Record guide

Orphan train records

Orphan train riders were city children sent to new homes in rural America from 1854 to 1929; their records are held by the agencies that placed them, not by any one government office.

Between 1854 and 1929, the National Orphan Train Complex estimates, about 250,000 orphaned, abandoned, or homeless children were sent by train from New York, Boston, and other cities to rural communities across the country. The movement was started by Charles Loring Brace and the Children's Aid Society of New York, and other organizations soon copied it. Children's Aid itself counts more than 120,000 children it placed, and describes the program as the beginning of foster care in the United States.

There was never one set of records. Each organization kept its own, most did not share their numbers, and some records have been lost or destroyed. Not every rider was an orphan, and many states now have strict privacy laws for adoption and foster care files. So finding a rider takes two steps: proving the child rode a train, and then finding the agency that placed the child.

Who rode and where they went

Most riders came from New York City and Boston, but orphanages in other cities sent children too, among them Philadelphia and Chicago. Children went to all of the 48 continental states, most to the Midwest and West, and some to Canada. Children's Aid says its trains stopped in more than 45 states as well as Canada and Mexico. By the early 1920s, its records show, half of all the children it placed went to upstate New York.

The National Orphan Train Complex estimates that about half of the riders were born in America. Most were white children of Western European background, because placing organizations thought they would be easiest to place, but Italian, Armenian, and Black children also rode. Children's Aid's first annual report said the great majority of the children it sent away were the children of poor parents who were leaving them to grow up neglected in the streets.

Placed, indentured, or adopted

A child taken off a train was not necessarily adopted. The Children's Aid records describe three kinds of placement. Some children were foster children, whose new families agreed to treat them as family members and send them to school, and expected help on the farm or in the house in return. Some were formally adopted. Others, usually older boys, went as paid laborers.

The difference matters for records. An adopted child became equal to the natural children, including the right to inherit, while an indentured child had no inheritance rights. The National Orphan Train Complex notes that people used the two words as if they meant the same thing, so a family story that grandmother was adopted may describe a placement that never went to court. If there was a legal adoption, look for it in the court records of the county where the family lived.

Clues that an ancestor rode a train

Ask older relatives first. Not every rider talked about it, but some did. The National Orphan Train Complex suggests looking for a person born on the East Coast who appears in another state as a child, a surname that changes in the middle of childhood, or a child listed in the census as a boarder, inmate, or servant, or living with a family that is not the birth family.

Expect the details to be off. There are not always records of the children, and when there are, a name or birth date may be written slightly differently from what the family remembers. Siblings were often separated, at the orphanage or later, so a rider may have had brothers and sisters placed elsewhere. Some trains were written up in local newspapers, and the National Orphan Train Complex uses public records and news articles to learn when a rider traveled and which agent went along.

What the agencies kept

The Children's Aid Society followed up on the children it placed. Children and their foster families were expected to write regularly, and field agents visited the homes and wrote a report after each visit. Children were often moved to another home when a placement did not work. These letters, reports, and case files are the heart of the Society's records.

The Society's historical records, 1836 to 2006 with most from 1853 to 1947, are at the New-York Historical Society. Case files and correspondence for children sent to the country are in Series XI, and most of those boxes are restricted. A researcher who asks to see a restricted file is referred to a Children's Aid specialist, who interviews the researcher, decides what may be seen under the legal limits on adoption and foster care records, and supervises the use. Children's Aid also has its own archives department for questions about the program.

Other placing organizations

Children's Aid phased out its placing-out department by 1929, although it kept placing boys on farms as laborers through the 1930s. The New York Foundling Hospital, whose riders to Louisiana are the focus of the Louisiana Orphan Train Museum, still operates, and the National Orphan Train Complex advises contacting it directly for its records, as with Children's Aid and the Home for Little Wanderers.

Records of some other New York institutions have moved. The National Orphan Train Complex lists the New York City Orphan Asylum records at the Westchester County Historical Society, the original New York Juvenile Asylum records at Columbia University, and the New York Infant Asylum and the Nursery and Child's Hospital at the Weill Cornell Medicine archives. The Complex itself owns many records of the American Female Guardian Society's Home for the Friendless, including certificates signed by parents surrendering children.

On the page, look for

Write down every name the rider used, birth, adoptive, and married, with birth date and place as best known.
Find the rider in each census as a child and note who the household head was and how the child is described.
Look for the year and town of placement in family papers, obituaries, and local newspapers.
Note the rider's religion, which the National Orphan Train Complex asks for when it searches its database.
Ask the National Orphan Train Complex to search its rider database.
Identify the placing agency, then contact it or the archive that now holds its records.
If an adoption is claimed, search the county court records where the family lived.
Search for siblings, who may have been placed in the same area or in another state.

Where to see them for free

The National Orphan Train Complex in Concordia, Kansas, which keeps a database of more than 8,000 riders and will search it for a name. As of October 2026 it also offers research by mail for a fee of $100 per name.
The New-York Historical Society, which holds the Children's Aid Society records (MS 111), and the Children's Aid archives department.
The New York Foundling Hospital and other placing agencies that still exist, contacted directly.
FamilySearch, as the place where the Home for the Friendless records owned by the National Orphan Train Complex can be viewed online.
Local newspapers and county court records in the town where the child was placed.

Sources

How to cite this page

Daily Ancestor. "Orphan train records." Record guides. https://dailyancestor.com/records/orphan-trains. Last checked 2026-10-12.