Charles Loring Brace (June 19, 1826 – August 11, 1890) was an American philanthropist who contributed to the field of social reform. He is considered a father of the modern foster care movement and was most renowned for starting the Orphan Train movement of the mid-19th century, and for founding Children's Aid Society.

Early life

Brace was born on June 19, 1826, in Litchfield, Connecticut. He was named after his uncle, the lawyer Charles Greely Loring, a defender of fugitive slave Thomas Sims. His mother died when he was 14, and he was raised by his father, a history teacher.

Education

He graduated from Yale College in 1846. Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect, also lived in New York.

Career

In 1852, at the age of 26, Brace, who had been raised as a Calvinist, was serving as a minister to the poor of Blackwell's Island (now known as Roosevelt Island) and to the poor of the Five Points Mission, when he decided he wanted to pursue his humanitarian efforts in the streets rather than in church. Brace was aware of the impoverished lives of the children in New York City and for this reason he concentrated on improving children's situation and their future. In 1853, Brace established the Children's Aid Society.

thumb|Charles Loring Brace, aged 29 years

In 1854, the Society opened the first of its "newsboys' lodging-houses", which would become one of Brace's most successful projects. These houses provided basic room and board at low prices to homeless children who hawked newspapers on the streets of American cities. Though Brace viewed the newsboys as children in need of the services provided by the houses, they also inspired several of Horatio Alger's stories in which the newsboys' independence and pluck is rewarded with great wealth.

Brace believed that poor, Catholic immigrants were genetically inferior, deeming them "stupid, foreign criminal class" and the "scum and refuse of ill-formed civilization". Some of the children of immigrants had been in trouble with the law. Such was the severity of child poverty in 1854 that the number of homeless children in New York City was estimated as high as 34,000. The police referred to these children as "street rats".

According to an essay written by Brace in 1872, one crime and poverty ridden area around Tenth Avenue was referred to as "Misery Row". Misery Row was considered to be a main breeding ground of crime and poverty, and an inevitable "fever nest" where disease spread easily. Many of the children he deemed orphans were not orphaned at all, and when families of origin tried to keep their children, they were rebuffed.

The arrangements for placing homeless children varied. Sometimes, children were pre-ordered by couples, who would send a request for their desired gender, age, hair and eye color, end etc. to one of the institutions participating in the placements. After a suitably fitting child was found, the child was sent via train to their new family for adoption.

More commonly, groups of 5-30 children of various ages from infant to teenager would travel with an adult agent as escort along a determined route of towns and communities to be placed in foster home situations. Railroads and charities would provide discount fares, new clothes, bibles, and other sundries to the children for the journeys, and Brace raised money for the program through his writings and speeches. To improve the chances of successful placement, since many host families harbored strong prejudice towards ethnic groups,

Children could be placed with couples, families, or single adults, and adoption was not necessary for placement. Rather than adoption, many placements, especially older placements of teens, instead signed a contract of indenture for the children selected, which outlined certain obligations, such as providing clothes, room, board, 4 months of education per year, and other terms in exchange for the child's indentured labor until the age of 21.

The trains and relocation efforts began to decline in the face of rising criticism over the lack of oversight and vetting of the placement homes, and changing views on child labor. The need for children to adopt and provide labor declined steeply as rural areas became settled, and many states passed laws preventing the importation and placement of out-of-state children within their borders without the payment of costly fees, to ensure in-state needy children took priority. The relocations finally ended in 1929.

Overall, Brace's relocation program was largely deemed a success. A 1910 survey concluded that 87 percent of the children sent to country homes had "done well," while 8 percent had returned to New York and the other 5 percent (representing 10,000 children) had either died, disappeared or gotten arrested, He argued Darwinism was compatible with charitable efforts like his, against some Social Darwinists who held the opposite view. Brace was also an outspoken abolitionist who (unusually in his time even for abolitionists) entirely rejected scientific racism, arguing that Black people should have equal rights, and even held their having children with Whites could lead to a better future race. In a bold move (and perhaps inspired by his abolitionist and Darwinian mindset), Brace did away with the centuries-old custom of indenture so that the "placed" children were allowed to leave a home if they were uncomfortable with the placement. Brace's vision of migrating children to live with the western Christian farming families was widely supported by wealthy New York families – the first large gift of $50 was given by Mrs. William B. Astor in 1853.

The Children's Aid Society (CAS), the best-known organization finding homes for children, made efforts to screen the host families and follow up on the welfare of placed children. By 1909, at the first White House Conference on Dependent Children, the country's top social reformers praised the CAS' emigration movement, but argued that children should either be kept with their natal families or, if they were removed as a result of parental neglect or abuse, every effort should be made to place the child in a foster home nearby. In a report in 1910, the Children's Aid Society estimated that 87 percent of children placed by the Orphan Train program had done well.

Brace served as an executive secretary of Children's Aid Society for 37 years, overseeing the program. He died in 1890 from Bright's disease.

The family includes son, Charles Loring Brace Jr. (Yale, 1876) and CAS board secretary,

  • Kate Manning's My Notorious Life (2014) predominantly features early 1800s orphans as main characters, who get selected on the street amongst children who must prostitute themselves for food, by Charles Loring Brace for the Orphan Train, and eventually become Lake Shore Drive (Chicago) and Fifth Avenue residents.
  • The book Last Train Home, an orphan train story by Renée Wendinger, is a historical novella describing the methods by which children were placed West by the Children's Aid Society and the New York Foundling following the lives of two children of the train.
  • The book Extra! Extra! The Orphan Trains and Newsboys of New York by Renée Wendinger, is an unabridged nonfiction resource book and pictorial history about the orphan trains.
  • The song by Utah Phillips called "Orphan Train" has been performed by numerous modern bluegrass singers.
  • The book Gratefully Yours describes a nine-year-old girl's feelings about her new family who adopt her from the orphan train.
  • There is a ballet entitled Orphan Train presented by Covenant Ballet Theatre of Brooklyn, which tells the story of Brace and shows stories of orphans on the train. It is choreographed by Marla Hirokawa.
  • Authors Al and Joanna Lacy have written an Orphan Trains Trilogy, depicting the lives of fictional orphans.
  • The ballad "Rider On An Orphan Train", written by David Massengill, describes the inevitable tragedy of the separation of siblings in spite of the efforts to keep brothers and sisters together.
  • The book Train to Somewhere by Eve Bunting describes a fictional account of a girl's journey on the Orphan Train.

See also

  • History of childhood in the United States
  • Timeline of children's rights in the United States

References

Further reading

  • Askeland, Lori. " 'The Means of Draining the City of These Children': Domesticity and Romantic Individualism in Charles Loring Brace's Emigration Plan, 1853-1861." American Transcendental Quarterly 12#2: (1988) 145–162
  • Brace, Charles Loring. "The Life of the Street Rats" (1872) online
  • , a one-hour documentary film based on exclusive access to the CAS archives using original research: Brace's diaries, letters from children, agents and interviews with "riders."
  • Holt, Marilyn. The Orphan Trains: Placing Out in America (University of Nebraska Press, 1992).
  • Staller, Karen M. New York's Newsboys: Charles Loring Brace and the Founding of the Children's Aid Society (Oxford University Press, 2020). online
  • "Champion of Children: Charles Loring Brace" (National Benevolent Association, 2022). online
  • The Children's Aid Society
  • Orphans' stories