ORPHAN TRAINS

GOSS

Posted By: Michael Goss (email)
Date: 4/1/2025 at 03:12:47

Ok, I am going to put this out there and see how much interest that develops and help that people would be willing to donate their time. There were 10,000 children fostered or adopted in the 75 years that the Orphan Trains operated. 1854 to 1929, the very first train actually ended up in Iowa City at an orphanage.
All from New York, Iowa was third highest in the nation of 47 of the 48 continental states visited with at least one train. 300,000 or more children sent nationwide. Maybe Iowa can organize a volunteer search to find as many as we can. I have a system but it is VERY time consuming. 95% of all Iowa towns on a rail line were visited by a train. Even more interesting, as much as 25% of the current Iowa population can probably find an Orphan Train Rider in their family tree. I have found four and maybe another in my tree. All from one train. Only way to find as many as we can is to search all townships in ALL 99 counties on EVERY page of every Census that applies--for me there are 10 Censuses (I only checked one Census 1895 Iowa and I found thirty children), that have a rail line running through the towns or close by the towns. There was a depot every ten miles or so in Iowa on a rail line and most towns followed the trains. Finding them is easy, researching and recording their lives is daunting to say the least. But--one volunteer from as many towns in Iowa as we can and do a ten mile radius around your town. Focusing on farming towns but cities also need checking (low priority). It is impossible to find them all and I think Linda Zieman agrees. I am writing an article on this. I started with 5 Riders and found another 25. I even found eleven that did not qualify because they were not born in New York. Once you start searching that New York will pop right out at you. The next ten years are crucial especially for the older trains I have even communicated with many descendants of the Riders because they contacted me when they read my article about their ancestor. Linda Zieman knows what I am working on and from a single page article this has turned into about 60 pages if not more by the time it is finished May 1. About half of the pages are already posted on https://www.facebook.com/LawlerHistoricalSociety/ look for 6 different photos of a train in the photo section going back to July 14, 2024. Start at the oldest and work forward. Check it out, who knows, maybe this can snowball and go viral. I think 10,000 kids are worth it. If I did it myself, shudders, it would take a lifetime. It would really put Iowa on the map then!!! I am open to communication. Overwhelm me--I dare you!!!