sing Sing because he killed the mother in front of those three children Again a lovely story.
John:What was the timeframe of this?
Kathleen:Nineteen 18ish, I think.
John:Nineteen? Yes, I'm not really sure. I'm telling you this country was a real interesting place to live in 1918. What I should be looking for, what anybody should be looking for when we're talking about orphanages, is not getting stuck on the word orphan.
Kathleen:There's two words we shouldn't get stuck on, john, and I'm glad you brought that up Right. I'm not saying that word orphan, because there's so many other words. An orphan train is a new wording, as of like 1970s, so they called it placing out children.
Kathleen:So what they actually did this is not as cynical as you think it is they literally were trying to find these children's safer places to be. Oh, I understand that. So they had good intentions, Just keep that in mind. And most of the children did have a good experience. They even have reunions. They remember the other orphans who traveled with them on the train, who went to nearby schools, and some of them went to the same schools. They stayed actually close. The stories are really beautiful, except for those who are.
Kathleen:We had to keep all of that in mind and as we're looking for all of this, you have to remember that there was a reason. This child was without a parent that could care for them, Whether money or death or disease, or the older ones could have just ran back out on the streets, but they were hungry, also in cold New York and Boston and Pennsylvania and all these places. And again, as I said, we also see them going not only to one home, but we might have one girl who went to 10 different homes before she was settled. But the idea is to get these children placed. Children of color and black children were also placed in on these trains but they were treated differently how they were placed. Sometimes there was an agency at the other end to receive them. So from New York to Kansas a lot of the black children went to Leavenworth where there was a black orphanage in Leavenworth and then that orphanage placed them in black homes.
John:Very, very interesting.
Kathleen:So did I answer all your questions on orphans and orphan trains.
John:Yes, all my questions were answered and it really is an extremely interesting topic and something I truly, until you started with presentations and doing this sort of research, I had no idea. Ok, so I'm thinking that you have some other news. I think you have some good news, don't you? I do have good news. Let's have some good news.
Kathleen:OK, well, hidden Bricks with Kathleen has a wonderful sponsor now, yeah, my heritage is in legacy family tree webinars and legacy family tree software. We are being sponsored by them.
John:Oh, fantastic.
Kathleen:I have mentioned them on several podcasts, because my mother, my brothers, myself and several cousins are all on my heritage.
John:Well, I'm on my heritage for DNA.
Kathleen:Yes, and it is one of my favorites because of their tools, their research tools, and you always talk about getting people crossed over.
John:If they've done it in one place, they need to always transfer it over to my heritage.
Kathleen:I would give you a big kiss if you are in this room, because I didn't know you listened to me.
John:This is. This is why I want to. I would like to combine the studio in the one room. So I could walk over and just give you a kiss when you do something, so I can give my Paul Jean Kishi, ok, ok, so that's wonderful. That's really good news. I'm happy to hear that and we look forward to this as far as the sponsorship goes. So are we able to pass that on to our listeners?
Kathleen:Absolutely. We will be giving away some of these packages, the complete package. We have a quarter of your giveaways we can give Fantastic.
John:And we are from the generosity of my heritage, my heritage and legacy tree.
Kathleen:Legacy family tree webinars. Fantastic OK, john. We have just completed one year of the podcast One year?
John:Yes, we have not been. Have we been doing this for a year?
Kathleen:Absolutely, John.
John:We started last January I assume that I'm eligible for profit sharing. Well, no, there is no profit to be shared.
Kathleen:I'm so sorry, but there is no. Do I get medical?
John:Do I get lunch? Maybe I get a sandwich. Well, congratulations, you've made it to the end of another episode. Thanks so much for staying. Thanks to my heritage and legacy family tree webinars. Thanks to Chewie Chewbacca Brandt, our part-time phrenologist and full-time witless worm, for his unwavering lack of interest in anything we're doing. The theme song for Hitting the Bricks was written and performed by Tony Fischnuckle and the Bosons Watch for their next appearance at the Rings of Saturn. You can find us on Apple, spotify, youtube and, of course, buzzsprout. We'd love to hear what you think about the podcast, and so stop by our Facebook page at Hitting the Bricks with Kathleen and let us know.