Libraries, Archives, and Museums Local libraries, archives, historical societies, and museums often keep records of local newspapers, photographs, or other items to help you learn more about your orphan train rider.

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 trains were the brainchild of Charles Loring Brace, a minister who was troubled by the large number of homeless and impoverished children in New York. A massive influx of new immigrants had crowded the city, and a series of financial panics and depressions in the late 19th century created unemployment.

In Orphan Train, I wanted to write about how traumatic events beyond our control can shape and define our lives. “”People who cross the threshold between the known world and that place where the impossible does happen discover the problem of how to convey that experience,”” the novelist Kathryn Harrison wrote.