I just recently finished reading Christina Baker Kline's book about a little known but shameful part of our history. The book is fiction but the events are true. Between 1864 and 1929 "Orphan Trains" carried over 200,000 children from New York to the Midwest for the purpose of them being so called "adopted." But most of them were used as free labor on farms and factories and elsewhere. And, as you can imagine, many were beaten, starved and sexually assaulted.
These were immigrant children, either orphaned or abandoned. It's estimated that there were 10,000 abandoned children at any given time in New York City durning that period of time. Those who were gathered and put on the train had experienced terrible trauma and had no idea where they were going.
Here's how it worked: The train would pull into a station, the children would be lined up, babies to teenagers, and the townspeople would be there to inspect them; looking at their teeth, limbs and so on. If they chose a child, they signed the papers right there and took the child.
Reading this so reminded me of the slave blocks in the south where they would bring Africans to the center of town to be inspected before being purchased.
Like slaves in the south, these children lost any sense of their on identities and backgrounds. Siblings were often separated. Names were changed.
We don't know much about this history because many train riders never talked about it. We're in danger now of having the last of them die before we can know their stories.
I don't know about you but I can relate to these kids on several levels. Especially the childhood feeling of never quite belonging.
***
