Charles Loring Brace (1826-1938) is considered the founder of the modern foster care movement. He started the Children's Aid Society in New York, and launched the "orphan trains" program that helped an estimated 100,000 to 400,000 children.

Brace became interested in the cause while studying at Union Theological Seminar in New York City. He was the descendant of a prominent Hartford, CT family and had attended Yale University. At age 26, the ordained Methodist minister decided that he wasn't cut out for the pulpit. Instead, he wanted to help the numerous children he saw all around him in the slums of New York City.

Homeless Children

It is hard to believe, but estimates from 1854 counted the number of homeless children in New York City at about 34,000. One of the causes was the flood of immigrants, who had left conditions of poverty in other countries only to find that New York City was no better. There were few jobs for them, and those who worked faced long hours, no benefits, dangerous duties, and low wages. Children were asked to go to the streets to beg for money, sell newspapers or matches, or bring in household income in other ways.

Some children ended up living on the streets. They were thrown out of their households, were runaways, or were simply trying to survive after their parents died. Their conditions were deplorable. Many were near-starvation, few had warm clothing in winter, and almost none had any medical care.

These children became known as "street Arabs" or "the dangerous classes." Because the children faced problems with street violence, many of them formed gangs and presented a growing problem for police. As a result, some children were arrested, and even those as young as five were thrown in jail with adults.

"Misery Row"

In his 1872 essay, Brace described the conditions that inspired him to focus his efforts on helping these children:

My attention had been called to the extraordinarily degraded condition of the children in a district lying on the west side of the city, between Seventeenth and Nineteenth Streets, and the Seventh and Tenth Avenues. A certain block, called "Misery Row," in Tenth Avenue, was the main seed-bed of crime and poverty in the quarter, and was also invariably a "fever-nest." Here the poor obtained wretched rooms at a comparatively low rent; these they sub-let, and thus, in little, crowded, close tenements, were herded men, women and children of all ages. The parents were invariably given to hard drinking, and the children were sent out to beg or to steal. Besides them, other children, who were orphans, or who had run away from drunkards' homes, or had been working on the canal-boats that discharged on the docks near by, drifted into the quarter, as if attracted by the atmosphere of crime and laziness that prevailed in the neighborhood. These slept around the breweries of the ward, or on the hay-barges, or in the old sheds of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Streets. They were mere children, and kept life together by all sorts of street jobs--helping the brewery laborers, blackening boots, sweeping sidewalks, "smashing baggages" (as they called it), and the like. Herding together, they soon began to form an unconscious society for vagrancy and idleness. Finding that work brought but poor pay, they tried shorter roads to getting money by petty thefts, in which they were very adroit. Even if they earned a considerable sum by a lucky day's job, they quickly spent it in gambling, or for some folly.

Initially, Brace tried to set up schools to teach children skills that would help them find work. But few attended, and most of those who did show up did not end up learning a trade or finding work. Orphanages were already overcrowded.

Westward Ho!

Brace's idea was to send homeless children "to the West." There, he imagined, they would find homes with farm families. New York was crowded, but the abundance of food and good people in "the West" would be a better place for these children.

A New "Society"

After founding the Children's Aid Society in 1853, Brace conducted a test. That year, he found homes for 164 boys and 43 girls at farms in New York and other New England states. These placements were a success, so he plunged forward with the "Orphan Train" concept. In 1854, the Society sent 46 boys and girls to Dowagiak, Michigan. Within a week, all found homes.

The orphan train did not originate with Brace. Other groups had tried this in England, Germany and even the U.S., but on a much smaller scale and with varying degrees of success. Nor was the idea of placing children in other families' homes new. Prior to the 1800s, the method involved placing homeless and orphaned children as indentured servants for better-off families, with the idea that such a situation was better than street life or an abusive, overcrowded orphanage.

None of the previous plans grew to the magnitude of what Charles Loring Brace started. When the orphan train program ended 75 years later, it had been the largest children's migration in history.

There is widespread belief that as an orphan train stopped in a town, the children were herded off and presented to townspeople, who would hand-select their choices, with the rejects returning to the train hoping for better luck in the next town. This did occur, but very seldom.

Brace had raised money from writing articles and giving speeches, as well as outright asking wealthy families for donations. He acquired discount fares from trains. He "advertised" the idea. Posters were placed in towns along train tracks, mentioning the program. Brace asked for a committee in each town to pre-screen parents and make sure they were able to provide a good home and did not have ulterior motives. Of course, in a few towns, committees approved anyone who asked. But for the most part, the system worked.

These children are of various ages and of both sexes, having been thrown friendless upon the world. They come under the auspices of the Children's Aid Society of New York. They are well disciplined, having come from the various orphanages. The citizens of this community are asked to assist the agent in finding good homes for them. Persons taking these children must be recommended by the local committee. They must treat the children in every way as a member of the family, sending them to school, church, Sabbath school and properly clothe them until they are 17 years old. The following well-known citizens have agreed to act as local committee to aid the agents in securing homes:
O. H. AVERY, E. B. WOOLFOLK, H. F. CHILDERS, WM. YOUNG, G. W. COLBERT
Applications must be made to, and endorsed by, the local committee. An address will be made by the agent. Come and see the children and hear the address.
Distribution will take place at the Opera House, Friday, Feb. 25, at 1:30 p.m.

B. W. TICE and MISS A. L. HILL, Agents, 105 E. 22nd St., New York City. Rev. J. W. SWAN, University Place, Nebraska, Western Agent