Organized by reformers in the Eastern United States, the program swept children westward in an attempt to both remove them from the squalor and poverty of the city and help provide labor for farms out west. Between 1854 and 1929, up to 200,000 children were placed on the trains and adopted by new families.

Therefore, he arranged to send the orphaned children to pioneer families. The Orphan Trains and the practice of “placing children out” into homes that would accept them was the precursor to the modern foster care system in the United States. A quarter million children rode the orphan trains from 1854 to 1929.

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline is her fifth book that deals with "pervasive and insidious legacy of trauma." Based on the Orphan Train movement of the early 1900's, the novel addresses the emotional trauma of two women whose stories are different, yet bound together by rootlessness, no ties with a particular ...

Families acted from various motives, and not all children who rode orphan trains found happy homes. Some suffered abuse, were treated like hired help or were never fully accepted. Officials knew that placing out was imperfect and did what they could to screen inappropriate families.