The Orphan Trains
The Orphan Trains ran from about 1854 to 1930 and the estimated number of Orphans who were "placed out" stands around 200,000 to 250,000. With that said, are you holding onto your seat? Good, because that number means that there are about 2,000,000 (two million) descendants of Orphan Train Riders living today. You could be one.
We first learned about the Orphan Trains from a friend who is related to Ed Borin Bowers (his chart is in the Charts section). This was in October 2008. Since then we've learned so much more. We did a bit of research on the web and found that basically orphanages, and the like, took babies and young kids from New York, especially, and other east coast cities, who either didn't have a family, were orphaned, abused, etc., etc., and put them on trains with Agents who then transported the children westward in hopes of finding homes and/or families for them...thus the term Orphan Train Riders.
But it wasn't done as you would expect. After all, it isn't a perfect world. I want you to imagine this story as you read, and I hope you have a very creative imagination, because you're going to need it. So far, imagine that you are a child and you have been placed or taken by an orphanage because your mom took ill and died and your dad doesn't know what to do. He has no family, for whatever reason, and decides to give his babies, his children to an orphanage in hopes that they will find the perfect family to adopt his once precious charge. Or, you can imagine that your parents are drunks and super abusive and you manage to escape from them, only to be popped into an orphanage, with promises of a better life. Imagine whatever you want that takes you from home and finds you in an orphanage.
So far, you and your sibling(s) are in the orphanage and you are terrified because the older kids are mean and angry at their own miserable lives and they take it out on the younger kids. It doesn't take much to want out. And you find out that there is a way made for all, and you see the other kids leave the orphanage almost daily, without a clue as to where they are going. That's scary as well.
Then one day it's your turn, or perhaps you and your siblings (if you were unlucky enough to have siblings). You're suddenly snatched out of the orphanage, barely able to hang onto the little hand of your brother or sister, you're given a clean change of clothes and blindly escorted onto a train . . . where you find dozens or more of other youngsters in the same situation as you. Your fear is beyond anything you've ever experienced before, and you find safety in the inner sanctum of your heart and mind. Deafening, numbing silence.
The train clicky-clacks across the countryside all night, rocking you into a deeper state of numbness as the Agent in charge reminds everyone to be quiet, stay clean, and for God's sake be on your best behaviour . . . or else! By morning you look out to find another world, something unlike what you've ever seen before. Where's the city? you wonder. What happened to my home? you silently ponder.
The whistle of the train jolts you out of your reverie and back from the imaginary city you once knew. You now see a small town with several adults waiting on the train platform where the train is stopping. You are again warned to be quiet and be good, as you and your siblings are paraded out onto the platform. Depending of the outcome of your life and that brief moment on the platform, you will look back and remember it as the day you were rescued, or worse, the day you were nothing more than that of a slave who was dolled out to the family with the right story. You're checked over for good health, good teeth, after all, you can't be a burden to the receiving family. They check your muscles and strength to make sure you'll do them good in the fields. But something goes wrong and you aren't chosen. You are just breathing a sigh of relief when something happens that you never expected. Words are shared by the adults and the Agent takes a firm grip of your shirt because he knows what's going to happen next.
You're little sister or brother is pulled off the platform and quickly disappears from your sight. They have been accepted into someone else's family but you haven't. No matter how hard you struggle to chase after your sibling, you are forcibly returned to the train to be lulled by the clicky-clack of the tracks deeper and deeper into your inner sanctum that's now wrapped with a new kind of fear . . . the fear of rejection.
Everything has happened so fast that you don't even know how to think clearly. After all, what ever happened to the fact that a kid didn't have to think clearly? What ever happened to being a kid? You realize that you no longer know who you are or even where you're going, but one thing is for sure . . . the next stop might be the one where a family finds you acceptable and if so, then what? Acceptable as a child slave? Acceptable as family member? And while you are silently wondering you realize you've just learned a new word . . . acceptable, and it has a terrible meaning to it.
No matter how much you pretend to not think about what happened, it will affect every single moment of your life, both waking and sleeping. Depending on the family you went to, you will have either wonderful memories or not. But you will forever remember the day you lost your home and family, or the day you were whisked from the streets, the days in the orphanage, the Agents, the train, the platforms, and even the day you lost your last loved one. As you grow older you will eventually compare that train platform to that of the platforms of the slavery auctions. One day you will most certainly look back on these circumstances and realize those train platforms were nothing more than a moneyless Auction block. With tears in your heart you will eventually see that you were nothing more than the white version of the slavery Auctions.
You decide to keep those memories bottled up inside you, because after all, it's just to traumatic to have to talk about. As much as you try to keep it a secret part of your life, as time goes by, you end up struggling to keep it secret from your children's life, and of course, their children's life. You think you're doing the right thing by that silence and think you have taken those memories with you when your life has finally come to a close. But what you never counted on was the love your descendants had for you and for what you endured. You never knew that for generations your descendants would be affected by your plight. You never knew that now they would be scouring the Internet, the libraries, whatever they can to find the missing link of your past and their lost heritage.
Now that I have written this, and wiped the tears out from my keyboard keys, I'm struck by the thought that the "Orphan Trains" were the white version of our Native brother's "Trail of Tears". Both WERE a desecration to our humanity and never should have happened.
Why do I say that? Because from all my recent research I have learned that most of the Orphan Train Riders did not go into loving and nurturing families. They were instead used as general laborers, indentured servants, slaves, (or worse) . . . and when old enough ran away to find their own lives.
