Rev. Charles Loring Brace is credited with beginning the institution of adoption in the U.S. around 1854. Having a deep concern for many children in the New York City slums who had been abandoned and were often starving and “drifting about our streets,” he formed the Children’s Aid Society. This organization sought out towns, usually in the Midwest, that were willing to place children in adoptive homes. In 1854 the first “orphan train” left New York City with 46 orphans from age seven to fifteen bound for Dowagiac, Michigan. There they were chosen by farm families eager to give them homes. Over a 75-year period, nearly 100,000 children were sent by trains to find adoptive homes in the Midwest …
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