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American Experience - The Orphan Trains

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American Experience - The Orphan Trains tells the story of how The Children's Aid Society was formed in 1853 to help poor and often homeless children in New York City get a better life by sending them on long train rides to more rural parts of our nation. It was thought that if the children could escape the city they would have a better chance at a happy, normal life. We see how Charles Loring Brace founded the society when the only help available for children was a type of "orphan asylum" in which the children were taught skills so that they could earn money.

Brace desperately wanted a better way to help these children; he and his peers did not believe that the orphan asylums were teaching skills valuable enough to truly help the children. This program changed the lives of so many children--between 1853 and 1929, more than 150,000 abandoned, abused and orphaned children were taken from a life of poverty usually while living on the streets and begging for money, and sent, more often than not, to relatively stable homes where they could have a much better sense of family.

On the down side, however, children were essentially rounded up (the film doesn't say exactly how) and sent forcibly to other parts of the country by train where they hopefully had a real chance at a better childhood. Of course there's more to the story but I don't want to spoil it for you so I'll leave the rest out. You can rest assured that if this topic interests you, you won't be bored watching this film!

The real electricity of the film comes from invaluable interview footage in which now elderly people who rode orphan trains tell their most personal stories about their experiences both good and bad. The emotions these people display truly moved me and I could see that in some ways The Children's Aid Society had helped some while it had been insensitive to the emotional needs of other children.

The DVD comes with few extras; there is a type of advertisement for other features of the Public Broadcasting System website but unfortunately that's about it. However, this film is so good I can overlook it. Another reviewer mentions the fact that the photos and stories of these children are about white children only--what happened to African-American children and children of other races? I would have liked to know.

American Experience-The Orphan Trains is quite a powerful story and I recommend this for anyone interested in this topic.

I am a Special Education Teacher of high school age students. I used this DVD as a concrete learning tool after we had read in the textbook about this event happening in our country many years ago. This movie is of such high quality that it helped my students realize that these young people really existed and how they felt going through this experience. In turn, my students also realized how fortunate they are to have their own families that love them and take care of them. Many very important life lessons are taught in this film. My students were so quiet and focused while viewing this film. They also learned about how our society has progressed and how much better children are cared for in this country at this time. They also learned the skill about caring for others who can't take care of themselves. I highly recommend this film to all Social Studies teachers. It is one of the important success stories of our country and how conditions for children have greatly improved. Frances Palmer

This was an amazing look at life in the late 1800's to early 1900's. My Grandfather was one of those orphans. He died before I was born, so I never got to meet him, but felt a connection with him while watching this DVD. It gave me a sense of what he must have gone through during his early life, and an appreciation of his adoptive parents, whom I also didn't know. They provided a good home for him, and a stable environment for him to grow up in. My Mother told me that he had been adopted, but I'm not sure she even knew the circumstances. A distant cousin recently told me about it. Thank you so much for providing this DVD.

This is a wonderful DVD to introduce students into this aspect of american history. I wish it could have been a little longer, perhaps had more interviews and stories as special features seperate from the main feature etc... so my students could use it as part of research. Anything made by PBS is always high quality and has resources on PBS.org.

My grandfather came to Minnesota on the Orphan Train from New York city. It is very hard to find information on the orphan train and it is neglected in history classes and books. This is a wonderful movie about this time in history with interviews with people that were on the orphan train. It is a great resource.

I had a general idea of the orphan trains that carried New York City street children to the midwest for placement with farm families. This documentary shows photos of the children and bits of interviews with now elderly men and women who lived through this experience. Each one gives their experience, good and bad, so gradually a picture emerges of what it was like to be a young child taken into a strange home, not knowing if they will be part of the family or just treated as a slave to work for the family. The glimpses into their lives was touching.

This gives a pretty good overview of the Children's Aid Society and the orphan trains that changed the lives 100,000 children. Quite a good documentary, very watchable.

Wonderful historical documentary .For those who are descendants of children of The Orphan Trains,this will be personally important.
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I teach Sociology and use this video to illustrate the concepts of socialization, resocialization, role and role exit (among others). This is a powerful and important story about a little known prorgam that lasted more than 70 years. While rarely reported in History books, this is the story of thousands of New York City orphaned or disadvantaged children who were involuntarily relocated to the country, and "adopted" by rural farmers. Very interesting story. The first-hand accounts of some of the now adult children who lived through the ordeal are very touching and surreal.

From the 1850s to the 1920s, a philanthropist sent orphaned and poor children from New York City to farms in the Midwest and West. By fluke, a recently deceased woman found his diary and helped to shed light on this topic.

I had known that French female orphans were sent to Quebec to be wives and maids for colonists centuries ago. However, I didn't know that the US had an adoption plan that crossed vast boundaries, in the past. This disc covers many questions that would concern adoptions of any kind. Were some children picked over others? Were adoptive parents grateful or abusive? Did the children want to be adopted? What happened when things didn't work out between child and potential parents? It'll warm your heart to see that some adoptees truly found love and shelter. Still, this work was realistic enough to talk of children that were abused and practically enslaved, though the work never say anything on the topic of sexual molestation.

Another thing this work NEVER mentions is RACE. Though it notes that the children were often a different ethnicity and religion than the English-descended, Protestant, adoptive parents, it fails to note that every child here was white. Did the philanthropist who started the program not care about black orphaned children? Did blacks have ways of adopting children that was unlike that of whites? (Is that why the 1980s film "Annie" only had white girls in it?) Though fictional, "Gangs of New York", based during the same time period, mentioned a black orphanage. So there were parentless black children at that time. It's possibly unjust that their stories were not brought up here. Also, the work talks of children being suspected of having "bad blood" (totally unrelated to STDs) from their parents, yet the word "eugenics" never comes up.

The migration of human groups fascinates me. I recently saw a documentary on how English women were shipped to Australia in its colonial days. I am the proud descendant of African Americans who moved during the Great Migration of the early to mid-1900s. Modern immigration is what is changing the birth rate and ethnic make-up of modern America. If mass migrations fascinate you too, then you may really benefit from seeing this work.