Illinois Bound: The Orphan Trains of the New York Juvenile Asylum

NEARLY SEVEN THOUSAND CHILDREN WERE LOADED ON TRAINS by the New York Juvenile Asylum (NYJA) in New York City and indentured in Illinois during the years 1854 to 1906.1 The trains they rode, now known as orphan trains, were collectively a part of what historians refer to as the orphan train movement. An estimated two hundred thousand children rode such trains to nearly every state in the US.2 Excluding New York State itself, it was the Midwest that received the vast majority of children, with Illinois holding the distinction of having received the highest number—followed closely by Iowa.3It was New York City that gave birth to the orphan train movement. The city became overwhelmed by thousands of immigrants arriving from Europe—primarily Ireland and Germany—many fleeing hardships such as religious persecution or Ireland's infamous potato famine. Crime rates began to soar as a result of overcrowding and poverty. In 1848, it was estimated that between ten and thirty thousand children were roaming the city's streets.4 By 1850, the city's population swelled to 515,477.5New York City's chief of police, George Washington Matsell, described the situation as a “deplorable and growing evil.” In his report to city officials, he warned of “the constantly increasing numbers of vagrant, idle and vicious children of both sexes, who infest our public thoroughfares, hotels, docks.”6New Yorkers were horrified by a subsequent grand jury report on serious crimes: “Of the higher grades of felony, four-fifths of the complaints examined have been against minors. And two-thirds of all complaints acted on during the term have been against persons between the ages of 19 and 21.”7The city began building institutions to hold the thousands of children arrested for vagrancy, truancy, or petty crimes—many of whom were placed in adult prisons for lack of juvenile institutions to hold them. Some were full orphans, others were half-orphans, having lost just one parent. Many were the offspring of intemperate parents. Yet others were the children of parents who were simply destitute and unable to provide basic food and shelter for them, forcing them onto the streets, and in many cases, into begging or prostitution.It was not long before the available orphan asylums were overcrowded or completely filled. Several of New York City's Protestant clergymen decided the wide expanse and farms of the West would provide the wholesome and religious atmosphere required to reform the children, teach them a trade, and at the same time, alleviate the shortage of farm laborers.The NYJA, which was incorporated in 1851,8 held hundreds of such children. Asylum officials partnered with Charles Loring Brace, president of the newly formed New York Children's Aid Society (CAS), to send what is considered the United States’ first orphan train west. A company of thirty-six children, most of whom were furnished by the NYJA, were sent by train and steamboat to Dowagiac, Michigan, on September 28, 1854.9 The venture was immediately declared a success.In October 1855, asylum officials were approached by Reverend Mr. Enoch Kingsbury, pastor of the Presbyterian church in Danville, Illinois, and asked if they would consider allowing him to find homes for children in that vicinity.10 Kingsbury was president of the Vermilion County Juvenile Aid Society, which was formed on July 4, 1855, for the purpose of aiding poor families and homeless children.11 The New York Tribune announced the formation of the society just a few weeks prior to Kingsbury contacting asylum officials: “A society has been organized in Danville, Vermillion [sic] County, Illinois, to aid the poor, and especially the young and orphans, in emigrating from the cities to that rich, beautiful, healthy region, where food, fuel and house room are cheap and labor plenty and well paid. . . . The railroad fare from here is about $25. . . . It is a pity that enough of those who will starve next Winter here for want of work could not be sent to Illinois to fill all the demand for laborers both in doors and out.”12Asylum officials agreed to entrust Kingsbury with their children, and over a period of about two years, under the close supervision of the asylum, sent an estimated three hundred west with him.13 He left New York with a company consisting of both adults and children in March of 1856. The children were “German and Irish chiefly,” and were bound to “suitable persons [identified as farmers and mechanics],—boys under 14 years and girls under 12 years till they arrive at said respective ages, and those over 14 with their consent, the girls till they arrive at 18 years, the boys till 21 years.” People taking a child had to agree to “educate them in the common branches, and to give them on their becoming of age the sum of $125 and a new suit of clothes.” The only compensation the NYJA received was for “the labors of its agents, except $10 for minors and $15 for adults from the persons receiving them.”14The asylum decided to terminate their arrangement with Kingsbury in June of 1857, but within two weeks, the asylum itself commenced sending out companies of their children for indenture in the central and northern counties of Illinois.15 The asylum did decide to continue Kingsbury's tradition of holding annual reunions for the children in Illinois: “The children are all to be brought together at the County seat, on the 6th of July of each year, to enjoy a public dinner.”16Many of the children were excited about being sent west, but some were affected very deeply by the prospect, and they tended to be the children who knew they had one or both parents living. Officials at the asylum tried to minimize these separations: “The hardships attending the separation of children from their relatives is sometimes more apparent than real. But when the children are favorably situated, and are happy and contented in Western rural homes, they generally soon become reconciled to the new circumstances.”17Word would often get out, or a notice would appear in the newspaper, regarding the plans for another company of children to be sent west. It was common for the children to be taken from the asylum over to the asylum's House of Reception prior to their departure. There are several instances noted in the asylum's records of children showing up at the House of Reception from the streets of New York City and asking to go along. Several were allowed to join the company about to depart, never having been officially admitted to the NYJA.18A relative of a little girl named Sarah, who was chosen as a candidate for western indenture in 1875, wrote to the asylum after receiving the asylum's letter asking for permission to send her: Dear Sir,I will now tell you something about Sarah. At Washington's birthday her mother died and left a family of seven. I took six of them and Sarah said she wanted to [go] west. Her father is a bad man. He drinks very hard. He put them all out of the house one night. It was snowing very hard. He says that Sarah can go west if she wants to so please send her west the next company that goes.I have her sisters with me in Connecticut so I will not be able to see her before she does, but I hope she will be a good girl and get a good home. I hope she will always think of the last words her mother said, “Honor thy father and thy mother. And love thy neighbor as thy self.”I will now finish by saying I hope she will always be a lover of the Lord.19The asylum's managers described the children surrendered for the express purpose of being sent west as “well brought up, but whose parents have suffered reverses, or whose parents are dead.” George H. Allan, western agent for the asylum, explained that the pool of candidates for the west during his tenure consisted “mainly of orphans, deserted children, and the offspring of parents too intemperate or too profligate to care or provide for them.”A sampling of three cases of children surrendered for the express purpose of being sent west in the early 1870s: Case 1: A boy named Arthur“The woman who brought this boy, says it was her servant's child. Its mother dying when the child was but 3 days old—Mrs. _____ took him to bring up. Having a large family of her own—she wishes to fully commit this boy to the Asylum on acc't of his disobedience and pilfering—to be placed in a Western home. Boy is smart and intelligent.Case 2: A girl named Mary“The Grandmother states that Mary's father has been gone for three years. Went as Steward of a Steamer Santiago de Cuba—running at that time to Europe, since which time nothing has been heard from him. The mother went off two years ago, abandoning the child and throwing its support upon the Grandmother. Is supposed to be living somewhere in Brooklyn with another man. The child is taken, by us, with consent of Grandmother—to send west.”Case 3: Two brothers“Mrs. _____'s husband was brother to the boys’ mother. She reports the father as worthless—says he has had them in a Mission—that he has entirely neglected them since the death of their mother, two years ago. Mrs. _____ desires the Committee to send these boys west. She says, the father wishes to have them kept somewhere, until they are large enough to get earnings to supply him with liquor.”20A special request would occasionally come in from a court official regarding children being sent west. One such letter, dated January 18, 1877, was sent to the superintendent of the NYJA by police justice Henry Murray of the Second District Police Court: Dear Sir,The circumstances in the case of Mary A. Siebert and her brother Edward appeal so affectingly to our sympathies that, although the boy is within the minimum of age for commitment to your institution, I respectfully suggest and request (if it be within the limits of practicability) that you extend your protecting care to both the hapless orphans, in preference to sending them upon divergent paths at this early period of their lives.21The asylum granted Justice Murray his wish and sent Edward and Mary west together in the April 2, 1877, company. They were placed in the same home in Annawan, Illinois.22Prior to leaving for Dixon, Illinois, in 1876, a company of children was gathered at the House of Reception at 61 West Thirteenth Street for “two or three days before their departure,” where “they received visits from friends and relatives, had their pictures taken, and were fitted out with an extra suit of new clothes.” On Sunday afternoon, they were all assembled in the chapel and listened to short addresses by various gentlemen who were interested in the asylum. Among those who spoke was Apollos R. Wetmore, who was “now in his eightieth year, who has been acting President of the asylum from the time of its inception, 24 years ago.” The children “sang a number of hymns from the Moody and Sankey collection” after Wetmore spoke.23It was customary for each child to be presented with a new bible, and during the colder months, a blanket to carry.24 The boys, attired in the gray uniforms worn at the Asylum, and the girls in gingham and calico dresses of various colors,25 were then marched several blocks to the Pavonia Ferry boats awaiting them at the foot of Chambers Street.26 They made their way about a mile across the Hudson River to the train awaiting them at the Erie Railroad depot in Jersey City, New Jersey. As they prepared for departure, songs were often sung by the children and words of encouragement were given to them in the form of brief speeches by officers of the asylum and influential businessmen in the city.27 The children could be heard singing “Illinois is large enough to give us each a farm” before their departure in May of 1858.28Notices were placed in local newspapers and displayed at the post office of designated towns in Illinois for a few weeks prior to the arrival of the company of children. Such notices designated the day, time, and venue where each distribution of the children would take place, which was most often in the parlor of a hotel near the railroad depot. The event would draw large crowds, with some people traveling from as far away as twenty to thirty miles.29 At one such distribution at Joliet, Illinois in 1879, the newspaper reported the street “from the [St. Nicholas] hotel for nearly a square was blockaded with teams from the country.”30A handbill announcing the arrival of a company of children in Gibson, Illinois, in 1889, read as follows: ASYLUM CHILDREN!A Company of Children, mostly Boys, from the New York Juvenile Asylum, will arrive inGIBSON, AT THE BURWELL HOUSE,THURSDAY MORNING, Nov. 21, 1889,And Remain Until Evening. They are from 7 to 15 Years of age.Homes are wanted for these children with farmers, where they will receive kind treatment and enjoy fair advantages. They have been in the asylum from one to two years, and have received instruction and training preparatory to a term of apprenticeship, and being mostly of respectable parentage, they are desirable children and worthy of good homes.They may be taken at first upon trial for three months, and afterward, if all parties are satisfied, under indentures,—girls until 18, and boys until 21 years of age.The indenture provides for four months schooling each year, until the child has advanced through compound interest, and at the expiration of the term of apprenticeship, two new suits of clothes, and the payment to the girls of fifty, and to the boys of one hundred and fifty dollars.All expenses for transportation will be assumed by the Asylum, and the children will be placed on trial and indentured free of charge.Those who desire to take children on trial are requested to meet them at the hotel at the time above specified.E. [Ebenezer] Wright, Agent.The noticeable disparity in payment to boys versus girls was reflective of the times, as men were thought of as the “breadwinners” of the family. Unfortunately, well over a century later, women are still fighting for equal pay in America.31 In referring to the children as being of “respectable parentage” they were likely referring to those parents whose only crime was being poor versus being alcoholics or in some cases even criminals. “Desirable children” were deemed such due to the fact they received a year or two of basic schooling and were taught proper manners at the asylum.Each prospective foster parent, often referred to as “employer” or “master,” was urged to fill out an application, which was scrupulously reviewed by the agent representing the asylum. In many cases there were far more applications than there were children to fill them. Those selected to take a child could do so on a trial basis, which ranged over time between two weeks and a month. If either the child or the employer found the situation unsatisfactory during the trial period, the child would be returned to the asylum's agent for placement elsewhere. If employer and child were mutually satisfied, the indenture papers were signed.Precious few firsthand accounts of the distributions of children from the NYJA have survived—most all of them now forever lost in the attic of history. One account by a boy named John Dunlap, sent west in 1896, demonstrates that the distribution process was not always pleasant: The woman agent of the Juvenile Asylum was waiting for us at the depot. She took us up to the principal hotel in the town. After we had our supper we were bathed and then taken up to the parlor and seated around on chairs. The folding doors were then opened and in trooped a number of farmers and their wives, who had driven in from thirty miles around.They expressed dissatisfaction and disgust because we were so small. They expected they were going to get fully developed men and women to work for them for nothing. They walked around, and pounded and thumped us as I afterward saw them pounding cattle on market day.A farmer named Ellis secured me. He was a tough master, but his wife was tougher. I had to work as hard in winter as in summer . . . do all the work of a hired man, although I was only fourteen years of age at the time.32Such distributions of children usually went off without a hitch. There was one notable exception—a distribution that took place on September 9, 1875, in Peru, Illinois. The asylum's agent, Ebenezer Wright, was in charge. Several Catholics (some being farmers) had applied for children. Leading the group of Catholics were Fathers Smith and Gray, prominent Catholic clergymen in the vicinity. Three of the four Catholic children in the company were placed with Catholic foster parents, but just as the fourth Catholic child was about to be placed with John C. Hennessy of LaSalle, Illinois, the group of Catholics headed by Fathers Smith and Gray forcibly took possession of six or eight of the children, including Louis and August Simon, Alexander Lindsay, and two sisters, Nannie and Gertrude Wells. The children were whisked away to St. Mary's Academy. Several Catholic applicants for children were apparently upset because their applications were rejected (reason for rejection not given) by Wright. Wright immediately telegraphed the asylum in New York for instructions on how to proceed.On September 14, The Pantagraph in Bloomington, Illinois, published Wright's letter to the editor regarding the fiasco. He ended it with “The action of the Catholics at Peru was hasty and inconsiderate, and it is they, and not myself, who have been placed in a dilemma thereby.”33A few of the children were subsequently returned to Mr. Wright. The records indicate that the Lindsay boy and one of the Wells sisters were returned on October 1, and the second Wells sister on November 6—all to the asylum's western agency. Louis Simon was reported as being in a hotel in Joliet, Illinois, as of September 30.For many years prior, members of the Catholic community had been objecting to what they perceived as the proselytizing of children of Catholic faith by Protestant organizations such as the NYJA and the CAS due to their practice of placing Catholic children in Protestant homes in the West. This concern was probably a significant factor in the establishment of the Catholic Protectory in New York City in 1863; however, there's little evidence to suggest that the Catholic institutions were any less guilty of the practice than their Protestant counterparts.During the early years, admissions of Catholic children to the NYJA far exceeded those of Protestants. This was due, at least in part, to the influx of an estimated half million immigrants from Ireland to America (primarily New York City and Boston, Massachusetts) between 1845 and 1850—many of whom were affected by the infamous potato famine. For instance, in 1854, those children admitted to the asylum included 576 identified as Roman Catholics, and only 292 identified as Protestants.34 The establishment of the Catholic Protectory played a big role in changing this dynamic as time went on, and eventually it was Protestants that outnumbered Catholics in the majority of New York's institutions for children.Proselytizing was never a written or official policy of any of the institutions involved—whether Protestant or Catholic. It was simply a case of what religion the original founders of any particular institution practiced. They thought they had the right, whether it was correct or not, to place the children in families of the same faith the institution identified with.Ironically, in 1875—the year the debacle in Peru, Illinois, took place—the New York Legislature (apparently recognizing the issue was a source of contention) passed the Children's Law, which read, in part: “In placing any such child in any such institution, it shall be the duty of the officer, justice or person placing it there, to commit such child to an orphan asylum, charitable or other reformatory institution that is governed or controlled by officers or persons of the same religious faith [emphasis mine] as the parents of such child, so far as practicable.”35On May 5, 1897, Governor Brown of New York held a hearing regarding a bill that would add the stipulation that destitute or orphan children should also be placed in families of the same faith. The CAS argued that since many placed out by their organization were Hebrews and some were Catholics, it would be impossible to find homes for them if a “religious test was made,” adding that no Jewish farmers could be found to take the Jewish children—it was “American farmers who would take the boys.” Mornay Williams, president of the NYJA, opposed the bill because of the difficulties he envisioned with carrying out its provisions. He explained that large numbers of Russian and Polish Jews came into the asylum's care and that the Jews “were not an agricultural people.” He declared, “We could not find homes of exactly the same religious faith for these children . . . therefore we should have to abandon the work. Other States make no such condition. Why should this State?”36An orphan train rider named Ann Harrison, sent to Nebraska by the Catholic-run New York Foundling Hospital when she was just an infant, summed it all up quite well: “It doesn't matter what you are when you come in there, you're going to go out a Catholic.” Decades after being sent west, Ann obtained a copy of her birth certificate in New York, and learned she was of Jewish descent—the daughter of Moe Cohen and Jennie Rubin.37Indenturing was not a new concept in America. Indentured servants first arrived in America in the decade following the settlement of Jamestown by the Virginia Company in 1607. The idea of indentured servitude was born of a need for cheap labor. The earliest settlers soon realized that they had lots of land to care for but few people to care for it. Men, women, and children entered into these earliest indentures in exchange for having their passage to America paid.38NYJA boys were primarily indentured to farmers, but also to blacksmiths and other tradesmen. Girls were most often indentured to learn “housewifery.” The terms of the indenture stipulated the children had to agree to “do no damage . . . nor see it done by others, without preventing the same.” Nor was the child to “absent myself day or night from the said party's service without the said party's leave, nor frequent porter-houses, taverns, play-houses, or gambling-houses.”39 The terms of indentures of the NYJA fluctuated slightly over the years.In 1887, the asylum wrote to all the children under indenture in the West and asked what they thought of lowering the age from twenty-one to eighteen for the boys so as to match the age of the girls. One very astute fifteen-year-old boy named George H. Miller gave his opinion on the matter: “When the boys come West they do not know any more about work than a cow knows about Sunday, and it takes them several years to learn all about farming, and not one in a dozen at eighteen knows what is best for him, nor how to appreciate a good home. At that age they are apt to have the big head, and if they were left to themselves, many of them would become tramps. I could say more, but I think you will grasp my ideas.”40 As it turned out, the asylum was of a like opinion and did not opt to alter the age, nor did they ever question doing so again. The indentures of the New York Juvenile Asylum were made “valid and binding” through an Act of the Illinois Legislature on February 18, 1861.41Two of the Illinois Senators who sponsored the act had a very personal connection to the children they sought to protect with it. They had themselves taken in children from the Asylum from a company sent west in February 1860 and seen firsthand how mutually beneficial the asylum's indenturing system was in that it taught the children a vocation and at the same time provided much needed help to the person they were indentured to. Judge James M. Rodgers of Carlyle took in a boy named John Sullivan, and William H. Underwood of Belleville took in a girl named Johanna Farrell.42In 1898, the asylum decided it was time to focus on indenturing children in Iowa instead of Illinois. They explained their reason for doing so: “The State of Illinois is itself beginning to suffer from the same influence of the city that the State of New York . . . losing its place as one of the States where a large percentage of its people own their own homes, and becoming a State where large numbers of persons are tenants only of the residences they occupy.” They added, “The mortgage indebtedness of the State is increasing . . . and the conditions of congested life, which bear heaviest on the poor, are becoming apparent in that State as in the State of New York.43The Asylum subsequently indentured several hundred children in Iowa—primarily in the eastern portion of the state.44Most visits to the children's homes were made for the purpose of settling disputes or removing a child that was not working out. As time passed the NYJA adopted a policy of more frequent visits to check on the welfare of the children, but for the first several decades of western placement such visits were very infrequent.During the early years, the asylum relied heavily on county agents they secured in Illinois to help the western agent with finding homes, receiving applications for children, and conducting other duties associated with indenturing the children: “We endeavor, wherever we locate a company of children, to enlist the sympathies of clergymen, school teachers, and other philanthropic individuals . . . to exercise for us a watch and care over the children, and communicate to us any information concerning them which may be deemed of interest.”45Asylum officials recognized the agents in their 1859 annual report: “These local agents have, in some cases, performed very arduous labors for several years past, without compensation, and we take much pleasure in being able here to record our warmest thanks for their generous efforts to advance our work.”46In addition, employers were asked to answer a series of questions in a questionnaire the asylum mailed approximately every six months; however, compliance with filling out and returning such questionnaires was a problem for the asylum from the very onset. As early as 1855, officials reported, “It is much to be regretted that masters are slow in performing that part of their contract. In many cases we have had answers, some of them exceedingly satisfactory, but we are sorry to state that hardly a majority have yet responded to our call.”47 In their 1859 annual report, asylum officials reflected back on the situation: “We did not receive regular and systematic replies from more than one half of the persons addressed.”48When questionnaires were returned, the replies were not always positive: “Lizzie is here yet and well. Attends church and Sunday school regularly. She is not such a girl as we like at all. She is more trouble than all my family; it is only through charity we keep her.”49 They did not elaborate on just what the trouble entailed.Another employer wrote: “There is no truth in him. He wets the bed every few nights (other specifications [likely referring to masturbation] are too indecent to mention here). I think we have put up with it long enough. He gets worse instead of better. Please write as soon as you get this and let me know when you want him delivered for I don't want to keep him any longer.”50One of the more positive replies to the questionnaires included one from the widow of a man a boy was indentured to in Lincoln, Illinois: “My husband has gone to his Heavenly Father I trust, but [I] still keep Frank. He does my little chores and goes to school and gets along well in his studies. The [school] master gives a good account of him. His health has never been very good.”51 It was not uncommon for a widow to take a child on indenture from the asylum. Girls could be a big help to her with housework, and boys with general farm work.Some replies were mixed, such as one from an employer in Metamora, Illinois, regarding the boy indentured to him: “Peter is still with me and enjoying good health. Attends church and Sabbath School regularly. Has attended district school a little more than six months. He is a tolerable good boy but has some unpleasant traits of character. If he is a good boy I will do a good part by him. There is an outside influence against your children I am sorry to say.”52 The “outside influence” he referred to was the fact that it was common for many neighboring farmers to try to entice the indentured children to leave their homes by offering them wages to come and work for them.The children were encouraged to write letters and report on their well-being, many of which were chosen to appear in the asylum's annual reports. Until 1877, only the initials of the children and foster parents were used, with full names and addresses appearing in subsequent years. In a letter from eleven-year-old Julius Herzberg, he declared, “I eat twelve pancakes in the morning and three pieces of beefsteak and have good coffee to drink,” while another boy reported he had memorized no less than 200 bible verses in the three months since being sent west.53Many children continued to write long after their indentures expired. Such was the case with Peter Durkin, who was indentured to a man in Metamora, Illinois, in October 1868. He wrote the asylum when he was twenty-five, proclaiming, “Removing me from the temptations of a great city to the broad prairies of Illinois, and putting me with an honest tiller of the soil was a good thing.”54By 1867, asylum officials deemed it necessary to establish a permanent agency house in Illinois due to the increasing difficulty of keeping track of what was fast becoming a large number of children indentured there.55 In addition, they found it necessary for the superintendent of the asylum's House of Reception to remain in New York and tend to duties there instead of also being tasked with handling the distributions and fol