I just finished reading "Riders on the Orphan Train"

[WhiteTara]

It was absolutely riveting and haunting. The author, Alison Moore, researched this for decades and tells the story of over 250,000 children (distilled in the lives of two of them,) ostensibly orphans, who were dispersed throughout the country. The practice began in New York and Ellis Island after WWI. There were so many children the Christian Charity decided this was the best thing to do and sent train loads of children across the country dropping them as so much baggage to anyone who wanted them along the way.

The author tells the story of 2 children that were dropped off in Springdale, AR and their lives up until their early 20s and then they reunite as a group of that train load of now elderly people in the mid 80s. Personally I could have used a mid section of their lives, but it's intimated that they live solitary lives.

It's stunning to me that I know so little true American history. It talks of the bigotry and racial divides that leave immigrants at the mercy of white people.

OT but think about this. Our science is Euro-centric...white people's science when there is so much that other countries can offer as theirs is more advanced in many areas.

[Srkdqltr]

1. When reading about amazing finds from archeological sites it seems people in the past were

Intelligent and creative a lot farther back in history than realised.

I wonder if current DNA searches are finding that we aren't all who we think we are.

Also the orphan trains were the height of child abuse.

[WhiteTara]

2. Indeed, it was child abuse and today

we are doing something even worse. We are using children in dangerous jobs while advocating slashing EBT so these little brown children can do what we don't want to pay grown men and women to do.

Governor Sarah just signed a law that allows children to work with in any field. More child abuse.

[Hestia]

3. Two thoughts...

1 - up until the 1970 (or was it the 1980) census, 80% of country marked "Caucasian/White" as race on the census forms. After that is when a person could mark one or more races on the forms. Caucasian is still 60% of the population today.

2 - Before getting your bowels in an uproar, read novels written by historians about the history of NYC before the orphan trains and you will find

a. children were kicked out of the house at about age 10 and told to make their own way. Only the upper middle class and rich could afford to have children at home and not working. These kids had their own bars and gangs and whores (or at least they were kidnapped by the kids and sold to whore houses). Average age of a prostitute was 14 years in the Victorian age. A girl was marked for life when she turned to prostitution to eat, not that there were really any jobs for females at that time. Marriage was really the only way out to keep your reputation but with the state sanctioned enforcement of having babies, it only exacerbated the rise of children living on the streets.

A good novel that gets into this history is "Dream Land." The 2nd Alienist book is also another good book about the explosion of children living on the city streets. I think it is called "Black Angel" about a woman who was in charge of a orphanage.

b. No birth control, so kids having kids constantly, to where the child population exploded out of control.

c. Knowing all these kids have absolutely nobody at all to fall back on at home and city, of course, was tired of devoting so much money to taking care of the kids, along with the rich women who funded a lot of foundling homes.

Armed with this information, what would *you* do to help the kids and cut down on the crime these child gangs were committing?

Before you get all up in my grill and stuff, my mother's side of the family adopted a girl from an orphan train - she was treated as a family member, inherited along with the other kids, etc. Unfortunately, by the time I found this out and wanted to know more, everyone has passed on. In fact, my mother is the very last from her side of the family and she has forgotten everything, even though I bought her diaries, family history diaries, etc. for her to write it all down before she passed. Now, she's getting lucky to remember last year.

[WhiteTara]

4. Sounds as though you are a bit dispeptic yourself

my dear Hestia.

I simply noted I felt haunted by the story. So much of it takes place in my current backyard and in the area my mother's family lived in. I felt that for the most part the idea of taking a child was to have help in what ever life the family was living. In this book, the children showcased were taken for companionship.

I was fairly aware of the horror of NYC in the early 1900s, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire exposed much of the degradation of life in the city.

I'm sorry you were so upset about my relating my experience of a part of history about which I knew nothing. I'm happy you were able to find your family as part of that story.