Clarion Books

In 1883, my twelve-year-old grandfather, George Williams, lived in a Minneapolis orphanage with his younger brother and many other four- to fourteen-year-old boys. But he had family nearby. His family members had food, and some of them had a place to stay. So, why was he in an orphanage? Lucky? Many children were orphaned, abandoned, homeless, or j... ust in a family that was having a hard time. Was 1883 any different from today for families and children? What was life like for kids in the United States back then? Statistics about families of that time are difficult to find because our country was still young, the population on the East Coast was expanding rapidly, and many people were moving west, across territory that collected little information. [1] An excellent history of how Americans cared for orphans from colonial times until the late twentieth century was written by Catherine Reef, an award-winning author of nonfiction for young adults. [2] She cited the animosity against immigrants, African Americans, and Native Americans as a strong factor affecting the type of care that was offered to children and their struggling families, who often had no place to live. After 1850, childrens aid societies in a few large cities on the East Coast transported more than two hundred thousand orphaned, abandoned, and homeless children on orphan trains to the Midwest for adoption, which often turned out to be indentured work. [3] No national social safety net for children existed until 1912, when the federal government established the Childrens Bureau, which was focused solely on the needs of children and addressed topics such as dependent children and child labor. [4] Whether supported by orphan train placements or helped by Childrens Bureau initiatives, many children of the late 1800s and early 1900s lived with foster families. My grandfathers story reflects the time of his birth, in 1870. His father, John Williams, was an Irish immigrant who had fought in the Union Army during the Civil War and then married the ...Read More