Orphan trains The story of Charles Loring Brace and the children he saved and failed

Review by Choice Review

O'Connor joins Marilyn Irvin Holt (The Orphan Trains; CH, Dec'92) and Miriam Langsam (Children West, 1964) in retelling the story of how New England-born Rev. Charles Loring Brace came to New York City, founded the Children's Aid Society (CAS), and between 1853 and 1929 placed out some 150,000 to 250,000 children in Protestant farm homes in the Midwest. O'Connor (Lehman College) expands on Holt's and Langsam's work, providing a fuller portrait of Brace's charitable interests and intellectual pursuits and devoting three insightful chapters to case studies of individual children. His discussion of Loring Brace, Charles's son and successor to the CAS, breaks new ground, but the author's assessment is, ultimately, uneven and presentist. He condemns the elder Brace for his racist and sexist outlooks and for deliberately misrepresenting the CAS's failure to meet its goals. At the same time, O'Connor writes in a hagiographic tone about Brace, which leads him to downplay Brace's anti-Catholicism and his resistance to reform. One difficulty in accepting O'Connor's conclusions is that the book is poorly researched and footnoted, with the result that many statements are unsupported with evidence, and the historical context for understanding Brace and the CAS is often missing or inaccurate. College libraries. E. W. Carp Pacific Lutheran University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

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Review by Booklist Review

Multitudes of street urchins constantly abused or neglected as they struggle for survival--these are images we associate today with urban centers in Third World nations. Yet in the nineteenth century, such horrors were commonplace in most large American and European cities. In mid-nineteenth-century New York, many of these children wound up in prisons or workhouses. Charles Loring Brace strove mightily to save some of these children by providing them with sustenance and then sending them westward by train to families. O'Connor is an author and former New York public school teacher. In this riveting and often heartbreaking account of Brace's successes and failures, he describes the process of adoption, the assumptions behind this massive effort, and the lessons we have learned, or should have learned. Many of the personal accounts of the children and their ultimate fates are both moving and disturbing. This is a very valuable and informative work that must compel us to ponder how we approach seemingly intractable social ills. --Jay Freeman

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

From 1854 to 1929, an estimated 250,000 children were "emigrated" out of "vice-ridden" urban areas and put up for grabs in the West, where labor was in short supply. Brace (1826-1890) educated himself for the ministry, but under the influence of Darwin and progressive European experiments like the Rauhe Haus, a children's settlement house, he set about saving lives. Rather than work with adults ("saving" prostitutes or banning rum), Brace chose to save their children. As organizer of the Children's Aid Society (CAS), he devised a series of projects to help street kids help themselves: lodging houses, industrial schools and, finally, the infamous "orphan trains." As haphazard and casual as Brace's adoption system may have been, it was the only solution to child abuse and neglect in America at the time. O'Connor intercuts his narrative with the life stories of a few orphan train successes and failures, as if to emphasize that there's no clear verdict on the CAS and what they did. While the book is organized as a biography of Brace, O'Connor digresses compellingly, drawing readers into accounts of rancher warfare, protestant philosophy and Horatio Alger's pedophilia. With a fast-forward to modern times, he reveals that there's nothing new about the crises in what we now call the foster care system. (Feb.) Forecast: From the typeface to the footnotes, this effort is too scholarly for general interest audiences, although it's bound to be required reading for anyone in the social work field. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

O’Connor ( Will My Name Be Shouted Out? , 1996) crafts a vibrant, wide-ranging narrative of Charles Loring Brace’s child-welfare movement, which had a profound influence on America’s treatment of disadvantaged youth. Born in 1826 and raised in a staunchly religious New England household, Brace was seemingly made to serve his fellow human beings—specifically the homeless children of New York City. He founded the Children’s Aid Society in 1853, and one year later the first load of street kids hoping for job training and perhaps new families steamed toward Dowagiac, Michigan. They were never called “orphan trains” during Brace’s lifetime; he referred to his practice of sending children to the country to be indentured or (in the best cases) adopted as “placing out.” In marvelously evocative and eminently readable prose, O’Connor relates an all-American story of explosive urban growth, of families destroyed by a nascent capitalism, of the West’s myths and promises. First-hand accounts from some of the 250,000 orphans who rode the trains between 1854 and 1929 provide a window into this era, and much space is dedicated to the movement’s most stunning successes and failures—from John Brady (who became governor of Alaska) to Charley Miller (who was hanged for a double murder). O’Connor balances these stories with a well-constructed chronicle of the ups and downs of the Children’s Aid Society. He also delineates changing perceptions about disadvantaged children that eventually led much of the nation to dismiss Brace as a figurehead for outmoded philosophies. O'Connor’s meticulous research studs the narrative with many marvelous details, from a description of Frederick Law Olmsted’s Staten Island farm to the atmosphere of Brace’s Newsboy’s Lodging House. Extremely engaging history.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Prologue: Working for Human HappinessOn the morning of October 1, 1854, forty-five children sat on the front benches of a meetinghouse in Dowagiac, Michigan. Most were between ten and twelve years old, though at least one was six and a few were young teenagers. During the week the meetinghouse served as a school, but on that day, a Sunday, it was a Presbyterian church, and more than usually crowded, not only because the children had taken so many seats, but because the regular parishioners had been augmented by less devout neighbors curious to see the orphans. For the last couple of weeks notices had been running in the newspapers, and bills had been posted at the general store, the tavern, and the railroad station asking families to take in homeless boys and girls from New York City. The children had arrived on the train from Detroit at three that morning and had huddled together on the station platform until sunup. They had spent the previous night on a steamer crossing Lake Erie from Buffalo, New York, and not a one of them had avoided being soiled by seasickness -- their own or their fellow passengers -- or by the excreta of the animals traveling on the deck above. The night before, they had slept on the floor of an absolutely dark freight car, amid a crowd of German and Irish immigrants heading west from Albany. During their first night out from New York City, on a riverboat traveling up the Hudson, they had slept in proper berths, with blankets and mattresses -- but only because the boats captain, after hearing the tales they told of their lives, had taken pity on them.The childrens days of hard travel were clearly evident in their pallor and the subtle deflation of their features. Their clothes -- which had been new when they left New York -- were stained and ripped and emitted a distinct animal rankness. Their expressions were wary, as if they had been caught doing something wrong and were wondering whether they were going to be punished. In some of the younger children this wariness verged on fear, but most of the older boys and girls had known too much disappointment and loneliness to be afraid of what was about to happen to them, or at least to reveal that fear, even to themselves. Some of them cast glances -- challenging, or ingratiating -- back at the men and women seated behind them; some looked down at their shoes, while others stared straight ahead at the young man beside the altar, whose enthusiasm, accent, and fluid gestures marked him as a city preacher. His name was E. P. Smith, and he was telling the audience about the organization he represented: the Childrens Aid Society, which had been founded only one and a half years earlier by a young minister named Charles Loring Brace.Brace, a native of Hartford, Connecticut, had come to New York in 1848 to study theology and had been horrified both by the hordes of vagrant children -- beggars, bootblacks, flower sellers, and prostitutes -- who crowded the citys streets and by th Excerpted from Orphan Trains: The Story of Charles Loring Brace and the Children He Saved and Failed by Stephen O'Connor All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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