Sometimes, because we are so used to the way we do things, we forget it wasn’t always that way. We assume that if an ancestor changed their name, they went to court to do so because that’s what most people do now. We also assume that if a child was adopted, some well-defined legal pathways were followed––again, because that’s what is expected today. However, the reality is that names were changed all the time without anyone taking any legal steps, and children were handed over to friends, clergy, family members, and other willing takers, quite often with no paper trail. Orphanages held thousands of children who still had one or more living parent, and children struggling to survive in poverty were often literally snatched off the streets and placed in institutions, sometimes without parental consent.
Many children in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries lived in foster care or were contracted out as indentured servants by family or institutions. Farm families that needed extra hands often eagerly accepted orphaned or abandoned children as workers. Think about the classic tale of Anne of Green Gables, written in 1908, by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Eleven-year-old Anne Shirley, who had spent most of her life in foster care and orphanages, is mistakenly sent to a farm on Prince Edward Island in Canada to live with a middle-aged brother and sister, who were expecting an orphan boy to work on their farm. After she wins the hearts of the Cuthbert siblings, Anne remains in their stable home, is educated, and finds love and acceptance in her new surroundings. She was far luckier than many!
In real-life, young Andrew Barling, born into the slums of southside Chicago in 1888, was sleeping in the street when he was not quite ten years old and picked up as a vagrant in a sweep of the neighborhood. He subsequently became a ward of the Cook County juvenile court system. Although both of his parents were alive, albeit unmarried, he was sent to a school for boys, where he remained for several months. Then, in the name of creating decent, productive citizens, he was placed on one of the infamous orphan trains and shipped to South Dakota. He was apprenticed there to a Russian-German immigrant farmer, who was good to him, but always treated him as a farmhand. He was never formally adopted, nor were his parents given the opportunity to redeem him from the bureaucracy of the state of Illinois. Like Anne, Andrew made the most of his early life. He met and married a local woman, moved to California, raised a large family, and made a success of his life in spite of his rocky beginning.
“Nomads of the Street,” by Jacob Riis, New York, c. 1900, public domain; Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sleeping,_homeless_children_-_Jacob_Riis.jpg
Were There Orphans in Your Family?
Remember that private arrangements were common and often without formal paperwork.
- Children were frequently removed by social service agencies in an attempt to improve their living conditions. Many ended up in institutions.
- Addresses of institutions will be listed in city directories, and relationships between people in those institutions may appear in the census, depending on the year.
- Locating and using agency and institutional records, however, is problematic. Many records were lost when institutions closed, and privacy restrictions are in place for many others.
- There is quite a bit of information available about orphan trains. Newspapers of the time are filled with abundant advertisements for “Homes Wanted for Orphans.” Books and websites contain a lot of detail on the trains.
- Some adoption agencies published reports on the children in their care. Depending on time and location, you may be able to access them.
- Court records may provide information: guardianships, juvenile court records, state legislative records, and probate records are potentially places to find clues on adoptions and indentures.
If you are researching orphans, a great place to start is with the FamilySearch Wiki page, “United States Adoption.”
In St. Louis, the definitive work on local orphanages is Researching Orphans and Orphanage Care in St. Louis, written by Viki Fagyal, and sold in the StLGS secure online store either as a book or a downloadable PDF file. (If you are an StLGS member, remember to log into the website first for your coupon code to obtain your discounted price.)
More Resources on Orphans:
Johnson, Mary Ellen, Orphan Train Riders: Their Own Stories, volumes 1–6, Orphan Train Heritage Society of America, $22 each volume, https://orphantraindepot.org/national-orphan-train-complex-store/
National Orphan Train Complex, Concordia, Kansas, https://orphantraindepot.org
“Orphans,” CyndisList, https://www.cyndislist.com/orphans/
“Who Wants a Little Boy?” by Maureen Taylor, Family Chronicle Magazine, November/December 2005, pgs. 14–16.
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